PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JULY 2015
The Emergence of Contention in
Global Internet Governance
Samantha Bradshaw, Laura DeNardis, Fen Osler Hampson,
Eric Jardine and Mark Raymond
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
Samantha Bradshaw, Laura DeNardis, Fen Osler Hampson,
Eric Jardine and Mark Raymond
Copyright © 2015 by the Centre for International Governance Innovation the Royal Institute
for International Affairs
Published by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Chatham House.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
vi
About the Global Commission on Internet Governance
vi
About the Authors
1
Acronyms
1
Executive Summary
1
Introduction
2
Rising Contention in Internet Governance
7
Contention as a Function of Shifts in Problem Structure
9
Underlying Factors in Producing Shifts in Problem Structure
15 Implications of this Shift and Prospects for Global Cooperation
16 Works Cited
20 About CIGI
20 About Chatham House
20 CIGI Masthead
GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JuLy 2015
ABOUT THE GLOBAL
COMMISSION ON INTERNET
GOVERNANCE
The Global Commission on Internet Governance was
established in January 2014 to articulate and advance a
strategic vision for the future of Internet governance. The
two-year project conducts and supports independent
research on Internet-related dimensions of global public
policy, culminating in an oficial commission report that
will articulate concrete policy recommendations for the
future of Internet governance. These recommendations
will address concerns about the stability, interoperability,
security and resilience of the Internet ecosystem.
Launched by two independent global think tanks,
the Centre for International Governance Innovation
(CIGI) and Chatham House, the Global Commission on
Internet Governance will help educate the wider public
on the most effective ways to promote Internet access,
while simultaneously championing the principles of
freedom of expression and the free low of ideas over
the Internet.
The Global Commission on Internet Governance will
focus on four key themes:
• enhancing governance legitimacy — including
regulatory approaches and standards;
• stimulating economic innovation and growth —
including critical Internet resources, infrastructure
and competition policy;
• ensuring human rights online — including
establishing the principle of technological
neutrality for human rights, privacy and free
expression; and
• avoiding systemic risk — including establishing
norms regarding state conduct, cybercrime
cooperation and non-proliferation, conidencebuilding measures and disarmament issues.
The goal of the Global Commission on Internet
Governance is two-fold. First, it will encourage globally
inclusive public discussions on the future of Internet
governance. Second, through its comprehensive policyoriented report, and the subsequent promotion of
this inal report, the Global Commission on Internet
Governance will communicate its indings with senior
stakeholders at key Internet governance events.
www.ourinternet.org
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Samantha Bradshaw is a research associate at CIGI in
the Global Security & Politics Program. She contributes
to the work of the Global Commission on Internet
Governance. Samantha’s research focuses on Internet
governance, the politics of the domain name system and
cyber security cooperation. She holds an M.A. in global
governance from the Balsillie School of International
Affairs and a joint honours B.A. in political science and
legal studies from the University of Waterloo.
Laura DeNardis, CIGI senior fellow, is a scholar of
Internet architecture and governance and professor in
the School of Communication at American University
in Washington, DC. The author of The Global War for
Internet Governance (Yale University Press, 2014) and
several other books, her expertise has been featured
in numerous publications. She serves as the director
of research for the Global Commission on Internet
Governance and is an afiliated fellow of the Yale
Law School Information Society Project, where she
previously served as executive director. Laura holds an
A.B. in engineering science from Dartmouth College, a
Master of Engineering from Cornell University, a Ph.D.
in science and technology studies from Virginia Tech,
and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from Yale
Law School.
Fen Osler Hampson is a distinguished fellow and the
director of the Global Security & Politics Program at
CIGI. He is also co-director of the Global Commission
on Internet Governance. He is chancellor’s professor at
Carleton University and a former Jennings Randolph
Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.
Eric Jardine joined CIGI as a research fellow in May
2014 in the Global Security & Politics Program. He
contributes to CIGI’s work on Internet governance,
including the Global Commission on Internet
Governance. Eric’s current research focuses on cyber
security, cyber terrorism, cybercrime and cyber protest.
He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the
Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at
Carleton University.
Mark Raymond is the Wick Cary Assistant Professor of
International Security at the University of Oklahoma.
His work has appeared in International Theory, the
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs and the
Canadian Foreign Policy Journal. He is also the co-editor
of Organized Chaos: Reimagining the Internet (CIGI, 2014).
He has testiied before the United Nations Commission
on Science and Technology for Development, and
participated in the Internet Governance Forum. His
current research projects examine the politics of global
rule-making, as well as Internet governance. He
received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.
VI • CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION • CHATHAM HOuSE
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
ACRONYMS
INTRODUCTION
ccTLD
Contention in global Internet governance systems is
evident in a series of recent controversies. They have made
visible the connection between Internet governance and a
number of public interest concerns, such as infrastructure
availability, security and individual civil liberties (such as
freedom of expression and privacy). Such controversies
include the state-induced Egyptian Internet outage,
increasingly frequent and sophisticated cyber attacks —
such as the recent episode involving Sony — an online
boycott over the Stop Online Piracy Act in the United
States, global tension over the arcane United Nations
international treaty conference known as the International
Telecommunication Regulations and disclosures about the
National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) expansive surveillance
programs.
country code top-level domain
DNS
Domain Name System
DOC
Department of Commerce
GAC
Governmental Advisory Committee
gTLD
generic top-level domain
IANA
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
ICANN
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers
ICT
information and communication technology
IETF
Internet Engineering Task Force
IGF
Internet Governance Forum
IPv4
Internet Protocol version 4
IR
international relations
ISOC
Internet Society
ITU
International Telecommunication Union
NSA
National Security Agency
NTIA
National Telecommunication and Information
Administration
SCO
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
TLD
top-level domain
UNGA
United Nations General Assembly
WCIT
World Conference on International
Telecommunications
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Internet governance has rapidly shifted from a technocratic
area of governance to one characterized by considerable
contention. This shift is unprecedented among the large
and increasing number of technocratic regimes essential
to contemporary global governance and is, therefore,
of broader interest and signiicance beyond Internet
governance scholars and practitioners. This paper draws
on international relations (IR) theory to argue that the
emergence of contention in Internet governance entails
a twofold shift in the nature of the problems posed by
Internet governance. First, cooperation problems have
emerged where few previously existed. Second, existing
coordination problems have become increasingly dificult
to manage as a result of a rapidly increasing number of
players and heightened distributional consequences. The
paper further provides four complementary explanations
for the shift in the underlying problem structure: extrinsic
uncertainty, changing market conditions, declining US
dominance in the Internet governance system and social
processes of institutional change and regime complex
formation.
Combined, these controversies have precipitated three
related public and policy-maker perceptions of Internet
governance: irst, it made visible the complex distributed
ecosystem of Internet governance; second, it politically
challenged perceptions that the coordination of the
Internet is “just a technical administration issue”; and
third, it engendered a public loss of trust in the systems,
companies, governments and institutions that coordinate
the Internet. The administrative tasks keeping the Internet
operational, while never without tension and controversy,
now relect both real and perceived conlicts of interest
among stakeholders and a heightened geopolitical concern
about the cooperation necessary to resolve these conlicts.
This paper is organized around three questions. First,
what does the emerging contention in Internet governance
look like? The paper illustrates emerging contention in the
Internet governance ecosystem in ive ways: the escalation
of conlict over the root zone ile; state actors pushing for
alternative arrangements in interconnection governance;
technical infrastructure tensions; co-opting of Internet
governance infrastructures to achieve political and
economic objectives; and discourses of (de)legitimation
and attempts at institutional design.
The second section of the paper draws on IR literature to
answer the question why has contention in the Internet
governance regime increased? It argues that contention is
the product of two simultaneous shifts in the fundamental
problem structure underlying Internet governance. The
irst is that Internet governance now presents problems of
cooperation, in which parties have an incentive to cheat
at each other’s expense, in addition to more familiar
problems of coordination. The second is that these
coordination problems are becoming more complex and
severe. They increasingly involve greater numbers of
players, as many more actors have interests in how the
Internet is governed and thus become new entrants to the
process, thereby increasing the complexity of creating and
maintaining stable arrangements. Coordination problems
SAMANTHA BRAdSHAw, LAuRA dENARdIS, FEN OSLER HAMPSON, ERIC JARdINE ANd MARk RAyMONd • 1
GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JuLy 2015
are also more severe in that the magnitude of players’
interests in the outcome are greater. As there are more joint
gains from cooperation to distribute among players, the
stakes involved in deciding how to distribute such gains
naturally increase.
