The BG News August 19, 2005

The BGSU campus student newspaper August 19, 2005. Volume 96 - Issue 1https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/bg-news/8458/thumbnail.jp

The Role of Transnational Elites in shaping the evolving Field of Internet Governance

La gouvernance de l'Internet est une thématique récente dans la politique mondiale. Néanmoins, elle est devenue au fil des années un enjeu économique et politique important. La question a même pris une importance particulière au cours des derniers mois en devenant un sujet d'actualité récurrent. Forte de ce constat, c ette recherche retrace l'histoire de la gouvernance de l'Internet depuis son émergence comme enjeu politique dans les années 1980 jusqu'à la fin du Sommet Mondial sur la Société de l'Information (SMSI) en 2005. Plutôt que de se focaliser sur l'une ou l'autre des institutions impliquées dans la régulation du réseau informatique mondial, cette recherche analyse l'émergence et l'évolution historique d'un espace de luttes rassemblant un nombre croissant d'acteurs différents. Cette évolution est décrite à travers le prisme de la relation dialectique entre élites et non-élites et de la lutte autour de la définition de la gouvernance de l'Internet. Cette thèse explore donc la question de comment les relations au sein des élites de la gouvernance de l'Internet et entre ces élites et les non-élites expliquent l'emergence, l'évolution et la structuration d'un champ relativement autonome de la politique mondiale centré sur la gouvernance de l'Internet. Contre les perspectives dominantes réaliste et libérales, cette recherche s'ancre dans une approche issue de la combinaison des traditions hétérodoxes en économie politique internationale et des apports de la sociologie politique internationale. Celle-ci s'articule autour des concepts de champ, d'élites et d'hégémonie. Le concept de champ, développé par Bourdieu inspire un nombre croissant d'études de la politique mondiale. Il permet à la fois une étude différenciée de la mondialisation et l'émergence d'espaces de lutte et de domination au niveau transnational. La sociologie des élites, elle, permet une approche pragmatique et centrée sur les acteurs des questions de pouvoir dans la mondialisation. Cette recherche utilise plus particulièrement le concept d'élite du pouvoir de Wright Mills pour étudier l'unification d'élites a priori différentes autour de projets communs. Enfin, cette étude reprend le concept néo-gramscien d'hégémonie afin d'étudier à la fois la stabilité relative du pouvoir d'une élite garantie par la dimension consensuelle de la domination, et les germes de changement contenus dans tout ordre international. A travers l'étude des documents produits au cours de la période étudiée et en s'appuyant sur la création de bases de données sur les réseaux d'acteurs, cette étude s'intéresse aux débats qui ont suivi la commercialisation du réseau au début des années 1990 et aux négociations lors du SMSI. La première période a abouti à la création de l'Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) en 1998. Cette création est le résultat de la recherche d'un consensus entre les discours dominants des années 1990. C'est également le fruit d'une coalition entre intérêts au sein d'une élite du pouvoir de la gouvernance de l'Internet. Cependant, cette institutionnalisation de l'Internet autour de l'ICANN excluait un certain nombre d'acteurs et de discours qui ont depuis tenté de renverser cet ordre. Le SMSI a été le cadre de la remise en cause du mode de gouvernance de l'Internet par les États exclus du système, des universitaires et certaines ONG et organisations internationales. C'est pourquoi le SMSI constitue la seconde période historique étudiée dans cette thèse. La confrontation lors du SMSI a donné lieu à une reconfiguration de l'élite du pouvoir de la gouvernance de l'Internet ainsi qu'à une redéfinition des frontières du champ. Un nouveau projet hégémonique a vu le jour autour d'éléments discursifs tels que le multipartenariat et autour d'insitutions telles que le Forum sur la Gouvernance de l'Internet. Le succès relatif de ce projet a permis une stabilité insitutionnelle inédite depuis la fin du SMSI et une acceptation du discours des élites par un grand nombre d'acteurs du champ. Ce n'est que récemment que cet ordre a été remis en cause par les pouvoirs émergents dans la gouvernance de l'Internet. Cette thèse cherche à contribuer au débat scientifique sur trois plans. Sur le plan théorique, elle contribue à l'essor d'un dialogue entre approches d'économie politique mondiale et de sociologie politique internationale afin d'étudier à la fois les dynamiques structurelles liées au processus de mondialisation et les pratiques localisées des acteurs dans un domaine précis. Elle insiste notamment sur l'apport de les notions de champ et d'élite du pouvoir et sur leur compatibilité avec les anlayses néo-gramsciennes de l'hégémonie. Sur le plan méthodologique, ce dialogue se traduit par une utilisation de méthodes sociologiques telles que l'anlyse de réseaux d'acteurs et de déclarations pour compléter l'analyse qualitative de documents. Enfin, sur le plan empirique, cette recherche offre une perspective originale sur la gouvernance de l'Internet en insistant sur sa dimension historique, en démontrant la fragilité du concept de gouvernance multipartenaire (multistakeholder) et en se focalisant sur les rapports de pouvoir et les liens entre gouvernance de l'Internet et mondialisation. - Internet governance is a recent issue in global politics. However, it gradually became a major political and economic issue. It recently became even more important and now appears regularly in the news. Against this background, this research outlines the history of Internet governance from its emergence as a political issue in the 1980s to the end of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2005. Rather than focusing on one or the other institution involved in Internet governance, this research analyses the emergence and historical evolution of a space of struggle affecting a growing number of different actors. This evolution is described through the analysis of the dialectical relation between elites and non-elites and through the struggle around the definition of Internet governance. The thesis explores the question of how the relations among the elites of Internet governance and between these elites and non-elites explain the emergence, the evolution, and the structuration of a relatively autonomous field of world politics centred around Internet governance. Against dominant realist and liberal perspectives, this research draws upon a cross-fertilisation of heterodox international political economy and international political sociology. This approach focuses on concepts such as field, elites and hegemony. The concept of field, as developed by Bourdieu, is increasingly used in International Relations to build a differentiated analysis of globalisation and to describe the emergence of transnational spaces of struggle and domination. Elite sociology allows for a pragmatic actor-centred analysis of the issue of power in the globalisation process. This research particularly draws on Wright Mill's concept of power elite in order to explore the unification of different elites around shared projects. Finally, this thesis uses the Neo-Gramscian concept of hegemony in order to study both the consensual dimension of domination and the prospect of change contained in any international order. Through the analysis of the documents produced within the analysed period, and through the creation of databases of networks of actors, this research focuses on the debates that followed the commercialisation of the Internet throughout the 1990s and during the WSIS. The first time period led to the creation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1998. This creation resulted from the consensus-building between the dominant discourses of the time. It also resulted from the coalition of interests among an emerging power elite. However, this institutionalisation of Internet governance around the ICANN excluded a number of actors and discourses that resisted this mode of governance. The WSIS became the institutional framework within which the governance system was questioned by some excluded states, scholars, NGOs and intergovernmental organisations. The confrontation between the power elite and counter-elites during the WSIS triggered a reconfiguration of the power elite as well as a re-definition of the boundaries of the field. A new hegemonic project emerged around discursive elements such as the idea of multistakeholderism and institutional elements such as the Internet Governance Forum. The relative success of the hegemonic project allowed for a certain stability within the field and an acceptance by most non-elites of the new order. It is only recently that this order began to be questioned by the emerging powers of Internet governance. This research provides three main contributions to the scientific debate. On the theoretical level, it contributes to the emergence of a dialogue between International Political Economy and International Political Sociology perspectives in order to analyse both the structural trends of the globalisation process and the located practices of actors in a given issue-area. It notably stresses the contribution of concepts such as field and power elite and their compatibility with a Neo-Gramscian framework to analyse hegemony. On the methodological level, this perspective relies on the use of mixed methods, combining qualitative content analysis with social network analysis of actors and statements. Finally, on the empirical level, this research provides an original perspective on Internet governance. It stresses the historical dimension of current Internet governance arrangements. It also criticise the notion of multistakeholde ism and focuses instead on the power dynamics and the relation between Internet governance and globalisation

