Abstract
Over the past two decades, Russia has championed the primacy of national governments in managing the global internet. Scholars attribute Russia’s global internet governance philosophy and practices predominantly to its increasingly authoritarian and illiberal regime under President Vladimir Putin. This article, by contrast, explores how Russian ruling elites’ view of Russia as an immutable great power has directed the subsequent Russian governments’ pursuit of a state-based multipolar digital order. To illuminate cultural continuities in Russia’s approach to global communication governance in the post-Soviet period, I examine its state-centric policymaking initiatives at the International Telecommunication Union and the United Nations in the 1990s.
Highlights
In the twenty-first century, Russia has spearheaded an international movement for the primacy of national governments in managing the internet
Over the past two decades, Russia has emerged as a leading advocate of transferring the global internet’s key governing functions and infrastructures away from the ambit of non-governmental organisations historically tied to the US public and private sectors toward state-based international organisations, such as the United Nations and its specialised agency, the International Telecommunication Union
I offered an alternative analytical lens to argue that Russian ruling elites’ perception of Russia as a historic great power with an inherent right to full participation in global governance has directed the Russian state’s approach to global internet governance—what I conceptualised as digital multipolarity
Summary
In the twenty-first century, Russia has spearheaded an international movement for the primacy of national governments in managing the internet. This article offers a cultural reading of Russia’s approach to global internet governance It argues that Russian ruling elites’ imaginary of Russia as a historic great power deserving of full participation in global governance has directed the state’s promotion of internet multilateralism and its challenge to the perceived US digital hegemony. By juxtaposing repertoires excavated in Russian discourse of multipolarity and of digital governance, I show how the Russian state’s conceptions and language of the multipolar world enable its vision of global communications This relationship between Russia’s national and technological imaginaries is best understood as “constitutive causality” By tracing Russia’s great power imaginary and pursuit of the multipolar world order to its most liberal years of the early 1990s, I challenge the prevailing analytical coupling of Russia’s internet governance agenda with the Russian state’s authoritarian political tendencies under Putin’s rule
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