Conceptualizing Internet Governance

Abstract

In recent years there has been considerable progress in the global communitys understanding of Internet governance (IG). Just a few years ago, three competing misconceptions were widespread: That IG does not and cannot exist, because the Internet is an anarchic system that is unbound by authority relations and social order; that IG consists solely of the management of domain names and IP addresses by the ICANN and related bodies; and that IG means intergovernmental regulation and control. These misconceptions made it difficult to direct focused attention to the broad range of governance mechanisms that actually existed, and they fed the intense political polarization evidenced throughout the WSIS process. With the release of the WGIG report and the Tunis summits subsequent embrace of the WGIG definition, the prevalence and impact of these misconceptions subsided considerably.