Maturing International Cooperation to Address the Cyberspace Attack Attribution Problem

One of the most significant challenges to deterring attacks in cyberspace is the difficulty of identifying and attributing attacks to specific state or non-state actors. The lack of technical detection capability moves the problem into the legal realm; however, the lack of domestic and international cyberspace legislation makes the problem one of international cooperation. Past assessments have led to collective paralysis pending improved technical and legal advancements. This paper demonstrates, however, that any plausible path to meaningful defense in cyberspace must include a significant element of international cooperation and regime formation. The analytical approach diverges from past utilitarian-based assessments to understand the emerging regime, or implicit and explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures, around which actor expectations are beginning to converge in the area of cyberspace attack attribution. The analysis applies a social-practice perspective of regime formation to identify meaningful normative and political recommendations. Various hypotheses of regime formation further tailor the recommendations to the current maturity level of international cooperation in this issue area. Examining international cooperation in cyberspace and methods for maturing international cooperation to establish attribution in other domains inform political mitigations to the problem of cyberspace attack attribution. Potential solutions are analyzed with respect to four recent cyberspace attacks to illustrate how improved international cooperation might address the problem. Finally, a counterfactual analysis, or thought experiment, of how these recommendations might have been applied in the case of rampant Chinese cyber espionage inform specific current and future opportunities for implementation. Although timing is difficult to predict, the growing frequency and scope of cyber attacks indicate the window of opportunity to address the problem before some form of cataclysmic event is closing

Conflicting forms of use: the potential of and limits to the use of the internet as a public sphere

