Day 0 Event #174 Giganet Annual Academic Symposium – Afternoon session

Summary

This discussion centered on the future of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and its relevance in contemporary digital governance, featuring a panel of experts debating whether WSIS should continue, reform, or end. The panelists presented divergent views on WSIS’s continued utility, with some arguing it provides crucial legitimacy to multi-stakeholder governance models and protects organizations like ICANN from potential government takeover. Alexander Klimberg warned that ending WSIS could trigger a cascade of negative consequences, including governments questioning ICANN’s authority over national internet segments and potential fragmentation of the global internet governance system.

In contrast, Milton Mueller argued that WSIS has outlived its usefulness and serves primarily as a distraction from addressing real digital governance challenges like the growing fragmentation between major digital ecosystems, particularly between the US and China. He contended that multilateral UN processes have little impact on actual digital economic development, which comes primarily from liberalized capital flows and private sector investment. Other panelists, including William Drake and Avri Doria, took more moderate positions, acknowledging WSIS’s limitations while emphasizing its ongoing role in coordinating various UN programs and action lines that address digital development issues globally.

The discussion also explored the tension between multi-stakeholder and multilateral governance models, with participants debating how to balance inclusivity with enforceability in global digital governance. A separate presentation examined stakeholder participation in recent processes like NetMundial Plus 10 and the Global Digital Compact, highlighting challenges in meaningful multi-stakeholder engagement. The session concluded with an open discussion about GigaNet’s role and future activities, emphasizing the need for greater global outreach and diverse participation in academic internet governance research.

Keypoints

## Overall Purpose

This transcript captures a GigaNet academic symposium focused on the future of internet governance, specifically examining whether the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) should continue, reform, or end. The discussion explores tensions between multistakeholder and multilateral governance models in the digital age.

## Major Discussion Points

– **WSIS Future and Reform Necessity**: The central debate over whether WSIS should end or continue, with emerging consensus that while WSIS shouldn’t be terminated, it requires significant evolution and reform to remain relevant in addressing modern digital governance challenges like AI, data fragmentation, and geopolitical tensions.

– **Multistakeholder vs. Multilateral Governance Models**: Extensive discussion of the fundamental tension between inclusive, bottom-up multistakeholder approaches versus state-centric multilateral processes, examining how these models compete for legitimacy and effectiveness in global digital governance.

– **IGF Independence and Relationship to WSIS**: Debate over whether the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) should become more independent from WSIS processes, with differing views on whether separation would strengthen or weaken both institutions’ effectiveness and legitimacy.

– **Geopolitical Fragmentation and Digital Sovereignty**: Analysis of how growing tensions between major digital powers (US, China, EU) and assertions of digital sovereignty are challenging traditional internet governance frameworks and potentially leading to internet fragmentation.

– **Academic Research and Stakeholder Participation**: Presentation and discussion of research examining how different stakeholder groups participate in governance processes, highlighting challenges in meaningful inclusion and the evolution from internet governance to broader digital governance concepts.

## Overall Tone

The discussion maintained a scholarly, analytical tone throughout, characterized by respectful disagreement among experts with deep knowledge of internet governance history. While there were moments of pointed debate (particularly between panelists with differing views on WSIS’s future), the overall atmosphere remained collegial and constructive. The tone became more collaborative toward the end as participants found common ground around the need for institutional evolution rather than elimination.

Speakers

**Speakers from the provided list:**

– **Wolfgang Kleinwachter** – Academic from the University of Aarhus

– **Audience** – Various audience members (including Jamal, Rolf Eppel from University of Zurich, Sivabrahmanyan Muthuswamy)

– **Jamal Shahin** – Chair of the GIGNET Academic Network, working at the Universities of Amsterdam and Brussels

– **Avri Doria** – ITF and former ICANN board member

– **William Drake** – Columbia University

– **Trisha Meyer** – Professor in digital governance and participation at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Vice-Chair of GIGNET

– **Sophie Hoogenboom** – PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and United Nations University in Bruges, Chair of the Programme Committee

– **Jaqueline Pigatto** – Dr. from Sao Paulo State University

– **Jyoti Panday** – Panel moderator

– **Milton L Mueller** – Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Director of the Internet Governance Project, Communications Director of GIGNET, founding member of GIGNET

– **Alexander Klimberg** – From the Hague Center for Strategic Studies

– **Berna Akcali Gur** – Lecturer at Queen Mary University, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Membership Committee Chair of GIGNET

– **Pari Esfandiari** – From the Global Technopolitics Forum

– **Nadia Tjahja** – From the United Nations University Institute for Comparative Regional Integration Studies

**Additional speakers:**

– **Mark Datzgeld** – Co-author from Sao Paulo State University (participated online)

– **Laura Silva** – Co-author from Sao Paulo State University (mentioned but not speaking)

– **Joerg Desai** – GIGNET Treasurer (online from Mumbai)

– **Dennis** – Audience member who submitted a panel proposal

# Comprehensive Report: GigaNet Academic Symposium on the Future of Internet Governance and WSIS

## Executive Summary

This report documents a comprehensive academic symposium organised by GigaNet at IGF 2024 in Riyadh that examined the future of global internet governance, with particular focus on whether the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) should continue, reform, or end. The discussion brought together leading academics and practitioners to debate fundamental questions about the effectiveness of current governance frameworks in addressing contemporary digital challenges. The symposium featured a structured panel debate on WSIS’s future moderated by Jyoti Panday, academic presentations on stakeholder participation in governance processes, and discussions about GigaNet’s organizational development.

The central debate revolved around competing visions of how global digital governance should evolve in response to emerging challenges including artificial intelligence, platform dominance, geopolitical fragmentation, and assertions of digital sovereignty. Participants grappled with whether existing multilateral frameworks like WSIS retain legitimacy and effectiveness, or whether they have become obstacles to addressing real-world governance challenges.