In noting these shifts in problem structure and connecting
them to increased contention in Internet governance, the
paper makes two contributions to the IR literature. First,
to the authors’ knowledge, the rapid rise in contention in
a formerly technical area of governance is unique. Where
the literature has addressed shifts in problem structure, it
has typically sought to explain either a reduction in the
severity of cooperation problems or their transformation
into more benign problems of coordination. Therefore,
an explanation for a degenerative shift to a situation
involving both high-stakes coordination and problems
of cooperation is signiicant to the literature and, beyond
that, has practical and urgent implications. There is a
risk that Internet governance is a canary in the coal mine
and that shifts in problem structure may occur in other
issue areas. Determining the extent of this risk requires
an understanding of what conditions are associated with
these degenerative shifts in problem structure.
Second, this paper makes a contribution to the growing
body of literature on the concept of regime complexes
in general, and the cyber regime complex, in particular.
Building on earlier work on regime complexes, Joseph
S. Nye, Jr. (2014) argues that Internet governance should
be understood as embedded in a broader set of rules,
institutions and processes that govern related issue areas
including trade, development, security, law enforcement
and intellectual property, among others. This argument
has two implications: Internet governance now often
includes actors whose primary responsibilities only
tangentially include Internet issues; and actors are often
tempted to accomplish objectives relating to patterns of
Internet use by means of technical Internet architecture.
The cyber regime complex, however, is still in the process
of formation. Indeed, it is precisely this process of regime
complex formation that is likely contributing to the rapid
rise of contention over Internet governance. At the same
time, regime complex formation is being driven by shifts in
the underlying nature of the cooperation and coordination
problems faced by actors. Processes of regime complex
formation are not yet well understood. This paper
therefore contributes to the regime complex literature by
studying an important case of regime complex formation
involving a wide variety of actor types, generating better
understanding both of the generic nature of these processes
and the conditions under which they become contentious.
The inal section of the paper asks why there has been a
shift in the underlying problem structure of the Internet
governance regime. The presence of extrinsic uncertainty,
changing market conditions, declining US dominance in
the Internet governance system, and social processes of
institutional change and regime complex formation all
drive shifts in the underlying problem structure in Internet
governance. These ive explanations are not mutually
exclusive; they interact and overlap in a number of ways
and are each necessary to properly understand the roots of
contention.
RISING CONTENTION IN INTERNET
GOVERNANCE
Contention over Internet governance predates Edward
Snowden’s disclosures about the expansive surveillance
practices of the NSA (see Figure 1). Current disputes
relect the high-proile controversies mentioned above,
as well as an inherent asymmetry between the rapid
growth of Internet adoption in emerging markets and
legacy Internet governance mechanisms developed in
the West. At the same time, there is an increasing turn to
infrastructure and governance systems for uses exogenous
to the core operational functions of this infrastructure.
There is a shift from governance of Internet infrastructure
to governance by Internet infrastructure, such as the use of
the Domain Name System (DNS) for intellectual property
rights enforcement. This section points to ive illustrations
of rising contention in Internet governance.
Escalation of Conlicts Over the Root Zone File
The US government’s contractual relationship with the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) and the question of who controls critical Internet
resources, oversees the DNS, and authorizes changes to
the root zone ile have long been contested topics in global
Internet governance debates. These issues predate global
concerns over nation-state surveillance, and contention
in these areas is about more than issues of surveillance or
even security. Various corporate and consumer interests,
as well as civil liberties and community rights, are at stake.
Nevertheless, concern about expansive NSA Internet
surveillance practices has created a loss of trust in the
stewardship and unique relationship of the US government
in other areas related to the Internet, and has heightened
the already entrenched global interest in continuing to
internationalize ICANN and control of critical Internet
resources.
Numerous studies address the history of ICANN and longstanding conlicts over control of the governance functions
carried out under the auspices of this institution (Mueller
2002; Matthiason 2008; Bygrave and Bing 2009; Brousseau,
Marzouki and Méadel 2012). In 1998, a memorandum of
understanding between ICANN and the US Department
of Commerce (DOC) initiated a process that transitioned
technical DNS coordination and management functions
to ICANN, while retaining accountability to the US
government. The contractual agreement between the
DOC and ICANN, among other things, authorizes the
2 • CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION • CHATHAM HOuSE
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
Figure 1: Comparative Media Coverage over Time of Internet Governance Topic
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
ICANN
IANA
WCIT
IG
Source: Authors.
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to perform
a number of critical Internet governance functions
including DNS root zone management, administration
of Internet numbers and management of protocol
parameters (Security and Stability Advisory Committee
2014). One long-standing point of contention is the DOC’s
authority — through the National Telecommunication and
Information Administration (NTIA) — to approve changes
to the root zone ile, which are then entered into the master
root server by the US company VeriSign and distributed
and replicated on the Internet’s root servers. Since the
inception of ICANN, the US government’s position has
been to gradually internationalize and privatize ICANN
and, ultimately, relinquish ties to the organization.
However, US authority continues to be a primary concern
for various governments and stakeholders.
Global concern over this relationship dates to the World
Summit on the Information Society (in 2003 in Geneva
and 2005 in Tunis). The very formation of the Internet
Governance Forum (IGF) was a compromise designed
to continue the dialogue about the transition. ICANN
structures, processes, composition, accountability and
scope have been core topics of the IGF since its inception.
In the meantime, the NTIA has continued to award the
IANA contract to ICANN, most recently in July 2012.
In the wake of mass surveillance revelations, this already
extant tension escalated and new voices questioned the
exclusive US-IANA contract and its control over the root
zone ile (Corwin 2013). For example, the surveillance
revelations spurred the Brazilian-hosted global gathering,
NETmundial — the Global Multistakeholder Meeting on
the Future of Internet Governance. The gathering did not
address surveillance as much as it addressed the future
of multi-stakeholder governance around ICANN and, if
anything, the gathering was a win for multi-stakeholder,
rather than multilateral, governance. In March 2014, just
prior to NETmundial, the NTIA announced that the United
States would transition oversight to the multi-stakeholder
community by 2015. However, no consensus proposal for
replacing the current model exists as of this writing and
contention continues.
Despite a degree of agreement on the desirability of
multi-stakeholder governance involving private industry,
technical experts, civil society and governments, there has
also been increasing politicization and calls for greater
government intervention. A 2014 French Senate report on
Internet governance called for the formation of a “World
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers,”
rather than ICANN, to oversee IANA functions and also
called for the formation of a new Global Internet Council
under an international treaty to ensure compliance with
NETmundial principles (French Senate 2014). In the United
States, there is mounting partisan debate and contention
over the transition of ICANN oversight to a “global multistakeholder community.”
Contention has always surrounded the US government’s
close relationship with ICANN and its ability to award
the IANA functions contract and authority for changes
to the root zone ile. Yet the level of contention increased
as the visibility of ICANN and other Internet governance
functions came into stark relief with the explosion in
the economic importance of the Internet as a global
communications facility and with Edward Snowden’s
disclosures of NSA surveillance.
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GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JuLy 2015
Interconnection Governance
Technical Infrastructure Tensions
Evidence of rising contention also materialized
during the 2012 World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. The meeting
was designed to review and update the International
Telecommunication Regulations, a global set of rules
governing the exchange of telecommunication trafic
across national borders. Administered by the International
Telecommunication
Union
(ITU),
the
telecom
interconnection rules were previously updated in 1988
prior to Internet commercialization and the development
of the Web.
Rising contention over Internet governance includes
infrastructure concerns, such as policy controversies over
net neutrality and broadband competition, and technical
developments, such as the depletion of the Internet
Protocol version 4 (IPv4) address space and a resurgence
of proprietary protocols. Net neutrality, it can be argued,
is a local/national concern because it addresses Internet
access policies, and, speciically, the question of whether
there should be legal prohibitions on network operators
prioritizing or blocking the delivery of certain types of
trafic relative to other types of trafic. But, the rise in policy
interest over this question — especially in the European
Union and the United States — relects rising concern
over how “last mile” Internet providers can discriminate
against content, either to privilege their own business
models and content or in an attempt to engage in paid
prioritization deals from large content companies whose
business models depend on reaching the access provider’s
customers.
Since the commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s,
there have been calls for greater government regulation
of Internet interconnection. Much of this has stemmed
from concerns about creating fair payment structures
for exchanging information among network operators,
sometimes viewed as net neutrality-type concerns about
irst mover advantage and exploitative extractions of
high rents for carrying trafic. Yet Internet interconnection
has been one of the most privatized areas of the Internet
governance ecosystem. Network operators agree to
interconnect and exchange trafic and negotiate private
agreements, either informal or contractual, that set out the
terms to do so, either for mutual peering, paid peering or
paid transit (DeNardis 2012a).
The 2012 WCIT turned into a controversial and divisive
event (Raymond and Smith 2014; Mueller 2012).
