Guest editorial
| Date | 11 September 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/DPRG-07-2017-0036 |
| Pages | 413-414 |
| Published date | 11 September 2017 |
| Author | Milton Mueller,Farzaneh Badiei |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information policy |
Guest editorial
Milton Mueller and Farzaneh Badiei
Milton Mueller is
Professor and
Farzaneh Badiei is
Research Associate at
School of Public Policy,
Georgia Institute of
Technology, Atlanta,
Georgia, USA.
Cybersecurity and internet governance: introduction to the special issue
Cybersecurity is one of the frontiers of digital policy, regulation and governance. The
growing linkage between cyberattacks and state actors adds a national security and
foreign policy dimension to the problem, complicating efforts at global cooperation. This
special issue focuses on the way problems related to information and network security
challenge existing institutions of governance. It is particularly concerned with the impact of
cybersecurity policies on internet governance.
Two decades ago novel institutions, most notably Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers (ICANN), were formed to respond to the rise of a global internet. The new
internet governance institutions departed from the traditional sovereignty model to
empower non-state actors in a multistakeholder model of globalized governance. Some
have argued that the link between cybersecurity and national security requires moving
back to a more traditional sovereignty model on the internet. Yet the factors that led to
transnational governance innovations like ICANN are also present in cybersecurity: global
technical compatibility, globalized markets for technology and services, a need for
cooperation and information sharing across jurisdictions and the need to avoid technical
and economic fragmentation of online capabilities.
Will cybersecurity elicit institutional innovations, or will national security concerns lead to a
renationalization of the internet? If the latter, what consequences will this have for global
internet governance? Can internet governance offer lessons and models for institutional
solutions to cybersecurity problems? The papers published here explore those questions.
These papers come out of a workshop organized by the Internet Governance Project (IGP),
which is part of the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy. The IGP workshop featured a
complementary and interdisciplinary mix of academic researchers, industry
representatives and military and public policy practitioners.
The opening paper by Milton Mueller, “Is cybersecurity eating internet governance?”
attempts to conceptualize the relationship between internet governance and cybersecurity
governance. It discusses and evaluates definitions of cyberspace, cybersecurity, national
security, cybersecurity governance and internet governance in an attempt to develop an
understanding of the degree to which internet governance and cybersecurity governance
are interdependent, or competing and hostile models.
Unlike Mueller, Michel van Eeten sees little threat that cybersecurity will become the
entering wedge for a renationalization of cyberspace. In his view, the “war” between nation
state and transnational internet governance is only taking place at the level of discourse,
which is at best loosely coupled to actual control over internet resources and policy. His
paper, “Patching security governance: an empirical view of emergent governance
mechanisms for cybersecurity”, surveys a range of case studies to study how the
institutional landscape of security governance is “patched” to deal with emerging threats.
While Michel van Eeten recognizes the emergence of state actors as major attackers in
cyberspace, he sees no transformation of defensive cybersecurity; most governance of
DOI 10.1108/DPRG-07-2017-0036 VOL. 19 NO. 6 2017, pp. 413-414, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2398-5038 DIGITAL POLICY, REGULATION AND GOVERNANCE PAGE 413
To continue reading
Request your trial