## The WSIS Continuation Debate: Core Arguments and Positions

### The Case for Ending WSIS

Milton Mueller from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Internet Governance Project presented the strongest argument for terminating WSIS, contending that it has outlived its usefulness and now serves primarily as a distraction from addressing genuine digital governance challenges. Mueller argued that the real crisis facing internet governance stems from growing fragmentation between major digital ecosystems, particularly US-China competition, alongside increasing assertions of digital sovereignty by various nations.

Mueller challenged the notion that WSIS provides meaningful legitimacy to institutions like ICANN, arguing that “there’s no legal basis for ICANN or anything else in WSIS” and that ICANN has established its own legitimacy through operational effectiveness rather than multilateral endorsement. He cited the Digital Solidarity Fund as an example of UN institutional failure, describing it as corrupt and ineffective, arguing that actual digital development comes from liberalising capital flows and investment rather than multilateral aid mechanisms.

Mueller’s position reflected broader skepticism about the effectiveness of UN processes in addressing real-world digital economic development, suggesting that whilst academics debate institutional frameworks, the actual drivers of digital transformation operate largely independently of these multilateral processes.

### The Case for Preserving WSIS Legitimacy

Alexander Klimberg from the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies offered the strongest defence of WSIS continuation, focusing on its legitimising function for the broader internet governance ecosystem. Klimberg’s argument centered on warning against “inadvertent consequences” of dismantling WSIS, suggesting this could trigger negative effects that would ultimately undermine the multi-stakeholder model of internet governance.

Klimberg referenced specific WSIS documents, particularly Articles 55 and 62 regarding “day-to-day management,” arguing that WSIS provides crucial legitimacy to the internet community and multi-stakeholder governance model overall. He warned that ending WSIS could lead governments to question ICANN’s authority, potentially triggering demands for greater state control over internet infrastructure and governance.

His position reflected concern about the current geopolitical environment and warned against opening what he characterised as a “Pandora’s box” by dismantling existing frameworks. Klimberg emphasised that whilst WSIS may have operational limitations, its symbolic and legitimising functions remain crucial for maintaining the balance that allows non-state actors to play significant roles in internet governance.

### The Institutional Scope Argument

William Drake from Columbia University provided a different perspective by emphasising WSIS’s broader institutional scope beyond internet governance. Drake argued that critics focus too narrowly on ICANN and technical internet governance whilst ignoring the summit’s much larger mandate encompassing digital development and capacity building globally.

Drake highlighted that WSIS involves multiple action lines across numerous UN entities and processes, each with extensive expert communities and NGOs. This perspective positioned WSIS as a coordinating mechanism for a broader ecosystem of digital development work, rather than simply a forum for internet governance debates.

From Drake’s viewpoint, the question of WSIS’s continuation should be evaluated based on its effectiveness in coordinating diverse UN programmes and addressing digital divide issues, particularly in developing countries where market mechanisms alone may be insufficient to ensure digital inclusion.

### The Reform and Reimagining Position

Pari Esfandiari from the Global Technopolitics Forum and Avri Doria, former ICANN board member, both advocated for significant reform rather than termination of WSIS, though their approaches differed.

Esfandiari reframed the debate by asking “How can WSIS be reimagined to meet today’s realities?” rather than whether it should continue unchanged. She argued that WSIS represents a crucial achievement in recognising Global South participation as governance actors rather than merely aid recipients, and that this foundational principle should be preserved whilst the institutional framework evolves.

Doria took a pragmatic approach, arguing that “the only way to kill WSIS is to leave it as it is and ignore it.” She advocated for systematic analysis to determine which elements of WSIS work effectively and should be preserved, which need fixing, and which should be replaced entirely. Doria characterised multi-stakeholder governance as “a baby” that needs to grow and potentially “infect” multilateral systems over time, emphasising that institutional death comes through neglect rather than active termination.

## Academic Research on Stakeholder Participation

### Empirical Analysis of Governance Processes

Jacqueline Pigatto from São Paulo State University, attending her first GigaNet symposium, presented research examining stakeholder participation in recent governance processes including NetMundial Plus 10 and the Global Digital Compact negotiations. Her analysis revealed significant challenges in achieving meaningful multi-stakeholder participation, particularly in processes where final negotiations remain closed to non-state actors.

Pigatto’s research highlighted the gap between rhetoric about inclusive governance and the reality of how decisions are actually made in multilateral processes. She found that whilst consultation processes may include diverse stakeholders, actual negotiation and decision-making often reverts to traditional state-centric models.

The research also revealed problems with traditional stakeholder categories used in internet governance processes, noting fragmentation within stakeholder groups, including different government bodies within the same country competing over digital policy. This finding suggested that even seemingly coherent categories mask significant internal complexity and potential conflicts.

## Internet Governance Forum Independence and Reform

### The Case for IGF Independence

A significant portion of the discussion focused on the relationship between the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and WSIS, with most participants agreeing that IGF should gain greater independence whilst maintaining some connection to the broader framework.

Doria advocated for significant separation, arguing that IGF should become more independent from WSIS to be truly multi-stakeholder from top to bottom. Her position reflected concern that IGF’s current anchoring within UN processes subjects it to state control that undermines its multi-stakeholder character.

Drake supported IGF independence but focused on procedural reforms, arguing that IGF should get a permanent mandate to increase independence and ability to address controversial issues. His approach emphasised that IGF’s current renewable mandate creates uncertainty that limits its effectiveness.

Mueller agreed that IGF independence represents necessary evolution rather than existential risk, but cautioned that independence should not mean complete separation from institutional anchoring.

### Balancing Independence with Legitimacy

The discussion revealed tension between desires for IGF independence and concerns about maintaining legitimacy and operational effectiveness. Klimberg argued that IGF should remain as an information exchange platform for deliberative democracy rather than decision-making, emphasising its value as a forum for dialogue rather than policy development.

Esfandiari took a nuanced position, arguing that IGF and WSIS serve different but complementary functions—experimental versus connective—supporting some degree of independence to enable IGF to be more innovative and experimental.

