CYBER POLITICS

All international relations involve politics in one way or another,  implicitly or explicitly.  The laws of politics,  though subject to debate among some political scientists,  generally refer to regularities of human behavior across time and space.  Often,  variation is explained in terms of issue area,  empirical referent,  specific modalities,  or exceptionalism,  to note some of the most common terms.  Insofar as there is as yet no decisive account or description of cyberpolitics,  the language and concepts we use are the familiar ones of politics in kinetic domains. Combining Lasswell ’ s (1958) definition of politics as the authoritative allocation of values in society with David Easton ’ s (1953) stark statement about   who gets what,  when,    and   how    leads us to the most generic and appropriate view of politics,  relevant in all contexts,  times,  and places. With the creation of cyberspace,  a new arena for the conduct of politics is taking shape,  and we may well be witnessing a new form of politics as well. These dual insights into the nature of politics,  while initially articulated for the individual polity or the nation-state,  carry powerful meaning that is readily transferable to the international arena.  They also skillfully draw our attention to issue areas dominated by the politics of ambiguity, areas where the domain is unclear and the stakes are not well defined. We must also keep in mind that politics consists of    “ the more or less incomplete control of human behavior through voluntary habits of   compliance   in combination with threats of probable   enforcement  ”   (Deutsch 1968,  17; italics in original).  Moreover,  politics is    “ the interplay of enforcement threats,  which can be changed relatively quickly,  with the existing loyalties and compliance habits of the population,  which are more powerful but which most often can only be changed more slowly ”  (ibid., 19). All politics,  in cyber or real arenas,  involves conflict,  negotiation,  and bargaining over the mechanisms, institutional or otherwise, to resolve in authoritative   ways the contentions over the nature of particular sets of core   value s.  14    As Harold Lasswell noted,  the  “ study of politics is the study of influence and the influential. ”   The influential people    “ are those who get the most of what there is to get ”   (Lasswell 1958,  3).  15    When  politics is evoked,  power is a necessary corollary.  16    Since politics,  by definition, involves some struggle,  even in the most collaborative of situations,  the capabilities available to the participants become important determinants of potential outcomes; and the final outcomes must be viewed as authoritative in nature — subject to the next round of contention. 

        By Shayo Issah