This thesis examines the potential of and limits to the use of the Internet as a public sphere. To this end it considers the claim that the Internet is or can be a public sphere. To do this there are two related spheres of enquiry: the `public sphere' and `the Internet'. The enquiry into the concept of the public sphere is based on an engagement with the work of Jürgen Habermas. The concern of this thesis is to draw on the wider corpus of Habermas's work to develop a model of the public sphere that takes account of his thesis of `colonisation'. Because the process of colonisation results in systemically distorted communication the liberal model of the public sphere is replaced with a model of a `radical' public sphere. These two concepts, the radical public sphere and colonisation then form the basis for the investigation into the potential of the Internet. The Internet, like other technologies, cannot, however, be considered in abstraction of its use. Therefore, a theory of `forms of use' is developed, through which the potential of and limits to media can be analysed. This term considers technologies to be socially constructed, and this social construction tends to meet the needs of dominant material forces in society; that is, technologies are not neutral or autonomous but neither are they necessarily completely controllable. A technology is rarely onedimensional, for the basic technology may contain a variety of potential uses. Different case studies are presented in order to show how these different forms of use of the Internet can be supported. However, we can understand that certain `systemic' colonising forms of use of the Internet threaten the functioning of other, radical forms of use. This colonisation requires juridification' through political, legal, socio-cultural and economic frameworks for production, exchange and consumption The limits to the use of the Internet as a public sphere are not, however, inherent features of the technology itself, but pertain to its use under a system in which certain social practices and institutions have priority over others. Under these conditions, the use of the Internet as a radical public sphere takes place as a continual struggle against dominant forms of us

Technologies and Utopias : the cyberflâneur and the experience of being online

The thesis examines the historical moment of the transition of the Internet from a technology to a cultural form with widespread social use. It is a moment that contains traces of the utopian dreams of the early users of the Internet at the point when it became a widely available, accessible everyday resource. I examine this moment of transition in terms of a vocabulary of use that sought to give expression to the then novel experience of being online. These conceptualisation of use are called user types and usually appear as metaphors. The first two chapters begin with metaphor, presented both in theory and in practice. This is followed by an introduction to cybercultural studies and cyberferninism, approaches which provide both inspiration and counterargument to the here presented approach. This framework is expanded in the fourth chapter, in which existing methodologies are outlined to introduce the virtual archaeology. This approach is inspired by the most important theoretical reference point for the thesis: Benjamin and his Arcades Project (and within that: cyberflAnerie). Benjamin's project emphasises the analysis of fragments, which are juxtaposed to illuminate an otherwise invisible meaning. Similar structures are seen to exist online. These shape the particularity of the creation of meaning. Another important aspect of Benjamin is his emphasis on the city and the radical shift of modernity. Each user type is seen to similarly express a reaction to the shock of the new, expressing particular utopian moments in Internet history. User types tell us something of the formation of discourses that complete the transformation of a technology from the technical into recognisable social and cultural identities. The user types analysed in detail are: the cyberflAneur, cyberfldneuse, webgrrl, cyberpunk, netizen, cybernaut and surfer. Their detailed analysis provides the second part of the thesis. The aspects referred to in the first part are all part of these analyses. Final reflections about the user types' role as specific communication tools, which shape the cultural form of the new medium, conclude the thesis.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Technologies and Utopias: the cyberflâneur and the experience of being online

The thesis examines the historical moment of the transition of the Internet from a technology to a cultural form with widespread social use. It is a moment that contains traces of the utopian dreams of the early users of the Internet at the point when it became a widely available, accessible everyday resource. I examine this moment of transition in terms of a vocabulary of use that sought to give expression to the then novel experience of being online. These conceptualisation of use are called user types and usually appear as metaphors. The first two chapters begin with metaphor, presented both in theory and in practice. This is followed by an introduction to cybercultural studies and cyberferninism, approaches which provide both inspiration and counterargument to the here presented approach. This framework is expanded in the fourth chapter, in which existing methodologies are outlined to introduce the virtual archaeology. This approach is inspired by the most important theoretical reference point for the thesis: Benjamin and his Arcades Project (and within that: cyberflAnerie). Benjamin's project emphasises the analysis of fragments, which are juxtaposed to illuminate an otherwise invisible meaning. Similar structures are seen to exist online. These shape the particularity of the creation of meaning. Another important aspect of Benjamin is his emphasis on the city and the radical shift of modernity. Each user type is seen to similarly express a reaction to the shock of the new, expressing particular utopian moments in Internet history. User types tell us something of the formation of discourses that complete the transformation of a technology from the technical into recognisable social and cultural identities. The user types analysed in detail are: the cyberflAneur, cyberfldneuse, webgrrl, cyberpunk, netizen, cybernaut and surfer. Their detailed analysis provides the second part of the thesis. The aspects referred to in the first part are all part of these analyses. Final reflections about the user types' role as specific communication tools, which shape the cultural form of the new medium, conclude the thesis