Article by Lea Kaspar and Rose Payne: “As digital technologies reshape global power, the rules that govern them are increasingly negotiated in multilateral fora. But if these bodies are to deliver legitimate and future-proof governance frameworks for the Internet, AI, cybersecurity, and data, their processes must adapt – expanding participation to include the wider set of actors whose expertise is indispensable.
Multistakeholderism – the principle that governments, civil society, academia, the technical community, and the private sector should work together on digital policy – is not new. It is foundational to the Internet itself. Stakeholder engagement is both an inherent good – enhancing openness and inclusivity – and an instrumental one, improving outcomes and legitimacy.
Too often, however, multilateralism and multistakeholderism are cast as competing models of legitimacy: states vs. stakeholders. In reality, the two can, and must, complement one another. A helpful way to think about how is through two tracks of integration:
- State-led openings (vertical integration), where stakeholder perspectives are fed through governments – via national consultations, advisory bodies, or inclusion in official delegations. This makes openness part of a country’s digital foreign policy.
- Institutional openings (horizontal integration), where stakeholders engage independently with multilateral institutions through structured participation channels created by the institutions themselves.
Both tracks already exist in practice, but are applied unevenly. Looking at how each has worked, especially in Internet governance, where multistakeholderism has the deepest roots, shows both the possibilities and the limits…(More)”.