Negotiations faltered over numerous issues, including
attempts to create a role for the ITU in Internet governance
as well as procedural irregularities, but the WCIT also
highlighted the disruptive potential of changes in
economic models for the data transit industry. Certain
telecom providers — some owned by governments —
advanced proposals that would enable them to extract
rents from content providers. Such proposals have complex
distributional implications. They could fundamentally
disrupt many Internet economy business models by, for
example, privileging incumbent over-the-top service
providers and content platforms at the expense of startup irms. They would also generate windfall proits for
network operators, many of which are large irms that
also offer content services in addition to their roles as
network operators. Thus, there are signiicant competition
policy implications to any such decision. Further, alternate
economic models for Internet interconnection may have
international distributive implications, enabling states
located at certain key points on the Internet’s physical
layer to extract revenue from the transit of Internet
trafic between irms and users in other states. Over the
longer term, such payment models could incentivize the
construction of alternate cable routes.
Some technical areas of contention are related to scarcity,
most notably the depletion of the IPv4 address space.
In February 2011, 4.3 billion addresses had been fully
allocated by IANA to the ive regional Internet registries.
Internet governance debates relate to how to manage
the remaining reserve or free up assigned but unused
addresses and how this development has particular
implications in the developing world and other areas
without large existing stores of IPv4 addresses. The new
version 6 (IPv6) standard, designed to expand the number
of available Internet addresses, has not been adopted to
any great extent. An ongoing concern for policy makers
and the technical community, therefore, is what type of
technical transition mechanisms, market interventions or
government incentives are necessary to ensure suficient
Internet addresses for devices connected to the Internet
and for future services, growth and innovation.
Another form of technical conlict relates to the resurgence
of business models based on proprietary rather than open
protocols. In contrast to the proprietary online systems
of the 1990s and non-interoperable business networks,
because they were based on closed protocols developed
by competing companies, the Internet’s core protocols
were inherently designed to create interoperability among
devices made by different manufacturers. Since 2010, there
has been a turn back to closed models in which platform
designers opted to use proprietary standards. The Web
was designed to provide universal access to websites from
any browser. In contrast, social media platforms, device
app stores and even some voice over the Internet protocol
systems are inherently designed to not be interoperable
with other devices. This move away from open standards
is also a form of technical contention (DeNardis 2014).
4 • CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION • CHATHAM HOuSE
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
The basic technical underpinnings of Internet governance
that were once largely uncontested are increasingly
undermined by newly divergent interests. Contention at
the technical level is often driven by business interests,
which now realize the tremendous economic value of the
Internet and aim to capitalize on these beneits. Yet this
contention is also highly political, with regulatory decisions
having large distributional effects. Scarce resources that
are essential in order for people to use the Internet, such
as IPv4 addresses, are inite and their limited supply could
restrict the ability of new users (most of whom are in the
developing world) to fully enjoy the Internet’s myriad
beneits. Limited supply of critical Internet resources also
threatens further innovation in the Internet economy.
Finally, the turn to proprietary standards (especially in
combination with increasing concentration of ownership
among a small number of global players in some segments
of the Internet economy) risks harm to consumers, as well
as the emergence of monopolies or oligopolies that may
diminish innovation.
Co-opting Internet Governance
Infrastructures
As systems of Internet governance have become
increasingly visible and also recognized as sites of
economic and political power, various interests are coopting these infrastructures for purposes completely
extraneous to their originally constructed operational
and policy objectives (DeNardis 2012b). For example, a
US court awarded victims of a Hamas suicide bombing in
Jerusalem hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation
from Iran because of Iranian support of Hamas. In an
attempt to collect damages, plaintiffs have asked ICANN
to seize and turn over Iran’s country code top-level
domains (ccTLDs) (Newman 2014). ICANN has resisted
this ccTLD seizure for a variety of technical, political and
legal reasons (ICANN 2014), but this example illustrates
the turn to Internet governance infrastructures to resolve
global political and economic problems. It also raises a
number of questions, including who should control the
fate of ccTLDs and whether this should be the purview of a
private, non-proit corporation or a matter for international
agreement.
The DNS, and top-level domains (TLDs) in particular,
relect tensions between territorially bound cultural/
regional interests and multinational companies with crossborder economic interests. During the ICANN-initiated
expansion of the number of TLDs, for example, conlicts
arose between corporations proposing TLDs associated
with their trademarked names (such as .amazon or
.patagonia) or industries (for example, .wine or .vin),
and countries that pushed back against these proposals
via ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC)
because of perceptions of regional and territorial claims
associated with, for example, the Amazon rainforest,
the Patagonia region and France’s wine region. Even
the core DNS function of resolving names into numbers
has been co-opted as a mechanism for blocking access
(actually redirecting queries) to websites that illegally
sell counterfeit trademarked luxury goods, counterfeit
patented pharmaceutical products, or copyrighted music,
movies or video games (Bradshaw and DeNardis 2015).
Perhaps most illustrative of the turn to infrastructure to
resolve geopolitical tensions are cyber security governance
developments such as Stuxnet, or politically motivated
distributed denial of service attacks and government
proposals that impose restrictions on where and how data
is stored (data localization).
Internet governance infrastructures have become a proxy
for broader geopolitical and socioeconomic contention,
with disputes ranging from TLDs to manipulation of the
DNS functions.
(De)Legitimation Discourses and Institutional
Design Attempts
Rising contention is illustrated by recent declarations
and actions, from numerous actor types and a variety
of substantive perspectives, which call into question the
legitimacy and itness-for-purpose of different components
of the Internet governance regime and the broader cyber
regime complex. In some cases, these efforts explicitly
include calls for reform or replacement of the norms,
rules and institutions that comprise the legacy Internet
governance regime and the emerging cyber regime
complex.
A subset of state actors is among those most insistently
questioning the current system. While such efforts have
gained momentum and support since 2012, they are not
entirely new. The First Committee of the United Nations
General Assembly (UNGA) has been the locus of such
debate since Russia irst introduced a resolution calling for
the development of an international law dealing with the
security implications of information and communication
technologies in 1998 (Maurer 2011, 20). Russian efforts
to pursue “information security” encompass not only
arms control efforts, but also attempts to press the UN
Charter protections guaranteeing members’ sovereignty,
territorial integrity and political independence into service
as a shield against international human rights law and its
commitments to freedom of speech. In its 2006 resolution
on this issue, Russia was joined as a sponsor for the irst
time by China, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Myanmar, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan (ibid., 22).
These efforts have further intensiied. Russia and China
concluded the negotiation of a bilateral cyber treaty that
facilitates joint research and joint cyber security operations
(Razumovskaya 2015). China has also increasingly
asserted a positive vision of Internet governance, heavily
SAMANTHA BRAdSHAw, LAuRA dENARdIS, FEN OSLER HAMPSON, ERIC JARdINE ANd MARk RAyMONd • 5
GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JuLy 2015
driven by its particular security concerns, and has begun
to erect an alternative discourse with an accompanying set
of rules and institutions. These efforts are complicated by
recent economic pressures and by the importance of the IT
sector to the Chinese economy. As a result, China’s Cyber
Administration is engaging more with multi-stakeholder
processes in ICANN and at NETmundial. The Xinhua
News Agency, an oficial government organ, has also
touted the “Internet Plus” plan, which “aims to integrate
mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data and the Internet
of Things with modern manufacturing, to encourage the
healthy development of e-commerce, industrial networks,
and Internet banking, and to help Internet companies
increase international presence” (Xinhua News 2015).
This new economic policy thrust is at odds with the People’s
Liberation Army’s attempts to use the Internet to conduct
proxy operations against Western countries and the Chinese
government’s growing efforts to suppress dissidents and
control Internet content via the “Great Firewall” of China.
On these issues, the Chinese government has justiied its
position by arguing that “in this virtual space where trafic
is very heavy, there is still no comprehensive ‘trafic rules.’
As a result, ‘trafic accidents’ in information and cyber
space constantly occur with ever increasing damage and
impact. Therefore, the development of a set of universal
and effective international norms and rules guiding the
activities in information and cyber space has become an
urgent task in maintaining information and cyberspace
security” (United Nations Institute for Disarmament
Research 2014). In addition to joining the long-standing
Russian efforts within the UNGA’s First Committee, China
has also partnered with Russia to advance this agenda
in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The
inal declaration of the 2014 SCO summit in Dushanbe,
Tajikistan announced the intention of SCO members
to “cooperate in preventing the use of information and
communications technologies which intend to undermine
the political, economic, and public safety and stability of the
Member States, as well as the universal moral foundations
of social life, in order to stop the promotion of the ideas
of terrorism, extremism, separatism, radicalism, fascism
and chauvinism by the use of the Internet” (Incyder News
2014). This language its squarely within the efforts of these
governments to apply such pejorative terms to democratic
opposition groups, human rights activists, journalists and
others both within and outside their borders.
