Multistakeholderism: anatomy of an inchoate global institution

Abstract

Building on John Ruggie's pioneering study of multilateralism, this paper presents an analogous study of multistakeholder governance, or multistakeholderism. Its central argument is that multistakeholderism is, as yet, a much less well-defined institutional form. Cases exhibit significant variation both in the combinations of actor classes entitled to participate and the nature of authority relations among those actors. The first section discusses multistakeholderism as an institutional form, and proposes a taxonomy of its types. This section also briefly addresses the implications of the analysis for International Relations theory. The paper then conducts a comparative analysis of multistakeholderism, applying the taxonomy to five illustrative cases. It demonstrates the degree of inter-case variation, and the range of issue-areas across which the institutional form is employed and invoked by actors. Three cases are drawn from the increasingly contentious area of Internet governance; the paper thus makes a secondary contribution to this growing literature. The paper's most striking finding in this regard is that Internet governance often fails to live up to its multistakeholder rhetoric. Other cases include governance of securities regulation and the governance of corporate social responsibility. The paper concludes by examining the implications of our argument, and identifying areas for further research.

What Is an International Cybersecurity Regime and How We Can Achieve It?

“…The cyber/information security discourse differs a lot in Russia, China, and the US. 35 The analysis of threat perceptions in Russia, China, and the US reveals common grounds in cyber threat perceptions for further cooperation 32 to mitigate the negative effect for a national security (see Tab.2). 36 Colored boxes indicate what threat or contentious issue is under the country's focus.…”

“…Each sub-issue is 30 Finnemore, M., Sikkink, K. represented and treated differently in the political process and at different points in time. 32 That is why the theory of securitization introduced by Buzan, Weaver and De Wilde can be useful to draw the link between a national security and cyber domain.…”

Cyber Futures and the Justice Motive: Avoiding Pyrrhic Victory

“…In this section, I briefly characterize existing governance arrangements as well as three potential cyber futures, and discuss some major value tradeoffs at stake in these various possible alternative futures. Governance arrangements in the cyber domain remain highly privatized, and highly decentralized (Raymond 2013/14;Raymond and DeNardis 2015;Raymond 2016). However, these governance arrangements are also rapidly evolving, and are doing so in ways characterized by considerable political contention (Nye 2014;Bradshaw et al 2015).…”

Social and political challenges of the Digital Single Market and of increasing connectivity: digital literacy and network power

“…29 For example, Raymond and DeNardis argue that this process often fails to live up to its multi-party rhetoric and that "across a number of crucial governance functions, the reality is perhaps closer to industry self-regulation than to genuine multistakeholder governance". 30 Madeline Carr argues that this process serves, in large part, to reinforce existing power relations (that is, those of the US government and those aligned with a US agenda), and that civil society remains relatively disempowered, even though it performs an important role of legitimacy for other stakeholders; summing up, "the private sector is dominated by US multinationals (…), and governments show no significant signs of relinquishing their conventional hold on sovereign power".…”