Governing Cyberspace: Building Confidence, Capacity and Consensus
| Author | Mahima Kaul,Joris Larik,Sash Jayawardane |
| Date | 01 February 2016 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12286 |
| Published date | 01 February 2016 |
Governing Cyberspace: Building Confidence,
Capacity and Consensus
Sash Jayawardane and Joris Larik
The Hague Institute for Global Justice
Mahima Kaul
The Observer Research Foundation
Cyberspace is an integral part of modern societies and has
transformed global social and economic relations in the 21st
century. From an arcane and technical domain on the mar-
gins of international policy debates, cyberspace has entered
the realm of high politics and is an important feature of
contemporary debates on global governance. During the
2014 India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Gover-
nance, Indian academic and foreign policy analyst C. Raja
Mohan opined that ‘the age of innocence is over ... the
widely held beliefs that cyberspace will be a libertarian uto-
pia for individuals and a technological cornucopia for corpo-
rations now look utterly unrealistic ... the experiment in
constructing a cyber world beyond states has come to an
end’.
1
In other words, cyberspace is no longer the apolitical
province of nonstate actors. Its power and ubiquity make it
inherently political, and states increasingly seek to assert
their sovereignty in this domain. While cyberspace presents
unprecedented opportunities for economic growth, innova-
tion and development, it also entails unparalleled risks.
According to the chair of the 2015 Global Conference
on Cyberspace (GCCS), ‘the potential for malicious cyber activ-
ities by State and nonstate actors to create instability and
mistrust in international relations is increasing’.
2
A clear need
exists for building confidence, capacity and consensus
among key stakeholders to ensure stability and predictability
in international cyber relations.
Recognizing the growing importance of cyberspace in the
foreign and security policies of states, as well as the eco-
nomic prosperity and development of societies across the
world, the 2015 GCCS called on all stakeholders to ensure
that this global resource is managed in the public interest
and remains ‘free, open and secure’.
3
This special section
provides insight into how freedom, openness and security
can be achieved in cyberspace by making global cyber rela-
tions more stable, predictable and productive. It brings
together four updated and revised contributions on cyber
governance and cyber security that were first presented at
the conference on The Future of Cyber Governance at The
Hague Institute for Global Justice in May 2014.
4
Chelsey Slack opens the special section by addressing how
to improve international relations in the area of cyber gover-
nance in her article ‘Wired yet disconnected: The governance
of international cyber relations’. According to Slack, the net-
worked structure of cyberspace –with its asymmetrical,
anonymous and dual-use characteristics –as well as signifi-
cant variations in the technological capabilities and political
strategies of states, make it hard to establish consensus on
international policy issues. She argues that while existing
international legal regimes are adequate for effective cyber
governance, further effort is required to link legal and political
frameworks. Slack’s analysis yields a set of policy recommen-
dations to reduce uncertainty in international cyber relations
and facilitate the development of norms for responsible state
behaviour in cyberspace. These include: cultivating cyber
security as both a national and foreign policy priority; calibrat-
ing the debate on cyber security in a manner that recognizes
its military, political, economic and cultural dimensions, while
focusing on areas where practical cooperation can build con-
fidence among states; and bringing together likeminded
states to build momentum around specific principles with the
ultimate goal of forging international consensus (‘minilateral-
ism’in international cyber relations).
Mark Fliegauf analyzes the trust deficit in international
cyber relations in his commentary entitled ‘In cyber we trust’,
arguing that current efforts to govern interstate security
issues in the digital domain are inadequate. According to Flie-
gauf, states are prone to exploiting the digital vulnerabilities
of other states to access sensitive data and/or gain strategic
advantages. He asserts that states generally favour private
rent-seeking behaviour over producing a public good –global
cyber security –which has led to the securitization, militariza-
tion and fragmentation of cyberspace. This results in a Catch
22 scenario: international governance structures are required
to reduce the trust deficit that results from securitization and
militarization, but the establishment of these structures
requires a basic level of trust that is difficult to build under
present conditions. Fliegauf writes that the US must take the
lead in efforts to build the trust that must underpin any inter-
national governance architecture for cyber security. This can
be done by improving on a recent track record of restraint
under the Obama administration, which, for instance,
declined to use cyber adjuncts to operations in Iraq and Libya
over concerns about civilian casualties. Additionally, all states
must resist the temptation to adopt cyber security strategies
©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2016) 7:1 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12286
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 1 . February 2016
66
Special Section Article
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