Issues of Internet regulation, digital peace and security have been underrepresented in global policy debates for too long until the international community acknowledged the seriousness of the challenges digital technologies bring to us.

But even though we can see a global division regarding the approaches to tackle new problems of digital agenda – some nations see a positive potential and build their national policies of minimum restrictions and regulations towards technological innovation, development, and cooperation across sectors and countries; other nations choose more conservative way focusing on implications for national security and considering a state as the only and primary stakeholder to be responsible for it. They become guardians, or “gatekeepers” - a term widely used in the Russian political lexicon.

Multilateralism for digital agenda was a very inert tool on the background of the rapid Internet spread across the world accompanied by cyber instability in the international security domain.

Introduction of the multistakeholder model didn’t add too much confidence in it for gatekeepers. The case of IANA transition and ICANN accountability didn’t assure particular states in the legitimacy of all processes. This led to the acceleration of the trend on Internet fragmentation and spurred isolationist national policies aimed not only at the content and social layers but logical too.

Anyway, the multistakeholder model proved its right to exist. And even today, when particular stakeholders, namely IT giants, have become too powerful to avoid their claims, multistakeholderism seems to be a logical form of global Internet policy. The concentration of data and services in their hands – the new oil of 21 century – made states to seek ways for collaboration to keep the security component of policy in the government jurisdiction. Moreover, the private sector started to address governments to step in to stop the snow break of problems emerging in a variety of sectors – global cyber instability, social media content policy, personal data protection, violation of privacy, etc.

The recent report of the High-level Panel (HLP) on Digital Cooperation says for effective digital cooperation multilateralism must be strengthened itself and complemented by multistakeholderism. Of course, it is natural to seek a unified structural mechanism to address global digital policy comprehensively. And one of the proposed global architectures by HLP exactly tries to fulfil this task – IGF Plus with an extended mandate. Currently, IGF High-level sessions seem to be cut off the rest of the forum. Reinforcing IGF through a reconceptualization of stakeholder roles to ensure the interdependence of cybersecurity, digital economy, human rights, and enhance the global policy process may not be met with enthusiasm among gatekeepers.

Seems that their understanding of interdependence has a different meaning – in order to provide the best policy to address security, economy, technology and human rights concerns they favour isolationism and sovereign principles against cooperation. Gatekeeper’s logic is simple: the ability to plug out from the global digital space will let them build a safe digital enclave and protect the state and citizens from destructive influence and interference. However, current unequal distribution of digital resources – ranging from critical Internet resources to the production of hardware and R&D for software – make isolationism a hard trend to follow in full scale. Lack of trust not only between nations but in the private sector too, is the main reason for isolationist policies. Gatekeepers’ way of thinking cannot let them respect and take into consideration other stakeholders’ views, especially on security concerns.

If we believe that we urgently need a global mechanism for digital policy, or a combination of mechanisms, based on the idea of innovative multilateralism, we need to admit that gatekeepers will hamper the process impeding multi-stakeholder decision-making since it contradicts their normal policy-making process.

More decentralized mechanisms could be a solution to overcome this problem. However, it may require revolutionizing global governance system and focus on self-regulated communities instead of traditional stakeholders – far more challenging task than finding ways to global cooperation in current circumstances.