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B u i l d i n g ‘mu l t i - s t a k e h o l d e r ’ c o n s e n s u s Internet developments Commonwealth Governance Handbook 2014/15 77 civil society has participated, although it also involves governments and the private sector; and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is the UN agency generally accepted as being a predominantly governmental body, although it prides itself on being ‘unique among UN agencies in having both public and private sector membership’. A real challenge is how to bring the debates in these overlapping forums together, and indeed whether there is actually real interest in doing so. Attempts to create a truly global forum, including the ill-fated Global Alliance for ICTs and Development (GAID), have largely failed, although the WSIS+10 process (the World Summit on the Information Society’s review of its first ten years), led by the ITU and involving other UN agencies, continues to strive to bring a wide range of participants together. Four particular challenges arise in considering multi-stakeholderism in the field of ICTs in general and internet governance in particular: Defining multi-stakeholder groupings. Most work on multistakeholder ICT partnerships recognises a triadic typology of ‘states’, the ‘private sector’ and ‘civil society’. However, all too often each organisation refers to its own approach as the multistakeholder approach, rather than being but one of many different kinds of multi-stakeholderism. This is typified by ICANN, which, in referring to the multi-stakeholder model, claims that its ‘inclusive approach treats the public sector, the private sector and technical experts as peers’. This clearly excludes civil society, although civil society is indeed welcome to participate in and contribute to its discussions. Which organisations should be engaged in multi-stakeholder ICT dialogues? Governments have the dominant say in global bodies concerned with international treaties, as with UN bodies such as the ITU. However, many governments, particularly those of the USA and some European countries, are determined that the ITU should not play a role in shaping regulations concerning internet governance. It is much more difficult to decide upon legitimate private sector and civil society representation in such deliberations. UNDESA’s integrated Civil Society Organizations (iSCO) system currently lists more than 24,000 such entries1 and it is extremely difficult to determine which of them should participate. Invariably, in practice it is only the richer and more powerful organisations that can afford to participate. Likewise, there are real challenges in determining which companies might represent the private sector. Across the board, therefore, identifying who might be involved in any multi-stakeholder discussion is highly problematic. Representative democracy. Invariably, it is only the larger and richer companies and civil society organisations that are able to participate in major multi-stakeholder international decision-making gatherings alongside governments, often quite simply because of the cost. ICTs, though, have themselves enabled increasing participation through live web-streaming and the use of social media such as Twitter, but many of the crucial decisions and discussions at such gatherings happen in the corridors and receptions in which such online participation is not possible. In such circumstances, it is helpful to draw on principles of representative democracy to propose scenarios that involve the private sector and civil society in some way electing stakeholders to speak on their behalf in such discussions, in the same way that governments are expected to represent the views of their citizens. Governance structures. The mechanisms for selecting such representatives also depend heavily on the kinds of governance structure that are considered to be appropriate for the purpose. At a very basic level, it is possible to imagine a multi-stakeholder decision-making body made up of a specific number of members from each of the three key sectors: governments, private sector companies and civil society. There would then need to be mechanisms for determining how elections would take place and what the constituencies should be. In the ITU, for example, members of the Council and the Radio Regulation Board are elected based upon regional groupings and one could imagine different kinds of structure for electing other constituencies, perhaps based on industry sectors, or civil society groupings. The year 2014 was very significant for the future of the internet: • In March the US Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intent to change key internet domain name functions to the global multi-stakeholder community, and asked the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to bring together a meeting of global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the co-ordination of the internet’s domain name system (DNS) • In April the government of Brazil convened NETmundial, a global multi-stakeholder meeting on the future of internet governance, which originated in part because of presidential concerns regarding revelations about the USA’s monitoring of international phone calls and emails • ICANN itself convened three meetings (March in Singapore; June in London; and October in the USA) where these issues were discussed • In August the World Economic Forum launched its NETmundial initiative on internet governance in close cooperation with ICANN • In September the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), created in 2006 in the aftermath of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as a forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue, held its annual meeting in Turkey • In October the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) convened its quadrennial Plenipotentiary Conference in Korea, where matters of internet governance were also hotly discussed among delegates, with sentiments being polarised between those arguing for a greater ITU presence in internet regulation, and those against These discussions raise important questions about governance issues in general, about who should determine the future of the internet and on ways through which consensus can be built in the international community, especially at a time when information and communication technologies (ICTs) have themselves transformed the ways through which such decision-making can be mediated.


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