Developing Digital Capacity : How Foreign Assistance Shapes Institutions

What explains patterns of bureaucratic delegation and policy diffusion in cybersecurity, and how do these patterns reflect bureaucrats’ access to expertise and information? Internet and cybersecurity touch nearly every part of modern government - security and cooperation issues relevant to militaries and foreign policy bureaucracies, regulatory issues important for technical bureaucrats, and economic issues relevant to development and commerce. Interdependence creates a challenge for developed states, whose security is partially a function of capacity in developing states. However, cybersecurity capacity building itself presents a puzzle. Digital state capacity is dual use - the ability ensure data standards, respond to cyber-crime, share threats and participate in international cooperation is fundamentally about skills and capabilities which are easily re-purposed for military or coercive ends. I argue that capacity development assistance is designed to provide expertise to narrow technical-focused institutions in developing states, increasing their autonomy vis-a-vis political and military institutions. I test this theory with an original dataset built from a corpus of policy documents that maps bureaucratic delegation and policy priorities for cybersecurity strategies across over 100 states since 2000. Informational mechanisms such as the policies of treaty partners only explains the diffusion of policies through non-technical bureaucracies. Diffusion patterns among technical bureaucracies demonstrate how developed states and transnational actors impact bureaucratic delegation through networking with sub-state actors. This paper broadens our understanding of cyber- security by demonstrating its importance beyond military uses and capabilities, and offers an important case where interdependence creates incentives to cooperate through state-building with targeted developmental assistance