Beyond its emphasis on including limitations on access to
particular kinds of information in global efforts to govern
cyber security, China has also sought to promote a narrative
of multilateral (rather than multi-stakeholder) Internet
governance. The clear intent in such a discursive move is to
sharply restrict or even exclude the participation of various
kinds of non-state actors that currently play vital roles in
Internet governance. This agenda featured prominently at
the World Internet Conference, which China sponsored
in late 2014. Conference organizers circulated a draft
declaration to delegates that “call[ed] on the international
community to work together to build an international
Internet governance system of multilateralism, democracy
and transparency and a cyberspace of peace, security,
openness and cooperation” (Shu 2014). The appropriation
of Western procedural norms and values in this language
is striking, and relects the increasing social competence
of the Chinese government in operating the institutions
of the international system. The draft declaration also
called on parties to “respect Internet sovereignty of all
countries” and “respect each country’s rights to the
development, use and governance [emphasis added] of the
Internet, refrain from abusing resources and technological
strengths to violate other countries’ Internet sovereignty,
and build an Internet order to [sic] equality and mutual
beneit” (ibid.). While the draft declaration was ultimately
retracted without comment or explanation for reasons that
are not clear, the draft text is indicative of China’s general
perspective on these issues.
Many other states are uneasy with the multi-stakeholder
model (Maurer and Morgus 2014). A substantial portion
of the developing world views the highly privatized
nature of governance in this issue area as privileging the
interests of the advanced industrial democracies. It is also
likely that these states view the participation of non-state
actors in global negotiations as procedurally illegitimate,
on the basis of international law’s traditional restriction
of international legal personality to states and formal
international organizations. Much of this debate is framed
in terms of the nature of authority relations involving
ICANN. While ICANN has agreed to either accept or
justify its rejection of formal advice from the GAC, the
GAC is regarded by many states as an under-resourced
body that, in any event, operates according to consensus
decision rules. These conditions hamper its effectiveness
at playing a meaningful role in the complex, decentralized
processes of policy making within the ICANN community,
and the GAC is not able to formally participate in the
myriad of crucial Internet governance decisions that occur
outside of ICANN. In an attempt to partially address
concerns about the legitimacy of ICANN’s unorthodox
legal structure, some states have called for a transition to
a new body. Most recently, Brazil and Indonesia suggested
a multi-stakeholder body that would be institutionally
located in the broader UN system (Wright 2015).
Increased contention among states over Internet issues has
also hindered efforts to organize the decennial review for
the World Summit on the Information Society. Division
among states, including over the relative desirability of a
stand-alone, summit-level event proposed by Russia or a
more low-key event held at the United Nations in New
York, led to repeated delays in inalizing the modalities for
the review. Risk that the review event, currently scheduled
for December 2015 in New York, becomes a focal point
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THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
for contention is considerable, given that efforts to renew
the IGF mandate during the 69th UNGA failed and were
postponed until the 70th session (Kleinwächter 2015). This
creates a linkage opportunity that may be exploited by
states looking to bend the development trajectory of the
broader cyber regime complex.
Contention is also evident in the aftermath of disclosures
about the nature and extent of online surveillance that have
undermined the legitimacy of existing Internet governance
mechanisms in the eyes of a range of state and non-state
actors. The Brazilian and German governments were
among the leading critics of NSA activity. They pursued
an array of diplomatic initiatives to register their concern
over these issues, two of which are especially notable for
their impact on the broader cyber regime complex. First,
they partnered with ICANN and with other stakeholders
to support the NETmundial conference, held in Brazil
in April 2014. Second, they successfully sponsored an
UNGA resolution on privacy rights, formally adopted on
December 18, 2014. Despite the adoption of the privacy
resolution, the Saudi delegate insisted that each state had
the right to protect its citizens from online activity including
speech, and asserted that references to NETmundial in the
text were improper since the meeting was not held under
UN auspices (and procedural rules) and did not achieve
consensus because the outcome document inadequately
relected the positions of states (United Nations 2014).
This dissent relects enduring disagreements among states
about appropriate modalities for balancing order and
stability with human rights, which are likely to contribute
to further contention.
Efforts to push back against the legitimacy of online
surveillance have also been made by the Internet
community. Executives at major American technology
companies have raised concerns both about brand damage
and about the incompatibility of pervasive monitoring
with civil liberties (ibid.). More concretely, members of the
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) have sought to take
action in order to limit the possibility of such monitoring.
After the IETF’s 2013 meeting in Vancouver, the Internet
Architecture Board expressed its belief that “pervasive
monitoring represents an attack on the Internet” and that
such attacks “undermine public conidence in the Internet
infrastructure, no matter the intent of those collecting
the information” (Housley 2014). Accordingly, the IETF
membership has begun work on a variety of responses to
further encourage the widespread adoption of encryption,
to revise its standards and protocols to update obsolete
security provisions, and to ensure that “future protocol
designs can take into account potential pervasive
monitoring as a known threat model” (IETF 2013).
Some civil society groups also criticized the NETmundial
outcome document, on the grounds that it inadequately
relected their concerns with regard to net neutrality and
protections for human rights (Best Bits 2014). However,
Internet issues include an extraordinarily diverse set of
non-state actors with varying interests and values. In an
attempt to exert control over the ongoing global debate,
ICANN partnered with the Brazilian government and
the World Economic Forum to launch the NETmundial
Initiative, which was described by its organizers as “a
bottom-up, action-focused movement for the global
community to organically operationalize distributed
Internet governance” and as “based on the Principles and
roadmap developed at the 2014 NETmundial meeting”
(NETmundial 2014). However, within 10 days of its
oficial launch, the NETmundial Initiative had been clearly
rejected as illegitimate by key players within the Internet
community. The Internet Society (ISOC) issued a statement
declaring that it “cannot agree to participate in or endorse
the Coordination Council for the NETmundial Initiative”
(ISOC 2014b). The statement expressed ISOC’s concern
“that the way in which the NETmundial Initiative is being
formed does not appear to be consistent with the Internet
Society’s longstanding principles” (ibid.). It went on to
enumerate a set of desiderata shared broadly within the
Internet community, namely that governance should be
decentralized, open, transparent, accountable and multistakeholder.
These examples demonstrate the high degree of contention
in recent discussions about, and processes of, Internet
governance across an array of different substantive issues.
They highlight increasing consciousness among relevant
actors of rising stakes, changing patterns of incentives,
clashing and even incommensurate values, and tighter
linkages between formerly distinct policy issues.
CONTENTION AS A FUNCTION OF
SHIFTS IN PROBLEM STRUCTURE
The previous section argued that Internet issues have
become more contentious in the last two years, and
provided an array of illustrative examples. In this section,
it is argued that this rising contention can be explained by
two distinct shifts in the underlying problem structure.
To do so, the paper draws on the distinction between
coordination and cooperation problems, which has been
central to IR theory (Axelrod 2006; Fearon 1998; Jervis 1978;
Schelling 1980; Snyder 1971; Martin and Simmons 1998).
The irst shift is the emergence of cooperation problems,
in which actors have short-run individual incentives to
engage in non-cooperative behaviour. The second is the
exacerbation of existing coordination problems in ways
that increase the dificulty of reaching agreement on a
particular equilibrium, in particular due to an increased
number of players and larger distributional consequences.
Numerous IR scholars have drawn on game theory to shed
light on the nature of strategic interaction in world politics,
although they have made different assumptions and drawn
different conclusions in doing so. Realists have argued that
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cooperation problems are endemic in the international
system as a result of its putatively anarchic structure (Jervis
1978; Waltz 1979). Not all cooperation problems are equally
severe in their consequences. The security dilemma is one
of the more severe examples of a cooperation problem,
but it is known to vary in intensity (Jervis 1978). Other
cases of cooperation problems are typically less severe.
Nevertheless, neo-realist theories predict consistent state
concern for relative gains, on the grounds that anarchy
presents chronic enforcement problems or worries about
non-cooperative cheating behaviour.
Institutionalist theories helpfully distinguished these
cooperation problems, in which actors worry about
cheating, from coordination problems, in which they worry
about distribution problems pertaining to the division
of gains among participants (Snidal 1985). Examples of
international organizations playing coordination roles date
back to the nineteenth century: the International Telegraph
Union was created in 1865 and the General Postal Union
was created in 1874. Technocratic areas of global governance
tend to be dominated by coordination problems with mild
distributional concerns, such as coordination of rules for
air trafic control or for international postal deliveries.
