Legitimacy, Power, and Inequalities in the Multistakeholder Internet Governance : Analyzing IANA Transition

This book aims to develop a critical understanding of multistakeholder governance in Internet Governance through an in-depth analysis of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, the process through which the U.S. Government transferred its traditional oversight role over the Domain Name System to the global Internet community. In the last few decades, multistakeholderism has become the dominant discourse in the Internet Governance field, mainly because of its promise to provide democratic legitimacy for transnational policymaking, although empirical research has highlighted disappointing performances of multistakeholder arrangements. This book contributes to the debate on multistakeholder governance by analyzing the IANA Transition process's normative legitimacy, broken down in the dimensions of input legitimacy (inclusiveness, balanced representation, and representativeness), throughput legitimacy (procedural and discursive quality), and output legitimacy (outcome and institutional effectiveness). Findings warn about the risk that multistakeholderism could result in a misleading rhetoric legitimizing existing power asymmetries. Nicola Palladino is a research fellow at the Department of Political and Social Studies, University of Salerno, Italy, where he works at the Internet & Communication Policy Center. Mauro Santaniello is a researcher at the Department of Political and Social Studies, University of Salerno, Italy, where he teaches Internet Governance and Digital Policy Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction: The IANA Transition and Internet Multistakeholder Governance (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 1-20 Foundations, Pitfalls, and Assessment of Multistakeholder Governance (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 21-42 IANA Functions, ICANN, and the DNS War (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 43-61 The Institutional Design of the IANA Transition Process (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 63-80 The Input Legitimacy of the IANA Transition Process (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 81-101 The Throughput Legitimacy of the IANA Transition Process (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 103-125 The Output Legitimacy of the IANA Transition Process (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 127-141 Conclusion: The Misleading Rhetoric of Multistakeholderism (Nicola Palladino, Mauro Santaniello)....Pages 143-156