ABSTRACT
Internet governance relies on multistakeholderism – a distributed policy-making model based on the voluntary cooperation of key actors, usually identified as: states, business and civil society, operating “in their respective roles” through “rough consensus and running code”. Governance – a term often used in reference to the unique internet ecosystem – is neither new nor unique to the global communication network. The internet operates based on an intentionally decentralised design – to effectively defer threats to the network and its resources, there is no central point of control, which, when compromised, could disable the operation of the entire global web. When discussing governance and its evolution, Jessop argues new governance models are built upon the failures of old ones and describe the process as “second order governance”. In the transboundary world of the internet era, cybersecurity is an international matter. International cooperation is “intrinsically related to” the decentralised and distributed nature of this unique medium.
