This study fills a crucial gap by examining how political regimes influence internet governance and its impact on cyber risks. While recent research starts to explore cybersecurity under autocratic regimes, there's a dearth of studies comparing internet governance models across democratic and autocratic nations. We address this gap by investigating how multilateral and multistakeholder governance effectiveness is influenced by political regime types. Political regimes significantly shape internet governance by molding the institutions, policies, and practices regulating the internet within their borders. Despite the pervasive threat of open network services, organizations often lack incentives to modify these services due to high internal costs. This lack of motivation is largely due to the “externality” issue, where the repercussions are borne by external parties rather than the organization itself. Leveraging a unique dataset and longitudinal analysis at the country level, including a unique dataset assessing the country-level amplification risk based on a set of logs by scanning autonomous systems worldwide, we find that internet governance models affect distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) amplification risk differently in democratic versus autocratic regimes. In democratic nations, private sector-led regulation efforts, buoyed by digital economy development, help mitigate amplification risk. Conversely, digital economy growth in autocratic regimes may elevate DDoS risk. Surprisingly, laws and regulations show no significant impact on risk mitigation in either regime type, challenging assumptions of the multilateral model. By elucidating the nexus between political regimes and internet governance, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how the political context shapes cybersecurity risks.