Abstract:
This thesis, titled Cybersecurity and the State: Comparing Centralized and Decentralized Political Systems in Cyber Defense Resilience, authored by Aida Jaber, examines how political centralization influences the development and effectiveness of national cybersecurity governance and frameworks. Through a comparative case study analysis of China, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, and the Czech Republic, the study uses a Most Different Systems Design (MDSD) to assess how varying governance models shape cybersecurity capacities. It draws on realism and neorealism, the government size efficiency hypothesis, and state capacity theory to evaluate performance indicators derived from both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings reveal that while centralized systems facilitate streamlined decision-making and enable coordinated national policies, these advantages do not guarantee effective implementation or adaptive crisis response. This is often due to limited transparency, rigid structures, and a lack of institutional flexibility. Conversely, decentralized systems may face coordination challenges and political fragmentation, yet they tend to achieve better overall cybersecurity performance. This is attributed to broader inclusion, external governance alignment, and context-sensitive implementation. Ultimately, the study concludes that cybersecurity effectiveness is not solely determined by centralization, but by the interaction between internal institution structure, external influence, and normative policy goals.
