Assessing the Role of International Law in Regulating the Fight Against Cybercrime in the Digital Environment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.57125/FEL.2026.03.25.01Keywords:
Budapest Convention, legal studies, international cooperation, mutual legal assistance, prosecution rates, rule of law.Abstract
The growing menace of transnational cybercrime is a root problem for legal systems fixated on a particular territory, necessitating an emergency assessment of the practical consequences of global laws. This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of international law in combating cybercrime in the digital space. It aims to bridge the gap between theory and reality by providing quantitative measures of states' integration into the international legal regime and of national enforcement performance. The study adopts a mixed doctrinal-empirical approach. It is a mix of qualitative analysis of the Budapest Convention and other instruments, and quantitative analysis of a six-year (2018-2023) panel data set on 40 Council of Europe member states. It is methodologically grounded in constructing a new Treaty Commitment Index, conducting correlation analyses, and estimating fixed-effects regression models to test specific hypotheses. The principal research findings indicate that the international law is more of a facilitative rather than a deterrent regime. Although the rate of prosecution is positively correlated with a more serious commitment to the treaty, the volume of mutual legal assistance requests is a much stronger and more direct predictor of enforcement success. One of the key conclusions is that the domestic Rule of Law Index is the dominant determinant of the effectiveness of these international mechanisms; strong domestic regulation is a significant boost to the benefits of treaty commitment enforcement and cooperative operations. The practical use of these findings is that the policy should not be used to encourage a wider acceptance of treaties, but rather to develop effective operational capacity and enhance national governments as sufficient conditions for international effectiveness of the law.
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