## Contemporary Governance Challenges

### Geopolitical Context and Recent Developments

The discussion took place against the backdrop of recent tensions in WSIS processes, including the US blocking of a WSIS resolution over SDGs and diversity at a UN CSTD meeting. Participants acknowledged that these developments reflect broader geopolitical challenges facing multilateral internet governance frameworks.

Mueller emphasised that the real challenge facing internet governance is US-China digital ecosystem fragmentation and digital sovereignty assertions, suggesting that traditional internet governance debates have become less relevant compared to these macro-level geopolitical dynamics.

### Institutional Adaptation Needs

Participants discussed the role of newer institutions like the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies (ODET) and how they relate to existing WSIS frameworks. The Global Digital Compact negotiations were referenced as an example of how governance processes are evolving to address contemporary challenges.

Wolfgang Kleinwechter, speaking from the audience, emphasised the need for alternative processes and approaches, reflecting broader recognition that current frameworks may need fundamental restructuring rather than incremental reform.

## GigaNet Organisation and Academic Network Development

### Membership and Programme Innovation

Sophie Hoogenboom, serving as Chair of the Programme Committee and organizing her first GigaNet symposium, reported positive responses to alternative programme formats mixing panels and research presentations alongside traditional academic paper presentations. This innovation reflected efforts to make academic conferences more accessible and relevant to policy practitioners whilst maintaining scholarly rigor.

Berna Akcali Gur, GigaNet’s Membership Committee Chair, reported that GigaNet membership is open and increasingly diverse geographically, welcoming multidisciplinary academics. However, participants identified challenges in reaching underrepresented regions, with Mark Datzgeld participating online from São Paulo noting that GigaNet needs better visibility and outreach in regions like Latin America beyond the IGF environment.

The discussion revealed ongoing efforts to balance GigaNet’s historical roots in IGF processes with desires to broaden its reach to academics who may not be directly involved in internet governance policy processes.

## Key Areas of Agreement and Disagreement

### Emerging Consensus Points

Despite significant disagreements about specific reforms, participants showed some convergence around several points:

– WSIS requires significant evolution rather than simple continuation or termination

– IGF needs greater independence from current constraints, though the degree of separation needed remains debated

– Multi-stakeholder governance represents an important innovation in democratic governance, despite its limitations

– Current institutional frameworks struggle to address contemporary challenges including AI governance, platform regulation, and geopolitical fragmentation

### Fundamental Disagreements

The discussion revealed persistent disagreements about:

– The effectiveness of multilateral development processes versus market-based approaches

– Sources of legitimacy for internet governance institutions

– The appropriate scope of digital governance frameworks

– The relationship between technical coordination and policy-making in internet governance

## Implications and Future Directions

The symposium highlighted the complexity of contemporary debates about global internet governance and demonstrated that these discussions cannot be separated from broader questions about the future of global governance, the role of non-state actors in international relations, and the capacity of multilateral institutions to address transnational challenges.

Participants identified several areas requiring additional research and analysis, including empirical evaluation of WSIS impact on digital development, analysis of participation dynamics in governance processes, and examination of how geopolitical tensions affect the effectiveness of different governance models.

The discussion concluded with recognition that whilst perfect solutions may not be achievable, continued engagement with these institutional challenges remains essential. This ongoing work requires continued collaboration between academics, policy practitioners, and civil society organisations to develop innovative approaches that can bridge the gap between governance aspirations and practical challenges.

The symposium demonstrated GigaNet’s role in fostering this type of critical academic engagement with internet governance challenges, whilst also highlighting the need for academic networks to expand their global reach and develop new formats for bridging research and policy practice.

Jyoti Panday: Yeah, maybe to be safe, just say it anyway, there’s no harm. Here we go. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the GigaNet panel on Should Vices End. Before we begin, I would just urge people sitting in the audience to please move up and join us on the dais. This is an open forum for discussion. And so if you’re ready to begin. Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to this critical discussion on the future of the World Summit on the Information Society. For over two decades, WSIS has been a cornerstone of global digital governance, a space where governments, the private sector, technical communities, and civil society negotiated the Internet’s evolution. But as we approach a potential inflection point, we must ask, should WSIS continue, reform, or end? Born in the early 2000s, WSIS emerged amid debates over ICANN’s governance, the digital divide, and the clash between state sovereignty and multi-stakeholder models. Its outcomes, like the Geneva Declaration and Tunis Agenda, shaped early Internet governance. Yet today’s challenges, AI, data fragmentation, and geopolitical tensions over tech sovereignty, look nothing like those of 2005. Meanwhile, new initiatives like the UN’s Global Digital Compact raise questions about WSIS’s relevance. This panel will explore whether WSIS still serves a purpose, or if its legacy is now more symbolic than substantive. We’ll begin with opening statements, where our panelists will answer the key core questions, should WSIS end? This will be followed by a moderated debate on key tensions from geopolitical divides to multi-stakeholder legitimacy, and conclude with audience questions and answers, and closing takeaways. To guide us through this debate, we are privileged to have five leading voices. On my left, we have Alexander Klimberg from the to take Center for Strategic Studies. Next to him is Pari Esfandiari from the Global Technopolitics Forum. Next to her is William Drakefrom Columbia University. And on our extreme left there is Avri Doria, ITF and former Nikon board member. And to my right is Professor Milton Mueller, who’s from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Without further ado, let’s begin with our opening statements. Alexander, over to you. And the question to all the panelists is, should this end or continue?

