Multi-Stakeholderism and Intra-Civil Society Networking: The case of the WSIS IG-working group mailing list

Abstract

During the negotiations in view of the final declaration in 2003, one of the most sensitive issues at stake during the WSIS, namely that of Internet Governance (IG), was postponed to the second phase of the WSIS, held in Tunis from 16-18 November 2005. The then UN secretary general Kofi Annan was given the mandate to set up a Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) with ‘active and full participation’ of all stakeholders and charged ‘to investigate and make proposals for action, as appropriate, on the governance of the Internet’ (ITU, 2003a: paragraph 50). The WGIG consisted of 40 members, representing the different stakeholders, ‘who all participated on an equal footing and in their personal capacity’ (WGIG, 2005: 3). Four physical meetings were held in Geneva (23-25/10/2004, 14-18/02/2005, 18- 20/04/2005 & 14-17/06/2005), but besides that the internet itself also served as a potent tool in terms of civil society (CS) interaction and debate on the issue of IG. The participation of CS in policy-processes can be studied on two levels of analysis; 1) that of the formal level, where it foremost facilitates access to the process, and limited forms of (partial) participation 2) that of the informal level of networking amongst civil society actors and activists, which was in the case of the WSIS extensive and deemed by many to be the real success of the WSIS. A more in-depth analysis of the mailing list of the IG working group – one of the CS caucuses active in the WSIS process, in addition to email interviews with active members of the IG working group mailing list, exposed not only an intricate relationship to the formal policy process but also the intense networking within CS, largely sustained through mailing lists. This case-study, however, also confirms the importance of the dialectic between online and offline interactions in terms of networking and policy processes, as well as internal power-dynamics within CS exposing issues of legitimacy.