Other coordination problems, however, are subject to more
severe distributional problems; examples include the terms
of global trade agreements (such as reducing barriers to
agricultural goods versus manufactured goods) or the
selection among different potential modalities for dealing
with climate change (such as cutting coal emissions versus
other types of greenhouse gases). In these cases, agreement
on a particular equilibrium presents dificult negotiation
problems. Such efforts are prone to actors exercising
material and ideational power resources in order to secure
their preferred outcomes (Krasner 1991).
The extent to which actors are concerned with the
distributional consequences of speciic coordinated
outcomes is conditioned by their general preference
for relative versus absolute gains (Powell 1991). Actors
strongly concerned with their position relative to other
actors will care a great deal about coordinated outcomes
with large-stake distributional implications. States that
only want to increase their own wealth will care less
about whether a particular coordinated outcome is more
favourable to others. Apart from relative gains, justice
concerns are important motivators for actors attempting
to resolve distributional disputes (Welch 1993; Albin 2001).
Internet governance has typically entailed solving
coordination problems. Like the coordinating effects of a
common language, the Internet relies upon interoperable
protocols to ensure that different computers can speak to
one another. Examples of such critical protocols include
TCP/IP, BGP, HTTP1 and many other information and
1 TCP/IP is Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol; BGP is
Border Gateway Protocol; and HTTP is Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
communication technology standards. The system of
globally unique Internet names and numbers is another
example of Internet governance mechanisms designed
to resolve a coordination problem of administering
a common directory translating between names and
numbers and ensuring that these identiiers are globally
unique. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, few
players had vested interests in particular outcomes with
respect to these technological standards and protocols,
which were developed by an epistemic community of
engineers (Haas 1992). Thus, Internet issues presented
fairly simple coordination problems typiied by a small
number of culturally homogenous players who were
relatively indifferent between potential equilibria.
These conditions are increasingly inapplicable, but changes
in the basic problem structure have not been uniform. As
a result, there are examples where actors are confronted
with problems relating to managing the distribution
of joint gains among a large number of players with
conlicting interests alongside situations in which actors
are concerned primarily with creating (and ensuring
compliance with) cooperation rules and norms intended to
prevent defection, security dilemmas and arms races. The
following section discusses two examples of the former
drawn from Internet naming and addressing, and a single
example of the latter. It is worth noting, however, that
these two kinds of degenerative shifts in the underlying
problem structure are not mutually exclusive. It is possible
that a given situation involves issues of coordination and
issues of cooperation (Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal
2001).
The irst example of exacerbated coordination problems
involves Internet names. What speciic system is used to
assign names to websites matters far less than whether all
actors follow the same system and that individual names
are globally unique. In other words, each individual actor
beneits the most when they and everyone else coordinate
their behaviour. The coordination nature of this Internet
naming system is increasingly being complicated by the
creation of new generic TLDs (gTLDs) and by conlicts
involving territorially bound states and transnational
companies. The expansion of gTLDs has provided a
windfall proit to ICANN, and will do so for other players
in the domain name provision industry. It has also created
signiicant costs for new gTLD applicants and for existing
irms and civil society actors that may need to defensively
register a host of additional domain names in order to
protect their brands or operational missions. Essentially, a
situation has emerged where the fundamental function of
gTLDs remains to coordinate behaviour, but the emerging
distributional consequences of the allotment of domain
names entail that more actors have signiicant interests
in the outcome. The literature expects these conditions to
signiicantly complicate efforts to arrive at a solution (Olson
1965, Krasner 1991; Koremenos, Lipson and Snidal 2001).
8 • CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION • CHATHAM HOuSE
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
Internet numbering provides another example of the
same basic set of dynamics. The IPv4 Internet numbering
system is an example of a common, coordinated standard.
In the abstract, the kind of system adopted has little
importance aside from ensuring that numbers are globally
unique; however, in practice, the initial adoption of a
particular system creates powerful path dependencies.
The exhaustion of the supply of IPv4 addresses as a result
of the global expansion of connected devices has created
a subsequent and more dificult coordination problem
than that presented by the initial choice of an Internet
numbering system. Because exhaustion of the stock of
IPv4 addresses is not uniform across the regional Internet
registries, some actors have incentives to contribute to the
transition to IPv6, while others are able to extract economic
rents from their existing reserves of IPv4 addresses and
are not motivated to upgrade (Dell 2010; Mueller 2010).
Again, the use of common IP standards helps maintain
the coordinated functionality of the Internet, but the
distributional consequences that are part and parcel of
different outcomes create tensions when trying to settle
upon a given outcome.
Cooperation problems are most evident with respect to
state security issues. Given low barriers to entry for the
acquisition of signiicant cyber capabilities (MarquisBoire et al. 2013), the potential for such attacks to cause
signiicant electronic and kinetic disruption, and the
technical, legal and political dificulties associated with
attribution and deterrence (Raymond, Shull and Bradshaw
2015 [forthcoming]; Nye 2011), it is perhaps unsurprising
that a large number of states have acquired, or are seeking
to acquire, offensive cyber capabilities (Deibert 2014).
Indeed, some analysts have concluded that the cyber realm
is, at least at present, offense dominant (Nye 2011). This
suggests that it may be unstable in the event of crisis, and
prone to escalation (Jervis 1978; van Evera 1984). These
conditions have prompted some authors to conclude that
a “cybered Westphalian” outcome is likely (Demchak
and Dombrowski 2011); however, these conditions do not
necessarily mean that war is inevitable (Rid 2012). Indeed,
states have proactively attempted to create rudimentary
rules of the road to minimize this risk, with some degree
of success (UNGA 2013; Schmitt 2013). The important
point for this paper is that states are now preparing in
various ways to deal with cooperation problems that, until
recently, did not exist. These kinds of problems are nascent
and, at least for now, conined largely to the security
realm. They relect the development of “problematic
interactions” between overlapping regimes characteristic
of the emergence of a regime complex (Orsini, Morin and
Young 2013). In this case, the interactions are primarily
between the Internet governance regime, on the one hand,
and regimes for international security, arms control and
the global arms trade on the other.
UNDERLYING FACTORS IN
PRODUCING SHIFTS IN PROBLEM
STRUCTURE
This section presents four different theories to explain
a part of the shifting problem structure giving rise to
higher levels of Internet governance contention. In
particular, it argues that extrinsic uncertainty, changing
market conditions, hegemonic transition and social
processes of regime complex formation account for much
of the variation seen in the newly contentious Internet
governance regime.
Sunspots and Extrinsic Uncertainty
One explanation for the shift in Internet governance from a
regime that is largely centred around simple coordination
problems to one that increasingly involves complex
coordination problems and instances of (sometimes failed)
cooperation is that extrinsic shocks occurred that disrupted,
perhaps irrevocably so, perceptions of the former system.
Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent of NSA
surveillance is an example. This explanation could be
called the “sunspot” theory of Internet governance regime
transition.
William Stanley Jevons (1887), argued that sunspots
are an intrinsic factor that helps explain climatic change
and agricultural productivity. However, in the more
modern theory of sunspot economics (Cass and Shell
1983; Farmer and Guo 1994; Hirose 2007), uncertainty is
an extrinsic variable that affects outcomes. For instance,
the combination of a certain set of expectations and the
fundamentals of the situation in question generate an
equilibrium, with speciic behavioural patterns emerging
as a result. While fundamentals might be slow to change,
expectations are subject to extrinsic uncertainty. In other
words, people do not necessarily know that they are
acting in a way that the system requires. Events can then
transpire that alter people’s expectations about how the
system operates, rapidly generating different behavioural
patterns. These events affect behaviour through both
the nature of the event itself and through other actors’
construction of the meaning of the event.
The Snowden disclosures represent a clear case of a
signiicant event that originated largely outside of the
Internet governance regime, but which nevertheless has
signiicant Internet governance implications. The pathway
through which the disclosures affect the governance system
relies on individual expectations about how the system
operates. For instance, one effect of these revelations is a
decline in individual levels of trust in the Internet (CIGIIPSOS 2014). Another is the abhorrence (perhaps merely
rhetorical) that other many states expressed in response to
this event. As a result of these revelations, an increasing
number of states are pushing for Internet infrastructure
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changes, such as data localization (Chander and Le 2014),
with potential implications for the universality of the
Internet. Not all of these behaviours are solely caused by
what Snowden revealed, but peoples’ expectations of how
the system operates have certainly been affected by the
disclosures.
The sunspot effect of the Snowden event helps explain
some of the loss of trust in the system of Internet and
cyber governance. For example, a 2014 CIGI-IPSOS
Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust found that
of the 23,326 Internet users surveyed across 24 countries,
60 percent had heard of Edward Snowden (CIGI-IPSOS
2014). Of that 60 percent, 39 percent had taken actions to
protect their online privacy and security as a result of the
revelations (ibid.). Popular disclosures about the extent
of government surveillance online has shaken peoples’
perception of how the system operates, thereby generating
behavioural changes, as the sunspot theory suggests.