Alexander Klimberg: Thank you, thank you for that introduction. So following the ITU WCIT conference in 2013, I wrote that we had experienced an internet Yalta, where the ideological battle lines between the two camps, the free internet and the cyber sovereignty countries were now kind of obvious to all, as was a single-minded wish of ITU under Hamadan Touré to play a key role here. One commentator on my piece said he had a visceral reaction to my invoking of a Cold War imagery, implying that this kind of language could have inadvertent consequences. However, he came to the conclusion that, sadly, this was probably correct and that he had a change of heart. But that commentator also was right about one thing. We need to be careful with our language and be aware of the threat of inadvertent consequences, especially if creating that which we hope to avoid. That commentator, by the way, was Milton Mueller. So it is a lesson that I think Milton may have forgotten with his own recent white paper on the end of WSIS, which I think not only has some errors or omissions included in it, but also forgets the importance of the danger of inadvertent consequence. And I think that suggesting that we abandon WSIS and simply recreate something else, we might be opening a Pandora’s box that we have no wish to do. I somehow have a hard time thinking that negotiations today would be easier than in 2003 to 2005. I don’t know if anyone thinks it. be easier. So back to reality. After the unsettling scene at the UN CSTD meeting just a couple weeks ago, where the US basically blocked the WSIS resolution over SDGs and the word diversity, there is real concern that the whole WSIS process could unravel. I am worried too, but I think in the end we’re likely to get a compromise if we have to, because the consequences are pretty serious. To be clear, the continuation of the IGF or even the WSIS action lines are not the most important contribution of this process in my opinion. Rather, it is the legitimacy that it imparts to the Internet community and to the multi-stakeholder model overall. It also plays an indirect role in legitimising ICANN management of the Internet namespace as well as IANA writ large. I’d like to quote a former GAC chair here. Most European governments are probably breaking their own national laws and allowing a non-European non-profit to basically decide over key parts of their critical infrastructure. Now this person may have been referring to the WHOIS debate, which has been largely resolved, but we still have the sticky issues of the national Internet segments and similar factors to consider. So I still think the problem is still here and I think WSIS also helps explain how national sovereignty has actually changed for all of us in the Internet age. WSIS cannot really expire, but it would have to be actively killed off if somebody really wished to do that. Without a cast-iron successor, I think it would not be too long before a couple of things would happen. And this is what they are in no particular order. Firstly, many governments may conclude that there is now little legal basis for allowing ICANN to continue managing chunks of what they consider their national Internet segments, which does not only include their own ccTLD domain space, but also other aspects. Secondly, the US government might try to resume control of IANA, or at least the root zone key signing key rollover process. And this might also trigger a crisis within the DNSSEC chain of trust and the root zone operators overall. Thirdly, with the fragmentation of the root, eminent governments might be forced to consider the possibility of a new ICANN key signing. consider a new treaty to manage the Internet along the lines of what the Russian CIS communications agency suggested some months ago, in which a solid block of BRIC states has been arguing ever since the Code of Conduct was published, or even since 1999 with the first UN resolution on the topic. And if it all really goes that far, who’s to think that the Europeans will be happy to still back the US side on this argument? And also, if it really goes that far, or if it doesn’t go that far, and if we only have to worry about the old argument of effectively the Western free Internet society versus the rest, which is already bad enough, the pressure on Europe as it is right now might become too strong to effectively consider a different model to what they might consider a suddenly hostile American tech landscape. And the only way that could effectively placate European concerns in this regard, say a new or dual incorporation of ICANN, is probably unthinkable for the Trump administration as well. So we would have a complete fragmentation of basically this Western position. All this is extremely doom and gloom, and I think is unlikely to happen. And I think the overall compromise in the current WSIS is much more likely than some kind of failure, even if that might come down to looking at the link between WSIS and SDGs. One option is not to simply renounce the SDGs, but to commit to what Wolfgang Kleinvechter called the digital development goals as an additional thing to consider. This might be a small price to pay for keeping the WSIS consensus alive, but it might take probably until WSIS plus 22 to accomplish. So thank you.

Jyoti Panday: Thanks Alexander. Bari?

Pari Esfandiari: Thank you very much, Jyoti and Alexandra. So I want to step back and look at it from the distance. And I think the question of WSIS’ end is timely, but perhaps not the right one. A better question is… How can visas be reimagined to meet today’s realities? I don’t think visas should end, but I also don’t think it can continue unchanged. We shouldn’t keep it out of habit or nostalgia, nor should we abandon it just because the original context has shifted. Like technologies, institutions must adapt, and visas in terms of its broad ecosystemic, not just its historical documentation, is more relevant than ever, if we are willing to reimagine it. So Antonio Gramsci famously said, the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. That captures our moment. The optimism of early 2000 has faded, digital governance is in flux. We are seeing power concentrated in dominant platforms, behind closed systems, and in states motivated by authoritarian thinking, a desire for control, national security, and privacy concerns, and growing push for digital sovereignty. Legacy frameworks like visas are under pressure from AI, platform dominance, fragmented infrastructure, and geopolitical. you you you you you you privacy concerns and growing push for digital sovereignty Legacy frameworks like WSIS are under pressure from AI, platform dominance, fragmented infrastructure, and geopolitical challenges.

William Drake: In the TUNIS agenda having worked out, if we hadn’t reached an agreement on internet governance, and yes, I’m an internet governance guy, and it was the most important thing to me, for sure. But I’m not the world. The world is big. The world has 193 countries. And the UN General Assembly mandated WSIS, and mandates matter in the UN, to do a set of things. There are 11 action lines that are all involving 39 different UN entities and processes, each of which has a vast constellation of expert communities and NGOs and other actors that it works with on a variety of issues. If you only care about ICANN, then maybe you don’t care that the Food and Agricultural Organization is working on digitized agriculture in collaboration with lots of other different parties. Those that are involved in that do care. Maybe you don’t care that UNESCO is involved in open science and working with people on that. But there is a whole process there. So there’s a lot of people in the world who are involved in a lot of things other than ICANN. And there’s a mandate for them to continue to work on those things. And that’s not going to stop because we in GIGNET have a panel and say it should stop. Thank you.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, Bill, for those statements. Avri?

