| Cyberspace governance is the important topic at the international studies, it is also the center of global governance agenda. Not only the governments have been investing significant resources to participate the cyberspace governance, the private sectors and civil society also devoted on constructing of governance institutes. Meanwhile, the process of the governance practices provides a practical foundation for the academic studies. This thesis starts from the basic concepts and definitions, which were considered as cornerstone of multi-stakeholder cyberspace governance theory. Concrete and unified definitions will be helpful to eliminate the unnecessary disputes and demonstrate the subjects, objects as well as logics.The major theoretical hypothesis of the multi-stakeholder cyberspace governance theory is that there are various governance institutions in global cyberspace governance specialized in different governance areas, which decided the interaction models among the governments, private sectors, and civil society. According to the layer theory of the cyberspace, the related governance area can be divided to Internet governance, data governance as well as norms and rules governance of the actor’s behavior, which could be measured through four dimensions, including legitimacy, capacity, interest and resources. The results of the measurement will decide the leading actor during the interaction process on constructing of the institutions. Then the thesis analyzes how the governance institutions are constructed and operate through three layers of Internet governance, data governance and norms and rules governance. Finally. the thesis verified the validity of the cyberspace governance institutions according to the international regime theory.Multi-stakeholder theory have already been applied in cyberspace governance practices, the thesis studies theory’implication through Internet governance (technique and police level), data governance (information and content level), rules and norms (actor’s behavior level). In Internet governance, the thesis studied constructing process and validity of the Internet governance forum (IGF), World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), and ICANN.Data is the carrier of the power and wealth in the cyberspace, which made the governance institution even more complicated. The data governance could be separated from the information dimension and content dimension. On information governance, the date could be divided as three governance agenda as strategic information, competitive information and free information respectively. The data also could be defined form content perspective, which mainly focus on the value and ideology level of the data.Above the data governance is the norms and roles governance of the actor’s behavior, especially the government’s behaviors. Cyberspace was newly created as a forefront area, there is no successful governance institution regarding norms and roles due to the fast development and evolving of the space. In the real world, the norms and rules among the nations was based on sovereignty, which was the foundation the international relations after the establishment of the Westphalia Institutions. However, there is no agreement among nations and other actors on how to apply sovereignty in Cyberspace. The concepts of cyber independent and cyber commons are trying to deconstruct the legitimacy of sovereignty in cyberspace. Through the progress of cyberspace governance practices, all aspects realized the norms and rules should be based on sovereignty. This thesis discussed the challenges to apply sovereignty to cyberspace and give a definition of the cyber sovereignty first, then to study governance institutions of massive cyber surveillance, cyber economic espionage and cyber war based on cyber sovereignty.Last but not least, the thesis concluded that the multi-stakeholder theory applied to current cyberspace governance practice and will be helpful to resolve the difficulties of current cyberspace governance process. The research on cyberspace governance is meaningful to develop the cyberspace governance strategy and national cyberpower strategy of China. |