The occurrence of an event that changes actors’ perceptions
actually has the short-run effect of reducing uncertainty.
After Snowden’s disclosures, people had better
information about how the Internet governance regime
operated, in particular the extent of US surveillance.
Short-run behavioural changes result, but as time goes on,
uncertainty grows larger again as people’s perceptions of
the fundamental operation of the system moves further
away from the actual, objective operation of the system.
There is no doubt that the Internet governance regime has
been subjected to the presence of extrinsic uncertainty,
manifest not only from the Snowden revelations, but
also from the rapid development of technology and other
sources. Alone, this explanation is insuficient to explain
the full extent of the emerging contention in the Internet
governance regime. Many changes in the system are not
due to perceptions of uncertainty about how the system
is organized, but about changes to the fundamentals that
underpin the Internet governance system as a whole. One
such change is shifting market conditions.
Changing Market Conditions
A second explanation for the shift from a coordination
problem to a cooperation problem relates to changing
market conditions, which point to a change in the
fundamentals of the system. The Internet has dramatically
altered trade and commerce in the twenty-irst century.
The low of digital goods and services is reshaping society
and promoting prosperity on a scale that is unprecedented.
In 2014, it is estimated that digital lows added between
US$250 billion and US$450 billion to global GDP growth,
or 15 to 25 percent of the world’s total GDP growth per
year (Manyika et al. 2014).
All nations are beneitting from innovations in information
and communication technologies (ICTs) and the governance
transformations that facilitated their adoption. Changes in
digital technologies have advanced the economic take-off
of China and India, and other emerging powers, and also
brought a much greater level of digital connectivity to the
poor in every society. There is no doubt that the spread
of the Internet has brought with it a massive increase in
wealth and prosperity the world over.
The adoption of the Internet, however, has been uneven.
The prosperous, democratic nations in the West that
developed the Internet in the irst place have also been
at the forefront of ICT adoption, in particular compared
to more authoritarian regimes (Milner 2006). The uneven
spread of the Internet among nations entails that some
countries are potentially better positioned to capitalize on
the economic beneits that the Internet creates.
This inequality exacerbates some coordination problems
because it means that different policies are highly likely
to beneit some parties (often those best positioned to
take advantage) more than others. Already, some states
(particularly late adopters of Internet-based technologies)
maintain that the current Internet governance architecture
has been designed by Western countries without their
input. From this perspective, the current Internet
governance system reiies the irst-mover advantages
that the developed nations have both economically and
politically in the Internet governance space. These ingrained
economic and political advantages allow Western nations
to continue to “gain relatively more,” even as the Internet
as a whole produces prosperity across nearly all contexts.
Contention over coordinated solutions, such as the location
of ICANN’s incorporation or the process involved in the
IANA transition, are a natural outgrowth of the fact that
some nations feel that the current system, while producing
absolute gains for all, overly privileges some actors over
others. In such situations, actors are likely to bargain
harder than in more pure coordination games, in order
to preserve or acquire advantages. As in the international
trade regime, they may also begin to frame the situation
in justice terms and become less responsive to bargaining
they believe to be illegitimate.
As market conditions continue to evolve, so does the
importance of private actors in the Internet governance
space. The private sector owns and operates the majority
of ICT infrastructures, especially in Western countries.
As a result, private companies usually hold the data that
state authorities need in order to undertake their law
and order and security provision functions. This distance
between the private actors that hold the data and the state
that needs the data to fulil its central mandate creates
points of contention. For example, in 2014, Microsoft was
ordered by a US court to turn over email data produced
in the United States but physically stored on a server in
Ireland. Microsoft refused, arguing that the court could
only compel it to turn over data that was actually stored in
the United States (The Guardian 2014). The US government
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THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
is attempting to gather evidence in a drug-traficking case.
Microsoft, for its part, is also motivated by the business
consequences of government violations of online privacy.
Like Google and Apple, Microsoft has cued into the idea
that given both the reliance of people on ICT services
and the declining trust of individuals in governments’
online behaviour after the Snowden disclosures, ensuring
anonymity online is good business. This means acting
contentiously toward governments. As David Howard,
Microsoft vice president and deputy general council put
it, “Given what we know about the extent of access to
personal data from the Snowden revelations, this can only
undermine customers’ conidence in US businesses even
further. What we already know about surveillance now
seems to be true for ordinary policing” (cited in ibid.). In
short, due to the changing market conditions, where big
money is to be had from providing online services with
a strong promise to protect privacy and security, private
companies and governments are increasingly at odds.
Private companies are also increasingly in contention
with one another over some foundational governance
principles that bring with them the potential for large
economic gains or losses. One prime example of this trend
involves the issue of network interconnection. Despite
what the individual user experiences, the Internet is not
a single network but a series of networks that are more or
less independently run and operated. In 2011, the Internet
effectively consisted of 5,039 interconnected Internet
service providers (Woodcock and Adhikari 2011). Data
traverses the expanse of the globe by being relayed across
multiple networks. As recently as 2011, most peering
agreements that allow trafic to low as directly as possible
across the Internet are informal agreements (99.51 percent)
and based upon symmetrical terms (99.73 percent) (ibid.).
Tensions between network operators, however, have
lared in the past, causing small “rips in the fabric of the
Internet” (Ricknäs 2008). For example, in 2008, SprintNextel and Cogent stopped transferring each other’s data
directly, meaning that users of either network could not
exchange data with one another without passing it irst
through a secondary network. The cause of the dispute
largely comes down to issues to do with the costless or
nearly costless nature of their peering arrangement
(Miller 2008). When data lows between networks are
roughly equal, companies can assume that costs come out
in the wash. When data lows become unequal, then the
company that is transiting the largest amounts of data will
want to charge the company transiting less because there
is economic gain to be had. As network usage patterns
shift in the future due to changing market conditions, it
is likely that breakdowns in current peering agreements
will become more common and generate a new source of
contention between private actors.
As economies have become more interdependent due
to the expansion of the Internet, and as more and more
economic activity shifts to web-based platforms, there is
a whole host of new security vulnerabilities that emerge.
These vulnerabilities produce an additional layer of
potential contention in areas to do with cybercrime, since
many attacks will span national borders and are hard to
concretely attribute to particular actors. To quantify the
effect of these attacks, a joint report written by the ICT
security irm McAfee and the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (2014) estimates that the cost of
cybercrime to the global economy in 2013 was around
US$400 billion. Despite these huge costs, some nations
still refuse to cooperate on cyber-related crimes, often for
largely political reasons. Sometimes, as the recent hacks of
Sony Pictures indicate, other nations might have a direct
hand in the commission of cybercrimes, although the role
that North Korea actually played in the attacks is unclear.
The prosecution of cybercrime, therefore, becomes a source
of contention.
Changing market conditions fostered by technological
change create distributional contention, many of which
pertain to the governance of the Internet ecosystem. Private
actors are increasingly at odds with states over data and
privacy issues, which have serious economic consequences
for businesses. Private actors increasingly ind themselves
in contention with each other as the market surrounding
ICT and ICT-based platforms expands and changes to it
consumer preferences. Overlaid onto all of this is the role
of cybercriminals, who want to illegally capture a part of
the vast wealth that the Internet creates.
Declining US Hegemony in Internet
Governance
Rising contention in the Internet governance regime
might also be explained, at least in part, as a product
of the declining relative power of the United States,
which, through both its oversight capacity of ICANN
and dominance in the information technology sector,
has played a large role in the development of the current
system. The growing relative capabilities and interests of
other states have given rise to questions over how scarce
and critical Internet resources are distributed, and over the
rules and norms that govern the Internet.
Scholars studying hegemonic transitions argue that a
concentration of power can facilitate cooperative outcomes
because the dominance of the primary state provides
other actors with a degree of certainty about the future
(Wohlforth 1999). This logic is particularly powerful in
the short run, where few states can effectively challenge
a hegemonic power. Over the longer term, however, a
concentration of power can actually generate balancing
behaviour from other states. As the relative power of the
hegemon declines, cooperation becomes harder to achieve
and conlicts of interest tend to multiply (Gilpin 1983; Walt
2006). The relative power of the hegemonic power can
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diminish in relative terms for two non-exclusive reasons.
First, the dominant power might experience absolute
decline as a result of internal problems that sap its strength.
Second, other states with considerable latent power might
opt to mobilize their resources to challenge the primacy of
the hegemon, particularly if the hegemonic state wields its
power in a way that is seen as unjust.
The United States is a clear hegemon in the current
Internet governance regime, despite the fact that the
absolute number of Internet users in the developing world
is vast and continues to grow rapidly, and even though
non-roman scripts are increasingly used to host websites.
