Authoritarian multilateralism in the global cyber regime complex: The double transformation of an international diplomatic practice

Abstract

Multilateralism is regarded as a constitutive feature of the contemporary liberal international order and is associated with liberal values. However, for twenty-five years, authoritarian states have advocated the expansion of multilateral governance modalities for cybersecurity issues while major consolidated democracies have often opposed them. We explain this puzzle by distinguishing an overlooked variant of authoritarian multilateralism from the better-understood liberal variant. A Russo-Chinese coalition has employed various strategies within and beyond the United Nations to facilitate the adoption of this authoritarian variant for key cyber-governance processes, to achieve both specific cybersecurity goals and broader aims in contesting the liberal international order. Liberal democracies oppose instantiating authoritarian multilateralism, but they have also altered their understanding of multilateralism to encompass more space for private and multistakeholder governance alongside it, leading to a double transformation of the practice of multilateralism. The article concludes by discussing the implications of our analysis for multilateralism.