Avri Doria: Thank you. I find myself in a curious situation. I can’t think of a single word Bill said that I would disagree with. But no, it was actually a pleasure. But I want to go further because what we were asked, other than in some sense a silly question, was also a normative question. Should it end? Now, I personally think that WSIS has nothing to do with ICANN. They’re sort of coincidental along the same path. They marched along the same path for a while, and then they diverged. As Bill said, it has lots of other uses. Now, I am not sure that all those purposes are actually being met. I am not sure that all those programs are as effective as they should be, are working in the right direction, that their development goals are appropriate for today and not for yesterday. So, for me to say that all those programs should continue unabated would be as wrong as asking, should WSIS end? And what I really think is required is very much a reimagining, a reshaping, as was said, was let’s go through WSIS. Let’s go through the action lines. Let’s go through the programs, find out which are effective, find out which aren’t, continue those that are effective, fix those or replace those that aren’t. Some of them may no longer be necessary. I certainly have not done that. So that is, you know, perhaps there is a positive answer to should it end. If you do that analysis and you find out nothing is achieving its purposes, nothing is getting done other than applying a bunch of bureaucrats, then sure, maybe the answer will come down to end, yes, at the very end of the discussion. But if you find that it is still a value in developing economies, it is still a value in terms of the action irons and getting them working, then the answer would be no, because you would immediately have to replace it with something new. So, in my view, it’s analyze, fix, repair, get rid of what’s not worth keeping, and improve what is worth keeping. I guess that’s where I’ll stop.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, Avri. Milton? All right, so, thank you all for participating in this discussion.

Milton L Mueller: I think this is exactly what GigaNet can bring to the IGF, is informed scholars, and we certainly have to respect the fact, particularly with the case of Bill and Avri, that they were on the working group of internet governance that was charged with defining it. I have to say, I disagree with Bill that WSIS is a lot more than ICANN. The United Nations has come up with various kinds of initiatives on various kinds of technological things over the last 30 or 40 years, and none of them really amount to much, because multilateral institutions simply are not what develops the digital economy anymore, if they ever did. So, fundamentally, the reason we all converged around WSIS was precisely because of internet governance, because the problem was new, and because we wanted to establish new forms of governance around the internet. Now, I really have to sharply disagree with, that’s for Avri, right? So, I get her extra time. Sharply disagree with Alex, that the consequences of ending WSIS would be serious. He says, for example, without WSIS, there would be no legal basis for ICANN. I’m sorry, but WSIS is a political document. It is not a legal document. There’s no legal basis for ICANN or anything else in WSIS. There’s nothing in WSIS that legitimizes ICANN and IANA. That is, in fact, the whole point of the first 10 years of WSIS was to delegitimize ICANN and to see whether it could be incorporated into the intergovernmental system. And the reason most of us entered into this process at that time was precisely to defend the model of governance by non-state actors. So I don’t think that that’s a good reason not to end WSIS, that it has anything to do. I think ICANN and IANA have survived this process. They have established themselves as a legitimate form of governance, and that what we need to be doing, really, is extending and developing that. ICANN has a lot of problems that we are kind of ignoring, and they are allowed to sort of wave the flag of a UN takeover or multilateral threats to avoid dealing with their own problems. I think in our paper, we outline different ways forward, and the thing I’d like to emphasize the most is the significance of global trade relationships for the future of Internet governance as well as digital governance generally. I think you’d have to take the TikTok controversy, or perhaps even before that, the Huawei controversy, as a paradigm of where Internet governance has gone starting around 2017, 2018. Essentially, we have the two largest digital ecosystems on the planet, the Chinese and the American, fragmenting and deliberately decoupling from each other and erecting barriers to each other, all on the basis of national security, and I don’t think the WSIS framework addresses that. I don’t think it provides any basis for addressing that. WSIS is all about development, the sustainable development goals. Those kinds of things, but fundamentally, what’s driving development or non-development or undevelopment this day is, in fact, this clash over geopolitics and this assertion of digital sovereignty, which is really a reversion, a reaction against the Internet. So when the Europeans talk about digital sovereignty, they’re saying, we don’t really want to have a global Internet community and a global Internet technology. We want to have our own. And of course, the Chinese are saying that, and the Americans are starting to say that. This is the fundamental problem of digital governments that we need to start dealing with. And I just view the World Summit as a distraction, as a diversion of all of the energy that we should be devoting to developing new forms of governance that deal with that fundamental problem into channels which are very comfortable, but really not affecting anything, not really doing anything. So I’ll leave it at that, and may the debate begin.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, everyone, for your very objective and smart takes on this very important question. Bill, you talked about WSIS not being about ICANN, but more about digital transformation and development. And Alexander, you also talked about how the overall compromise of WSIS evolving could look for connections with the broader development agenda as captured through the SDG process. But can the WSIS process, the way it is functioning today, survive the potential crisis in Western democracies and the lack of consensus on multi-stakeholder mechanism? We see U.S. kind of receding from these multilateral institutions, et cetera. How is WSIS supposed to take up this challenge? And what forms do you think it should evolve into? The questions are open to anyone. Yes, I think it could, but only if it evolves beyond the West-centric architecture that initially supported it.

Pari Esfandiari: The geopolitical consensus that once underpinned multi-stakeholderism is under strain, we know from national agendas, techno-authoritarian, declining institutional trust. But WISE’s legitimacy doesn’t rest solely on the global North. It rests on the ability to convene diverse actors and institutional pluralism. So its survival depends on its renewal. That means decentralizing leadership, deepening regional engagement, and ensuring that governance is grounded in shared, not imposed values.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, Pari. Thank you.

Alexander Klimberg: I’m just going to quickly also just comment on what Milton said before, because I actually didn’t say that WISE’s, and that’s why I wrote the note down, that actually WISE’s somehow created ICANN or legitimized the model. But it has, I literally said, it also plays an indirect role in legitimizing ICANN management of the internet domain space, namespace, as well as IANA writ large. The reason why I say that, because it says clearly in Article 55 and also 62, it makes mentions to the day-to-day management. And day-to-day management was shorthand for ICANN at that time. And that was part of the whole idea of Tunis was, and this is where we all agree, is to protect it. And therefore, in my opinion, if you remove that protection, although, again, I agree with everyone else here, that would require an act of brute force, then the question is what happens next. So I want to make that clear on the record.