The DOC’s oversight role of ICANN places America at the
root of the current Internet governance system. The global
dominance of US-based telecommunication companies
and content intermediaries further solidiies the hegemonic
position of the United States. For example, in 2014,
American companies reportedly held a 27 percent share
of the global ICT market (Statista 2014). This dominance
has allowed the United States to shape outcomes in the
Internet governance space.
As previously discussed, many nations are concerned about
US dominance in the Internet governance regime in the
wake of the NSA surveillance disclosures. As hegemonic
transition theory would expect, the dominant US role
in the current Internet governance regime is sparking a
backlash from other nations. In 2012, Russia, China and
other states put forward a proposal at the WCIT to shift the
locus of Internet governance away from the United States.
These countries expressed interest in placing essential
functions of ICANN under the authority of the ITU. Many
developing nations view ICANN as lacking legitimacy
due to its close associations with the US government.
Consistent with hegemonic transition theory, it is also
possible that major nations such as China and Russia might
think that moving core Internet governance functions into
the UN system will give them more direct control over
some core Internet functions, which would increase their
ability to shape outcomes and obtain their interests. The
United States has also recently announced its intention to
relinquish its unique relationship with ICANN, provided
that certain criteria are met. These examples, particularly
the challenge presented at the WCIT, indicate that a part
of the change in the underlying issue structure of cyber
governance is at least partly driven by the relative rise of
non-Western nations.
Hegemonic transition theory can partially account for
some of the contentious state behaviour marring global
debates concerning Internet issues. States that are currently
dominant in the Internet governance regime, such as the
United States, are coming into increasingly conlict with
other states that hold different ideological viewpoints and
that see American dominance of the system as illegitimate
or even an outright security challenge. Many developing
nations that have yet to fully move online are now giving
voice to the fact that they are compelled to adopt a system
that is governed in a way that they did not help to directly
develop. Other nations, such as Russia and China, have
simply transposed tensions from other areas onto the
Internet governance debate, making the issue particularly
fractious. Hegemonic transition theory is less able to
account for the nature of the alternatives preferred by
these actors, which are shaped both by domestic values
and international norms (Ruggie 1982), or the processes of
global rule-making by which these objectives are pursued
(Brunnée and Toope 2010; Diehl and Ku 2010; Raymond
2013). Again, this highlights the interactions between
distinct factors that collectively account for increased
global contention over Internet issues.
Social Processes of Institutional Change and
Regime Complex Formation
While acknowledging the role of exogenous shocks and
a decline in US hegemony in accounting for increasing
contention over Internet issues, these factors cannot
provide a suficient explanation for the kind and degree
of contention observed. This is because exogenous shocks
and change in the state of American global leadership occur
against the backdrop of pre-existing social relationships,
rules and institutions, which exert effects on the timing
and form of future change, as well as on the success or
failure of particular attempts to create change.
To understand the multiple pathways and logics by which
institutions shape the nature and degree of contention, as
well as its eventual consequences, an explicitly eclectic
approach is adopted (Sil and Katzenstein 2010), comprised
of rational choice and constructivist approaches. These
approaches are ideal for the purposes of this paper because
there are valuable insights in this area that stem from both
theories and because there is (as yet) no broadly accepted
understanding of the relationship between them. In this
section, relevant theoretical contributions from both camps
are surveyed and the ways in which these arguments
can further understanding of increased contention over
Internet issues are illustrated.
One strand of rationalist scholarship emphasizes that
institutional arrangements provide information to states
and other parties, reduce transaction costs, facilitate the
coordination of behaviour and make commitments more
credible (Keohane 2005; Keohane and Martin 1995).
Institutionalized regimes have these effects because
they codify behavioural patterns, ensuring that people
and states know how events will roughly unfold. These
patterns can become very path dependent and resistant
to change (North 1990). From this perspective, only
large exogenous shocks, similar to the sunspot theory,
can change institutional arrangements. Change, in other
words, cannot occur from within the institution without
12 • CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION • CHATHAM HOuSE
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
irst being driven by change outside of the institutional
context.
Avner Greif and David D. Laitin (2004), however, propose
a theory of endogenous institutional change. In their
theory, institutional arrangements set up a speciic way of
doing things that is resistant to change in the short run,
even change from outside of the system, because these
arrangements condition what actors know about situations,
focus their attention on speciic self-reinforcing problems
and coordinate behavioural responses (ibid., 637-38).
At the same time, institutions generally set off processes
that can have little effect on institutions in the short run,
but that can be highly variable over the long run. These
processes can have either positive or negative effects. Some
processes, such as the European Union’s initial Common
Market, might enhance trust and cooperation between
states over the longer term and make the institution more
resilient. Others, such as the European Union’s adoption
of the euro, might cause economic deprivation in some
areas over the longer term and can thereby undermine the
resilience of the institution. An institution, despite being
designed to ensure routine, stability and predictability, can
actually be its own engine of change.
Since engineers led the Internet’s initial development
for non-commercial and largely academic purposes,
the institutional regime that developed for governing
the Internet involved ideas of universality, open
communication and accessibility. These initial institutional
arrangements have contributed to the worldwide spread
of the Internet, encouraged its adoption as a technical
platform for e-commerce and generated the growth of
new ways for people to interact with each other, such as
social media. In some ways, the trends that the original
institutional arrangements set off are now undermining
the original organizational principles of the Internet
governance regime. In a little over 10 years, the number
of Internet users has increased from one billion to three
billion, and the global number of users in developing
countries now exceeds those in developed countries
(ISOC 2014a).
The vast majority of future user growth will occur in the
developing world. Estimates show that by 2020, China,
India, Nigeria and Brazil should each house more Internet
users than Great Britain, Germany or France (Kleiner,
Nicholas and Sullivan 2014). This massive increase in
Internet users is a direct result of the initial system of
coordinated protocols and universal norms that governed
the Internet in its irst decades of existence. The original
institutional arrangement that governed the Internet
started a process that is facilitating the spread of Internet
usage to every corner of the world.
While demography is not destiny, the result of this trend
could have serious implications for the current Internet
governance regime, especially since a clear plurality of
new Internet users will be in China, which holds different
normative views on things online, such as censorship,
free speech and other human rights. This change could
result in an increasingly fragmented Internet if China,
anticipating its coming pre-eminence in the online world,
tries to change the Internet governance regime in its favour.
Arguably, China already attempted this to some extent
during the 2012 WCIT meeting. It is possible, therefore,
that the transitions seen from problems of coordination to
problems of (failed) cooperation are a result of the original
institutional design of the Internet governance regime.
Development of the Internet and the social institutions
that govern it and make its continued operation possible
have occurred in tandem. Many of these developments
are explicable in part by endogenous, path-dependent
processes. If the Internet had not been governed as an open
and permissive system, it is unlikely to have expanded to the
extent and in the way it did. Without the open architecture
of early Internet standards, protocols and institutions,
many of the current Internet governance challenges pitting
people of different normative perspectives against one
another or making the Web such a tantalizing economic
prize would not have emerged.
Constructivist scholarship also sheds light on the pathdependent effects of institutions on future behaviour, but
in doing so it emphasizes distinct behavioural logics of
appropriateness (March and Olsen 1998; Finnemore and
Sikkink 1998; Müller 2004), habit (Hopf 2010) and practice
(Adler and Pouliot 2011). In doing so, it employs a more
complex notion of agency and choice that acknowledges
the goal-directed nature of human behaviour while
broadening the conception of available goals beyond
utility maximization.
As such, constructivist scholarship is well equipped to
explain the extent to which Internet governance debates
increasingly revolve around concerns about legitimacy,
appropriateness and justice. Such concerns have been
articulated in both substantive and procedural terms.
Substantive concerns have to do with the nature of the rules
and institutions that provide for governance of particular
Internet functions, for example, provisions to encourage
the adoption of IPv6, or rules about state behavior in
online surveillance. Procedural concerns, for their part,
have to do with the means of reaching decisions about
these substantive matters, for example, whether the GAC
should operate by consensus or some other voting rule,
or whether it should be able to demand that the ICANN
board respond to its “advice.”
