Building digital authoritarianism 2.0: Social construction of bounded legitimacy of facial recognition technology in China and the United Kingdom

Facial recognition technology (FRT) diffuses across diverse political systems despite legal challenges. To explain how contested technologies gain acceptance, we propose the concept of Bounded Legitimacy of Emerging Technologies (BLET) to capture howstates, courts, and media interact to construct a repairable and flexible form of technology legitimacy in a given society. Through a comparative analysis of landmark FRT lawsuits in the United Kingdom (UK) and China, we examine media-court dynamics through the process of legitimation. The findings reveal systematic divergence where the UK exhibits decentralized balancing while China demonstrates convergent prioritization. Yet a cross-regime convergence emerges as both cases follow similar legitimation paths, where courtroom victories did not halt FRT expansion but instead normalized exceptional surveillance. We argue that this convergence reflects a hallmark of Digital Authoritarianism 2.0, a fundamental shift from overt ideological coercion to subtle instrumentarian control that transcends traditional regime dichotomies by embedding power within technical infrastructure rather than political institutions. Bounded legitimacy serves as the mechanism that enables this transition, as it allows contested technologies to absorb legal setbacks and continue to diffuse across regimes. Ultimately, this study illuminates evolving technology-power relations and offers comparative guidance for governing high-risk AI.