Jyoti Panday: Thanks. Avri? Thanks.

Avri Doria: I guess there was a couple of things I wanted to look at, and I wanted to sort of build on what Pari said. It’s, I actually believe that whatever there are of multi-stakeholder models is what can actually keep WSIS running. Because as we, I mean, not only is democracy still a baby that’s under attack, you know, the multi-stakeholder model as a form of democracy is even newer and is still forming itself. And of course it’s under attack, and it’s always going to be under attack. But it probably can patiently persevere. And it’s that kind of motion, it’s the people in the various countries that say, no, I need what the WSIS programs, the SDGs bring us. We have to keep working on that. That is actually the force that, so as opposed to it being, there is no multi-stakeholder and the multi-stakeholder will disappear. You know, people keep going back to ICANN. I think that’s kind of like an old chestnut. ICANN has its problems. ICANN has a really clever model for combining top-down business and bottom-up multi-stakeholder policy, one model that we actually haven’t dove deep enough yet to understand. But it’s irrelevant to the notion of SDGs. It’s irrelevant to the notion of the needs that need to be met that can only be met, I think, as some say, by industry, not by, you know, a unilateral or multilateral forces, but by a very extensive multi-stakeholder push to sort of get things done in the ways they can be done in the places where it works. And it takes a variety of models and ways to do it. So I believe when, I think the only way to kill WSIS is to leave it as it is and ignore it. But if you really want to kill it, you know, you can’t do anything.

Jyoti Panday: What you got to do is preserve it because we really do need, countries do need, that incentive, that ability to find their path to the development goals. Thanks. Thank you for that very poignant statement that the only way to kill this is to ignore and not help it evolve. Bill, do you want to come in quickly? Do I have to do it quickly? Preferably, but we have time. We’re good on time. Can I have as long as everybody else? Yes.

William Drake: Okay, good, thanks. So if the question is can it survive the collapse of Western democracy and so on, what’s the relationship? The United Nations General Assembly is going to adopt a statement saying, okay, the WSIS process, we’ve reviewed it 20 years, and now it goes on to the next stages. These things could go on fumes. I mean, the process can evolve regardless of what happens in the United States with Trump or other kinds of things. Doesn’t mean that they’ll be effective necessarily. If the Trump administration decides to cut all the budget for the 22% of the UN budget that it pays down to nothing and enfeebles a lot of UN processes, obviously that affects everything, not just WSIS. That affects the FAO, that affects, I mean, every organization, every set of processes. So WSIS is not in a uniquely endangered position because of what’s going on in the West. But more generally, I just want to come back to Milton’s kind of point that all the stuff that’s going on in the digital world that’s important is not being decided through these UN processes. That may well be true. We’re not solving the conflict between the United States and China in the United Nations. That doesn’t mean that what the United Nations is doing doesn’t matter to anybody. It’s still involved in a lot of stuff, issues that maybe you don’t follow or care about. But global digital divide issues are huge for developing countries. They spend an enormous amount of time and energy in the ITU, in UNESCO, and all these other bodies working on all these kinds of questions. There’s big ongoing work programs around them, and these are important things that you know They might be not not be top of our personal agendas But there there’s a bigger world out there and the same is true with all these other aspects So I just think we have to recognize Let’s be where be beware of false binaries either Important stuff is going on or you know the UN is irrelevant. That’s those are not the only choices

Milton L Mueller: Yeah Yeah, I’m really again going to perhaps make everybody mad at me by challenging this notion that the United Nations multilateral processes have anything serious to do about economic development in the digital economy I mean, let’s wake up folks we We in our paper we described the fate of the digital Solidarity Fund, right? that was the other big part of WSIS and what was that well it was a tenuous corrupt bureaucracy that raised six million dollars Which is about one one hundredth of a percent of the amount of capital you need to actually start building networks in the developing world and in fact in the interim between the time of the so-called digital Solidarity Fund and Today there has been enormous Economic development in the developing world and where does it come from it’s come from fundamentally from liberals eyes liberalizing capital flows and investment and the telecommunications industry and that is how continents, you know have Gone from you know, one percent penetration of their infrastructure to 50 60 70 sometimes 80 percent And I think the same is true about the application layer about software and those generative models that development is is I mean does anybody really believe that the United Nations is going to somehow facilitate the development of expertise in software and artificial intelligence in developing countries. I think maybe perhaps as some form of knowledge exchange, which the IGF, you know, facilitates and we support the continuation of the IGF, but, you know, if you’re talking about economic development of the digital economy, it’s not going to come from multilateral institutions. Let’s just be realistic about that.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, everyone, for your thought-provoking ideas and statements. We’re talking a lot about the multi-stakeholder model and how it’s achieved so much, and so now maybe we should reflect on how has WSIS been successful in redistributing power meaningfully among stakeholders? What has been WSIS’s legacy for bridging the global digital divide or for global south equity? I mean, if there are any great examples, I think this is the time that, you know, you can bring it up, and Bill, I would want you to start here because you are very optimistic and we want to share your optimism.

