Future of Internet Governance: Multilateralism, Multistakeholderism or a Third Path?

Agranee Kapoor and Angeline Bennny write about current models of Internet Governence and what future beholds.

Abstract

Every resource that has been unearthed over the centuries due to human innovation has become subject to extensive regulations, whether formal or informal to control its consumption. The Internet which is an intangible resource has become the latest to join the fray. Be it the self-imposed rules of the developers and users during the early stages or the governmental and organisational restrictions that followed its proliferation in the recent decades, the Internet
has also attracted its fair share of norms and deviations. The increasing nature of circumventions of the governance model in place leads us to question the suitability of the paradigm we have adopted. This paper aims to discuss the current models of Internet governance in place, drawbacks of the current models and derive a feasible model that learns from and builds upon the inefficiencies of the previous ones, a possible Internet Governance 2.0.