Cyberspace has become the ultimate frontier and central issue of international conflict, geopolitical competition, and security. Emerging threats and technologies continuously challenge the prospect of an open, secure, and free cyberspace. Additionally, the rising influence of technology on society and culture increasingly pushes international diplomacy to establish responsible state behavior in cyberspace and internet governance against the backdrop of fragmentation and polarization. In this context, novel normative practices and actors are emerging both inside and outside the conventional sites of international diplomacy and global governance. In Hybridity, Conflict, and the Global Politics of Cybersecurity, Fabio Cristiano and Bibi van den Berg explore the hybridity and conflict inherent to these recent processes of remodulation of the global politics of cybersecurity by analyzing emerging normative practices, threats and technologies, and actors. Through this comprehensive analysis, this edited volume ultimately sheds light on the problematic technical logic of emergence that informs the global politics of cybersecurity and delineates novel normative paths for cyberspace moving forward.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Providing a much-needed study on cybersecurity regime building, this comprehensive book is a detailed analysis of cybersecurity norm-making processes and country positions, through the lens of multi-stakeholder diplomacy. Multidisciplinary and multinational scholars and practitioners use insights drawn from high-level discussion groups to provide a rigorous analysis of how major cyber powers view multi-stakeholder diplomacy.

China’s emergence as a technology leader has become a major factor in geopolitics, transforming global political and economic relationships. In its bid to achieve digital great power status, China’s government has reformed laws and policies, drastically increased investment, and become more assertive internationally. Chinese companies have expanded at home and abroad, but relationships between government and the private sector have sometimes been fractious. The Emergence of China’s Smart State assesses the extent to which the Chinese government has been able to achieve its ambitious digital goals, and more broadly, how this reflects rapidly changing domestic and international political and economic dynamics surrounding China’s rise as a major technology player. This is the first book of its kind, interrogating the complex, dynamic interactions between political, market, and technological factors that structure China’s digital development. It will provide information and intellectual frameworks for scholars, policymakers, and professionals to appreciate the complexity of China’s digital policy landscape, the process of learning and iteration the Party continues to experience as external events impact the policy process, and the impact China’s innovation policies, regulations, and achievements have had, or may have, in the future.

There is a sprawling scholarship on violence, crime, and corrupt state rule; yet few have interpreted these challenges as transformative at the global scale and as a potential source of alternative, non-state, legitimacy. This volume challenges "Westphalian conservativism" in a provocative yet plausible manner, shedding light at the ubiquity and diversity of unfolding non-state agendas and at their effect on the imagined state community. Focusing on civil war parties, warlords, commercial providers of security, multinational companies and criminal organizations, the book directs attention to theoretical questions and policy challenges arising from non-state armed expansion. To accomplish this, the contributors present a range of case studies and comparisons within three thematic sections: the first takes stock of how, when, and in what measure state and state-system legitimacy are challenged by non-state violent or criminal activity; the second addresses the nature, effectiveness, and side-effects of different state-mandated reaction to non-state activities; and third focuses on the recombination of state and non-state actors contributing to processes of socio-political transformation. This volume provides a current analysis of different armed and violent actors encroaching on the state's monopoly of violence. It seeks to spark debate about global political change and will be of interest to students and scholars of global governance, global security, and international relations.

Global Political Leadership explores contemporary shifts in leadership, and the related leadership crisis, in the global world. Globalization is now perceived as a threatening and hostile force, with many of its advocates and political supporters turning away from it, but its processes cannot be reversed. New powers emerge, old ones re-emerge, and uncertainty about the future global order is increasing. This book tells the inside stories of global power games and asks important questions about the leadership crisis in the western world. The author provides an interpretative framework for contemporary shifts within the western political sphere based on the concept of global leadership. This framework presents the nature of the transformation caused by global processes, as part of which force and coercion have ceased to be the main modus operandi of the international realm. The issue of global political leadership has often been neglected in international relations literature, while being widely exploited by managerial and organizational studies. However, all social organizations have ‘gone global’ within the last several decades; they are more interconnected and more dependent on global processes, so the question of effective leadership strategies matching these new realities is highly necessary, even – or especially – at a time when globalization is no longer seen as a leading political programme. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of global affairs, politics and international relations, leadership and development, and diplomatic studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Argues that some of the least powerful countries masquerade as rights-promoters, paradoxically concealing the rights-violating effects of their patronage rule.

This book provides a detailed examination of the threats and dangers facing the West at the far end of the cybersecurity spectrum. It concentrates on threats to critical infrastructure which includes major public utilities. It focusses on the threats posed by the two most potent adversaries/competitors to the West, Russia and China, whilst considering threats posed by Iran and North Korea. The arguments and themes are empirically driven but are also driven by the need to evolve the nascent debate on cyberwarfare and conceptions of ‘cyberwar’. This book seeks to progress both conceptions and define them more tightly. This accessibly written book speaks to those interested in cybersecurity, international relations and international security, law, criminology, psychology as well as to the technical cybersecurity community, those in industry, governments, policing, law making and law enforcement, and in militaries (particularly NATO members).

This book introduces South Korea’s public diplomacy and identifies and evaluates the goals and corresponding areas of. It discusses implication for the foreign policy of the current Yoon Suk Yeol administration under the competitive geopolitical landscape. By establishing political diplomacy, economic diplomacy, and public diplomacy as the three pillars of its diplomacy, South Korea has endeavored to enhance its international image and credibility, deepen foreign nationals’ understanding of South Korea’s foreign policy, and expand its soft power across the international community. However, as current U.S.–China competition continues to expand to the domains of the political system and its organizing values, middle powers are struggling to hedge the risk of competition between liberalism and anti-liberalism, which closely relates to every middle power’s state identity and potential coalitions used to pursue certain value via public diplomacy. With that context, the contributions to the book examine the public diplomacy of South Korea and its achievement, the range of domains that it prioritizes, and future directions for such diplomacy amid the competition of great powers. Focusing on the Yoon Suk-Yeol administration’s foreign policy goals and how public diplomacy has been adapted to this framework under the intensifying great power competition between the U.S. and revisionist powers, the book addresses the ideological dimension in the ongoing power to explain how countries’ respective alignments could affect South Korea’s ability to conduct public diplomacy. This book is a novel contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in international relations, South Korean foreign policy, and Asian politics.

China, Trust and Digital Supply Chains presents a critical reflection on blockchain technologies in the context of their adoption in China and the world that China is engaged in and shaping. Approaching the issues of blockchain technology adoption and development on China’s own terms is critical if policy makers and others are to make effective sense of one of the key dynamics shaping the next few decades of the global landscape. The work challenges the ‘trust’ trope that dominates much discussion of blockchain technology’s application. It argues, contrary to the predominant trust trope, that blockchain is not about trust at all. It shows that China’s re-imagining of the 21st century global order is premised on driving intensified cross-border economic interactions without the presupposition of trust, and blockchain technology makes that possible. It also explores the paradox of technological decentralisation being taken up with vigour by a centralist polity, the role of blockchain technology as a critical condition of existence for the successful globalisation of China’s digital currency initiative, and the need to devise governance institutions that are multilateral in nature, to reflect the multi-polar nature of decentralised information systems with domestic and cross-border permutations. This book is of significant interest to readers of political economy, public policy, blockchain technology and Chinese studies.