The crucial and contested global public good: principles and goals in global internet governance

Abstract

Demands for a more democratic, transparent and accountable management of the internet were strong when preparing for the World Summit on the Information Society Review (WSIS Review), held in 2015. Partly in response to criticism, the United States initiated a process for transferring responsibility for domain names from the United States to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Increased accountability was among the key motivations for this change. ICANN practices what have subsequently been termed multi-stakeholder governance. This article finds that this form of governance is preferable to an intergovernmental governance model both in terms of transparency and accountability.