Regulating the Internet infrastructure: A comparative appraisal of the legitimacy of ICANN, ITU, and the WSIS

Abstract

How to generate legitimate forms of governance beyond the nation state is often considered a central question in contemporary world politics. To proceed in theory-building, scholars need to systematically assign the theory-driven assumptions on legitimate forms of governance beyond the nation state with the various, already observable, forms of global governance. This article aims to conduct a comparative appraisal of the legitimatory quality of different patterns of governance by applying a framework of indicators for their assessment. The indicators are selected from the scholarly debate within International Relations on the legitimacy of global governance arrangements and structured by a multidimensional concept of legitimacy (input, throughput, and output dimensions). This framework is then applied to international, transnational, and private forms of global governance in the field of Internet regulation in order to show how each of them tries to produce and maintain legitimacy, which strategies it applies, and in how it interacts with its stakeholders.

The legitimacy of transnational private governance arrangements related to nanotechnologies: the case of international organization for standardization

“…Brownsword, 2009;Chango, 2011;Dorbeck-Jung, 2008;Take, 2012;Forsberg, 2010Forsberg, & 2012Hahn and Weidtman, 2012;Vos, 1999;Vos and Everson, 2009;Koppell, 2005;Weinberg, 2000). The limited body of literature includes normative accounts of legitimacy and several empirical studies on the legitimacy of the European and international health and safety regulation (Take, 2012;Vos, 1999;Vos and Everson, 2009), and transnational standardization bodies (Dorbeck-Jung, 2008;Forsberg, 2010;Hahn and Weidtman, 2012;Wood, 2009). Although these accounts offer valuable insights with regard to transnational legitimacy debates, this thesis argues that the conceptualization of legitimacy they propose is often too narrow.…”

“…On the other hand, many scholars pay attention to legitimacy aspects of regulatory expertise and problem solving capacity of regulators (Esty, 2006;Hodge et al 2010;Majone, 1999). They focus on the robustness of scientific expertise (Carrier, 2011;Forsberg, 2012;Weingart, 2008), and the trustworthiness of experts (Cutler, 2010;Funtowicz and Strand, 2011;Jasanoff, 2003;Lövbrand et al 2011;Take, 2012;Quack, 2010). Therefore, these scholars have provided various norms of legitimacy, which are crucial to guiding the functioning of governance arrangements to achieve socially desirable outcomes at the transnational level.…”

“…However, for many others legitimacy is an empirical question (e.g. Beishem and Dingwerth, 2008;Cadman, 2011;Take, 2012). A question that relates to how transnational arrangements come to enjoy acceptance by relevant actors or whether they are perceived as legitimate and effective to solve certain regulatory problems.…”

“…According to Willke (2007) and Carrier (2010), one of the silent derivatives of legitimacy in cases of complexity and uncertainty is expertise (Carrier, 2010;Willke, 2007). At this point, the knowledge of experts and trust in experts' judgments have become important basis for decisionmaking, which complement the traditional norms of throughput legitimacy (Carrier, 2010;Take, 2012;Willke, 2007). In the legitimacy framework that I provide in this chapter (see Section 3.5), trustworthy expertise is considered as an important norm for the legitimacy of TPGAs, along with other norms of legitimacy.…”

“…Others suggest that there is a direct correlation between the legitimacy of the processes by which decisions are made in relevant arrangements and the acceptance of transnational outcomes (Bodansky, 2011;Buchanan and Keohane, 2006;Hurd, 2008;Meyer, 2009 Take (2012) -on the legitimacy of governance arrangements related to internet regulation (i.e., ICANN, ITU and the WSIS) -is also one of the few studies that provides empirical analysis on stakeholder perceptions on the legitimacy of TPGAs related to technology regulation. However, this is a qualitative interview study with the representatives of these institutions and lacks detailed quantitative analysis on the extent to which stakeholder believe that legitimacy norms are followed in practice and accept a governance arrangement as legitimate.…”