The pursuit of positive accountability in the cyber domain

PAWLAK, Patryk

doi:10.1111/1758-5899.13302

The pursuit of positive accountability in the cyber domain

dc.contributor.author	PAWLAK, Patryk
dc.date.accessioned	2023-12-05T10:40:49Z
dc.date.available	2023-12-05T10:40:49Z
dc.date.issued	2024
dc.description	Published online: 28 November 2023	en
dc.description.abstract	Debates about accountability in cyberspace are dominated by state-centric and security-driven approaches that disregard the complexity of the institutional ecosystem in cyberspace and the diverse ways through which different stakeholder groups may pursue accountability. Such an approach has contributed to a flawed interpretation of accountability in cyberspace as applicable solely to malicious actors who need to be punished for their actions. Despite greater policy and research attention to this line of reasoning, holding states accountable for their behaviour has yielded limited results due to the legal, political and technical complexities. At the same time, the non-malicious activities in cyberspace that might have unintended negative effects remain exempted from scrutiny. Cyber capacity-building activities, which aim at supporting governments and societies in strengthening their cyber resilience, illustrate this point well. This article introduces the concept of positive accountability to describe accountability for actions that are not malicious in their intent. It argues that the anticipatory potential of mechanisms like deliberation, joint problem-solving, interactive learning and competition plays an important role in strengthening accountability by eliminating or minimising any unintended or undesired spillovers. It concludes with a proposal that broadly defined capacity building might also be considered a form of anticipatory and deliberative accountability mechanism.	en
dc.description.sponsorship	This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - Wiley Transformative Agreement (2020-2023)	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Global policy, 2024, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 142-148	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1111/1758-5899.13302
dc.identifier.endpage	148
dc.identifier.issn	1758-5880
dc.identifier.issn	1758-5899
dc.identifier.issue	1
dc.identifier.startpage	142
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/76146
dc.identifier.volume	15
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.orcid.upload	true	*
dc.publisher	Wiley	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Global policy	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	*
dc.title	The pursuit of positive accountability in the cyber domain	en
dc.type	Article	en
dspace.entity.type	Publication
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person.identifier.orcid	0009-0002-3997-1931
person.identifier.other	31073
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