Mazaher Kianpour, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Efficient provision of cybersecurity as a public good requires distinguishing three levels, namely, production, supply, and utility. Deploying such a multi-level perspective depends largely on the institutional arrangements that involve and empower agents, and provide an opportunity to the stakeholders to leverage their knowledge, capabilities, as well as potential capacity to influence to provide sustainable cybersecurity. Polycentric governance structures can promote active participation that empowers stakeholders to embrace a critical understanding of their cybersecurity challenges and enables them to establish optimal strategies that manage situation-specific trade-offs between threats and opportunities. This research, at the macro-level, studies how polycentricity is conceptualized and operationalized in cybersecurity policies and institutions across the European Union (EU). We employed the Institutional Grammar 2.0 to investigate whether the EU’s cybersecurity strategies and policies establish a polycentric governance structure. Moreover, we analyzed the EU cybersecurity policies to identify sanctions that are prescribed as part of the regime and to what extent the sanctioning is centralized or decentralized. Since the scope of this study has been narrowed down to cyber incidents and crisis response across the EU, we also explored to what extent policies signal actors’ commitment to ensure efficient cyber crisis management as a complex public good. The results of this study reveal the variable degrees of polycentricity within specific cybersecurity regulations in the EU governance system and the variation in authority of actors across those regulations. However, our study found weak evidence of punishment and signals of commitment to the common goals related to cyber incidents and crisis response in the analyzed policies.
