Has cyberspace enabled a transformation of the sovereign state system, or do we find that cyberspace is becoming yet another “domain” where state authority is being established? Recent developments at international conferences on governing cyberspace in many ways fit with this analytical framing, with states like Russia, Brazil, and India proposing centralization of internet governance in the hands of intergovernmental organizations. However, the U.S. maintains a strong commitment to a multistakeholder model of governance, even while it pursues conventional military securitization of the internet at home. To address this empirical curiosity, I argue that the practices of multistakeholderism allows the U.S. to capture transnational flows, permitting the instantiation of global hierarchy in ostensibly democratic practices. In other words, the IR literature needs new concepts and relations to understand how different states have varying interests in preserving the state system.