William Drake: I’m not necessarily optimistic. I’m simply saying that in the real world, there’s a lot of activity, and this activity that lots of actors are engaged in that makes some difference on the ground, and that’s why these things continue to develop. I hate talking with these things. You know, I’m not saying the United Nations solves all problems. I’m not saying the United Nations is the central player in global digital economic development. I’m saying that it plays a role, especially in environments where the market, sorry Milton, does not solve everything. If you’re a Tanzanian villager, liberalization of telecom in 1995 may not solve all the issues you have with respect to digital inclusion, but when UNDP, which actually exists and spends billions of dollars on the ground. in developing countries and all the other programs that are associated with UNDP and the World Bank and all the regional development banks and all the other apparatus goes out there and does stuff to try to provide resources and expertise and knowledge transfer and everything else. It can make differences on the ground and they may not be things that you and I pay attention to. But that doesn’t mean that they’re irrelevant to those people who live there. I think it’s just… we can’t just look at this from the top down. We have to look at all these processes from the bottom up. And what WSIS is doing, I mean, it’s not just a question of multilateral organizations. WSIS created a overarching holistic framework for thinking about global information society issues and for justifying the continuation of actions within a larger framework. And it establishes a framework that the United Nations is continually then going back and doing reality checks and saying, how’s this going? How’s implementation? By what metrics and so on. And there’s mechanisms that have been put in place for that. And it just sounds to me like you’ve mapped all of that out of your consciousness as things that are going on. But they are, I encourage you to pay attention to what goes on within multilateral organizations as well as I can. Because within multilateral organizations, there are lots of people

Milton L Mueller: doing lots of things, lots of activity, and some of it does matter. I think I need to answer that. So, OK, the UNDP does not rely on the World Summit for its existence. And its funding does not rely. So sure, if there are aid agencies in the United Nations that want to support telecommunications or digital development, what’s stopping them with or without WSIS? I don’t see the contribution. And furthermore, if there is this constant monitoring process, where are the results? Why can’t you point to specific? accomplishments that are coming out of these WSIS reviews in which we say, oh, here’s how we increased telecommunications access in Tanzania by 10 percent because of WSIS. Abri? Okay. Sorry, but I don’t have your tangible proof. And so I guess I’m actually the optimist on this panel, and the one that actually makes almost a standard of faith, just like I believe in democracy, even though it fails constantly, and just like I believe in the multistakeholder.

Avri Doria: I personally don’t believe in the U.N. a whole bunch. And I think probably in agreement with Milton, I think multilateral is problematic, and therefore want to see more of those programs become more multistakeholder, include more of the stakeholders on the ground in making them work, and not so far as the sovereignty notion, but just the participatory notion, and that that is as opposed to, you know, sort of saying, well, we have UNDP and it can do it all, then it’s a central, then it’s a top-down. It’s the WSIS that opens up the possibility of making it at the ground level be something that can be participatory by the people who would gain from it, and therefore, again, an act of faith, you know, multistakeholder is a baby of 20 in a world of thousands. So the fact that I have faith that this baby will grow up and be useful, I think I’ve seen little pieces, I didn’t do the work to come up with a list of facts and figures, but I’m willing to bet, you know, at least at dinner, that there are those factors that probably people out there could probably even quote at us, the people that work constantly within WSIS within these action lines who have dedicated their lives to them, and maybe Parry will have some. But really, I don’t believe in the multilateral system. I think that much is probably plain from almost anything I’ve ever said or written. It’s what we’ve got, we’ve gotta cope with it, but I do believe we need to, and I use the word infect, infect it with multi-stakeholder model,

Jyoti Panday: and eventually replace it with multi-stakeholder models of various kinds. Thanks. Parry, if I may put you on the spot, the regional IGFs, the kind of efforts that are stemming from WSIS that impact Global South, from the top of your experience, what has worked in the WSIS process so far?

Pari Esfandiari: First of all, I think that it’s such a tall order to expect WSIS to resolve all the power distribution entirely, but we shouldn’t forget that while WSIS hasn’t managed to redistribute power entirely, which is, as I said, it’s tall order, but it has, for the, WSIS was the first forum to formally recognize the participation of Global South, not as a aid recipient, but as a governance actor. I think that was a big achievement that we shouldn’t undermine. Its legacy, in my opinion, lies in institutionalizing inclusion, even if it’s imperfect. So, but inclusion must lead to influence, I agree. That’s where the next phase, I believe, lies. So, true equity requires WSIS to move beyond representation towards structural reform, linking capacity building with agenda setting. and ensuring that Southern voices shape not just discussions, but decisions. Equity is not legacy, it’s a continuing obligation. So I think WSIS has achieved a lot, but it needs now to go further.

Alexander Klimberg: And we are on that moment. Thank you. Yes, I also don’t feel capable in being able to do a sum total accounting of the contribution of WSIS to alleviating global poverty, or overseas development aid, or anything similar along those lines. But I do have an hypothesis that effectively, and I agree with Avery very much here, that I think WSIS plays a key role in helping drive the notion of a multi-stakeholderism, and as well as the importance, indirectly, of the Internet community. And that, in turn, has other follow-on effects that are incredibly important. I, for instance, find it very difficult to imagine the Diana transition, which obviously was also due to the political circumstances of the Snowden revelations, and similar, would have been conceivable even within the US government space without this longer-lasting narrative of a multi-stakeholder model that was effectively driven through the WSIS process. And for me, that’s already one example of why it might be a good thing to keep continuing, because I also believe that it is an evolution of democracy to continue in the multi-stakeholder model. And therefore, that building on WSIS is the best way to keep it alive. And I also agree, therefore, that leaving it static would be a good way to kill it. So the emerging consensus is that we don’t kill WSIS, but it needs to evolve.

Jyoti Panday: And that leads me to my last question for the panel before we open up the panel to the audience. What happens if WSIS actually fails to reform? We are seeing parallel competing initiatives like the GDC. We are seeing digital trade, you know, a lot of these. very high-stake technology development is happening through bilateral agreements. There is a whole multilateral trade crisis that countries are also grappling with. There are sovereignty claims. Where do these issues go if the WSIS process doesn’t reform enough to take on these contested issues and how can WSIS actually evolve in a way because we’ve been dealing with this question for many many years that you know is it like It’s supposed to be about cooperation, but it really can’t pick up any serious issues because we don’t want to ruffle feathers So what does this reform really look like? Avri, would you like to begin?

Avri Doria: Sure, I guess the first thing is ruffle feathers Basically The thesis I would have is that anything that is run by the UN is going to have many failure modes and basically, you know that the UN is actually fairly good I think at Initiating things at getting a bunch of people together and say go forth and do But once it says that go forth and do it should pull back and and ten years later come back and say so How did you do and actually have a good? methodology for reviewing for and others if the UN could could sort of center itself on on Having ideas sending them forward and then being able to actually analyze the results Then it may actually be useful because it does get a global picture. It does You know create a space like the IGF where lots of people can come together and and and you know spout off Their views of things give their opinions, but it doesn’t do a very good job of doing anything and and and so My my view of getting WSIS to work is sort of pulling the UN back and moving forward with various multi-stakeholder type of initiatives that can actually get the work done.