Increasing levels of procedural contestation are especially
worthy of attention. The diversity of views on legitimate
procedural rules among participants in Internet governance
is striking and worrisome (Raymond and Smith 2014),
and disagreement on such rules renders the resolution of
substantive disagreements far more problematic (Diehl
SAMANTHA BRAdSHAw, LAuRA dENARdIS, FEN OSLER HAMPSON, ERIC JARdINE ANd MARk RAyMONd • 13
GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JuLy 2015
and Ku 2010; Raymond 2011; 2013). It is dificult to bridge
or resolve substantive disagreements if there is no prior
agreement on the legitimate procedure by which to do
so (Hurd 1999; Albin 2001). International opposition to
the continuation of the contractual relationship between
ICANN and the NTIA for the administration of key Internet
naming and numbering functions, discussed above, is
one case of legitimacy concerns shaping contention over
Internet governance issues. Such a claim does not require
that actors advocating change to this relationship operate
with pure motives. Legitimacy concerns, especially those
pertaining to procedural matters, can shape outcomes even
where actors may have mixed or even purely self-interested
motives. This is because procedural rules affect the ways
audiences respond to arguments and thus help to explain
the success or failure of particular attempts to change
institutions (Raymond 2011). Further, evidence indicates
actors are well aware of the beneits of framing their
arguments in terms consistent with prevailing procedural
rules. Debates about the future oversight mechanisms
for the IANA functions are especially interesting in this
regard. In these debates, states such as China and Russia
have criticized the multi-stakeholder model of Internet
governance for failing to meet the accepted procedural
practices of the institution of multilateralism (People’s
Republic of China 2014). In doing so, these states seek
to use practices intimately associated with the advanced
industrial democracies (Ruggie 1983; Reus-Smit 1999;
Ikenberry 2001) to deny legitimate standing to an array
of non-state actors. In neglecting to update international
procedural rules, the industrial democracies have left
themselves open to this subversion of the spirit of
multilateralism in the service of arresting the spread of
informal contemporary practices of global governance
more tolerant of the independent participation of nonstate actors.
While these innovative, strategic uses of procedural rules
highlight the surprising and creative ways actors exercise
agency in the contemporary international system, it is
worth reiterating that such examples do not negate that
such rules are in many cases deployed and complied
with in good faith even by powerful actors. This is true
both due to genuine internalization as well as the more
instrumental consideration that employing accepted
procedural rules in expected ways ensures that one’s
actions are socially intelligible and meaningful to the
relevant audience. Finally, although space constraints
prevent detailed empirical analysis, this issue area contains
cases of numerous theoretical mechanisms well known in
the constructivist literature — including, but not limited
to, strategic social construction, learning, persuasion and
socialization.
Both the rational choice and constructivist literatures
surveyed here are concerned with the way pre-existing
institutions shape the development of institutions over
time. This paper argues that these kinds of effects are
helpful in explaining why and how Internet issues have
become contentious. A series of technological, economic
and political developments have combined with existing
institutions such that Internet issues now involve more
(increasingly culturally diverse) players, higher stakes with
respect to the division of joint gains and, in some cases,
incentives to cheat on commitments. Internet governance
now often includes actors whose primary responsibilities
include Internet issues only tangentially, and actors are
often tempted to accomplish objectives relating to patterns
of Internet use by means of technical Internet architecture.
More generally, it is clear that key aspects of social, political
and economic life now occur in or through cyberspace. As
a result of increased cultural diversity among the players,
there is also less shared belief that existing institutions are
legitimate.
In light of these developments, actors are forced to
simultaneously confront a range of dificult problems, one
being a high degree of attempted institutional innovation
by agents pursuing diverse interests and values. Both
status quo and revisionist actors are confronted with
an increasing number of cases in which there is a need
to reconcile rules and norms dealing with Internet
governance with rules and norms regulating other issue
areas that are increasingly affecting, and affected by, the
Internet governance regime. Actors do not confront these
problems with a tabula rasa, but rather with identities
shaped in part by pre-existing regimes from a variety of
issue areas and with options conditioned by those same
rules and norms. Therefore, accounting for institutional
endogeneity is vital to explaining ongoing processes and
outcomes with respect to Internet issues.
Nye (2014) argues that Internet governance should
be understood as embedded in a broader set of rules,
institutions and processes that govern related issue areas
including trade, development, human rights, security, law
enforcement and intellectual property, among others. That
is, he argues it is more productive to think in terms of a
broader cyber regime complex rather than only in terms
of a single Internet governance regime.2 The authors
agree, but emphasize the ongoing, incomplete nature of
this process. They argue that changes in the underlying
problem structure have set off a continuing process of
regime complex formation as actors attempt to deal with
this new reality by creating and altering institutions. This
process, in turn, creates further contention, given the
diversity of interests and values, the increasing number
of actors involved and the heightened importance of the
issues.
2 On regime complexes, see Raustiala and Victor (2004), Betts (2010),
Keohane and Victor (2011), Orsini, Morin and Young (2013) and Drezner
(2009).
14 • CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL GOVERNANCE INNOVATION • CHATHAM HOuSE
THE EMERGENCE OF CONTENTION IN GLOBAL INTERNET GOVERNANCE
IMPLICATIONS OF THIS SHIFT
AND PROSPECTS FOR GLOBAL
COOPERATION
actors might also consider loyalty to the current system,
as is a fairly common position among many Western states
that more or less support the current Internet governance
regime.
No other areas of IR have been marked by such a
pronounced shift from relatively simply coordination
problems to a challenging hybrid of cooperation problems
alongside complex coordination problems characterized
by large numbers of players with divergent preferences
over the available equilibria. The emergence of contention
in Internet governance is, therefore, a novel problem with
potentially large implications for successful governance of
the Internet. These include destabilization of the Internet
governance ecosystem and the threat of various forms of
Internet fragmentation. Typically, states have dominated
in cooperation problems, raising troubling questions about
whether the private sector-led multi-stakeholder approach
can survive in this context.
Such questions are also more than matters of academic
interest. To the extent that non-state actors and emerging
powers (such as the BRICS countries, that is, Brazil, Russia,
India, China and South Africa) have distinct views about
legitimate procedural rules that diverge from accepted
international practices, it may be the case that Internet
governance is simply a canary in the coal mine, and that
the emergence of contention will also take place in other
issue areas. Such procedural conlict could eventually
compromise the basic operation of an array of global
governance mechanisms and perhaps even international
law more generally.
Resolving these disputes, or at least avoiding highconsequence negative outcomes, will require a nuanced
understanding of the layers of Internet governance, rather
than viewing the system in monolithic terms. Global
discussions and conlict over “who controls the Internet”
view the system as monolithic and thus have little relevance
to the complexity of the Internet governance ecosystem
and how Internet governance works in practice. Strategies
of decomposing issues in negotiations are therefore
especially appropriate and should be encouraged. Linkage
politics should be avoided where possible (Keohane and
Nye 2001).
The authors would like to thank Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Robert
O. Keohane, Dane Rowlands and all who have given
comments on the paper.
Acknowledgements
In addition to the implications of the analysis here for the
study and practice of Internet governance, the indings
are also of interest to IR scholars and practitioners more
broadly. Scholarly work in IR examining international
cooperation has typically understood problem structures
as static. Little attention has been paid to the possibility
for, or the dynamics of, degenerative shifts in problem
structure. This paper highlights the need for further
research addressing these questions.
It is also interesting to speculate about how actors within
the current Internet governance regime are going to react
to growing levels of contention. Albert O. Hirschman
(1970) points out that when faced with a dysfunctional
system, all actors have three choices: “exit, voice, and
loyalty.” Determining the precise times when actors will
choose each of these three strategies in response to growing
contention would be a useful endeavour. More generally,
the start of actions to this effect can already be seen. Russia,
for example, recently announced that it plans to develop
a system that would allow it to remove its Internet from
the global system, an example of exit if ever there was one
(Reuters 2014). Other actors are relying more on voice,
as can be seen in the example of stakeholder discussions
surrounding NETmundial in Brazil. Some nations and
SAMANTHA BRAdSHAw, LAuRA dENARdIS, FEN OSLER HAMPSON, ERIC JARdINE ANd MARk RAyMONd • 15
GLOBAL COMMISSION ON INTERNET GOVERNANCE PAPER SERIES: NO. 17 — JuLy 2015
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SAMANTHA BRAdSHAw, LAuRA dENARdIS, FEN OSLER HAMPSON, ERIC JARdINE ANd MARk RAyMONd • 19
ABOUT CIGI
The Centre for International Governance Innovation is an independent, non-partisan think tank on international governance. Led
by experienced practitioners and distinguished academics, CIGI supports research, forms networks, advances policy debate and
generates ideas for multilateral governance improvements. Conducting an active agenda of research, events and publications, CIGI’s
interdisciplinary work includes collaboration with policy, business and academic communities around the world.
CIGI’s current research programs focus on three themes: the global economy; global security & politics; and international law.
CIGI was founded in 2001 by Jim Balsillie, then co-CEO of Research In Motion (BlackBerry), and collaborates with and gratefully
acknowledges support from a number of strategic partners, in particular the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario.
Le CIGI a été fondé en 2001 par Jim Balsillie, qui était alors co-chef de la direction de Research In Motion (BlackBerry). Il collabore
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the near- to the long-term. For more information, please visit: www.chathamhouse.org.
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