Internet Governance: The New Frontier of Global Institutions

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Routledge, Aug 18, 2008 - Political Science - 200 pages

The expansion of the Internet has been called the most revolutionary development in the history of human communications. It is ubiquitous and is changing politics, economics and social relations. Its borderless nature affects the roles of individuals, the magic of the marketplace and the problems of government regulation. As its development has increased apace, contradictions have arisen between existing regulatory regimes, private interests, government concerns, international norms and national interests. Unlike most areas where there are global institutions, and the role of governments is predominant, the Internet is a field where the private sector and civil society each have a role as important – or sometimes more important – than governments.

Based on international regime theory, this book analyses how the multi-stakeholder institutions have grown along with the Internet itself. Starting with an examination of how communications were regulated under the Westphalian system, John Mathiason shows how governance of the Internet started as a technical issue but became increasingly political as the management of critical resources began to conflict with other international regimes.

 

Contents

Introduction
1
1 What is the Internet and what is governance?
6
Communications and its regulation through history
24
Engineers entrepreneurs and netizens
32
Internet governance is born
49
Downloading music free speech YouTube porn and crime and terrorism
59
6 The ICANN experiment
70
7 Multistakeholderism emerges from the World Summit on the Information Society
97
8 The IGF experiment begins
126
9 What does the frontier look like?
146
Notes
151
Select bibliography
161
Index
162
Copyright

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About the author (2008)

John Mathiason is Professor International Relations at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University. A former official of the United Nations Secretariat, he is the author of Invisible Governance: International Secretariats in Global Politics and many articles on global governance.

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