Global Internet Governance and Europe: A Regional International Organization Perspective (original) (raw)

The past decade of Internet governance issues and opportunities has been tumultuous and transformation-filled. Much work has been done on nation-states, new institutions such as ICANN or the Internet Governance Forum or even the private sector. Less work focuses on the roles of international organizations, including long-standing regional international organizations such as the Council of Europe (CoE) and their interactions with other key actors including the European Union. This paper takes a relatively long term view of international organizations and the European Union in the complex and uncertain internet governance ecosystem, beginning with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and its crafting of an institutional innovation, the Internet Governance Forum, convened for the first time in 2006 in Athens, Greece. Using case study data from our research project on international organizations involved in internet governance, it reports and analyzes findings from the Cou...