Jyoti Panday: Bill, in the earlier panel, we had some of the same discussions, should WSIS do something or is it just a very important forum for convening different stakeholders, different ideas, and doing something would negate that? What do you think?

William Drake: I think we need to be realistic about WSIS. It can’t both be an ineffective, irrelevant thing and a too big albatross on the world thing. It’s obviously somewhere in between, okay? The WSIS is just a process by and large on an ongoing basis of coordination among different programs. Through the UNGIS, you’ve got 39 different bodies that are coordinating and sharing information and checking against each other and saying, what’s going on with this, how are you doing that, et cetera under a holistic rubric that tries to tie together initiatives in different places to try to increase their coherence and so on. That’s just an ongoing institutional process. It’s not something that can solve the world’s problems. Now, there are questions, of course, obviously, what’s gonna happen with this review and what will the General Assembly agree to? What should it agree to? I mean, I certainly hope that the review process is not gonna get bogged down in re-litigating internet governance, that we’re not gonna be getting enhanced cooperation out the wazoo again. I mean, that would be a complete waste of time, obviously. I think efforts to try to get bold new initiatives, I mean, there are civil society coalitions that are demanding global justice and we should redistribute income and establish new global mechanisms for, all that stuff’s not gonna happen. The geopolitical conditions to do big, bold things through the WSIS process are just not there. The most we can do is reaffirm the TUDIS agenda and its fundamental lines. Try to maybe do some procedural reforms to increase multi-stakeholder participation in things like the CSTD implementation process, etc., and try to maybe fold some of the new areas where people want work done, AI, data, things like that, into the existing action lines given the budgetary resources, which are very, very limited. No big new pronouncements. No big new negotiations. Because it’s just not going to work.

Pari Esfandiari: Marie, is reaffirming the agenda enough or do we need more? I think we need more. I do support some degree of independence between IGF and WSIS. I think that would be helpful. But however, I don’t think that we need to get rid of WSIS for IGF to be completely independent. So I think they have different roles, they’re complementary roles, but I would support some degree of independence because I think that would help it to be more innovative and more experimental, where WSIS is a more connected layer and it could continue that role. But without WSIS, I think IGF would lose its legitimacy and influence. I think it’s good to focus on WSIS, try to increase its influence and impact. There are some imperfections within the participatory side, so those needs to be worked. But generally, yes, I support what has been said, that it needs to evolve, but WSIS certainly should continue.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you. Milton, is IGF independence actually a necessary evolution or an existential risk?

Milton L Mueller: I think it’s definitely a necessary evolution. I believe that one of the reasons to end WSIS is to make the IGF independent or more independent of the multilateral process. and essentially make it as freestanding. It’s good to have this nexus with governments and the multilateral system, but the degree to which the IGF has become kind of hierarchicalized and turned into something that is dominated by states, I don’t know how many of you were here for the early days of the IGF, but the atmosphere is so different now. You have separate tracks for parliamentarians, you have the MAG sort of half governmental and half the rest. When we talk about renewing WSIS or reaffirming WSIS, I would invite you to read the key phrases of WSIS about, you know, governments have sovereign rights to make policy and the rest of you are kind of, you’re doing operational stuff or you’re, you know, read the role of civil society in the Tunis agenda. It’s not even, there isn’t even a role there. It’s just like it’s important, but we don’t know what your role is. I mean, why would we want to reaffirm that? What is it that we are salvaging by reaffirming an agenda that was a political compromise between hardcore sovereigntists 25 years ago and advocates of governance by non-state actors? I just think we need to realize that that phase is over and let’s move on.

Jyoti Panday: Alexander, how is WSIS navigating geopolitical tensions, sovereignty challenges, are all of these parliamentarian tracks the future of WSIS?

Alexander Klimberg: So my reading of Tunis document is that there’s very much differentiation between public policy where the sovereign rights of states was underlined multiple times and basically the technical internet governance layer, as it were, which is effectively left to the private sector and civil society. And that is, in my opinion, pretty clear there, which is why Wolfgang Kleinwechter’s definition on the internet and of the internet is pretty helpful. So, which also leads me to underline which is protection of that role, which I think it does and it does quite well, but also to what IGF maybe should also consider doing. And this is where I think we should be careful about having too many different types of topics integrated into IGF. I don’t think it’s necessary to deal with all quantum related issues or even all AI related issues or even lethal autonomous weapon systems within IGF. I’m mostly part of the so-called cyber policy world and there we deal with those issues in the UN group of government experts and open-ended working group and other issues. Those are perfectly good bodies for that. And indeed, when we look back to the first draft of the digital compact, I mean, there was this idea of a digital cooperation forum that would have basically replaced the IGF completely. I mean, that was one of the first ideas or at least slides that are being floating about. And obviously that’s come quite a long ways. The GDC had a very difficult birth. It was a very top-down policy initiative and the multi-stakeholder language was very much watered down at the beginning and it took a lot of effort to get it back in there. But I also think that’s a perfectly decent space to deal with many of the issues that maybe would distract from the Tunis document and basically this agreement that we have that yes, public policy, absolutely, sovereign rights of states. But certain things that are related to the road itself, not behavior on the road, that should be left to the internet community.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, everyone. Hopefully our provocation has worked and the audience has many questions. We’ll take them now if we could have a show of hands. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Wolfgang Kleinwachter: My name is Wolfgang Kleinwächter. I’m an academic from the University of Aarhus. If we would close with this, the problems would not disappear. We would have digital divide, digital economy, human rights in the digital age. all this on the table. If we would close the annual COP conferences, climate change would not disappear. So that means you need an alternative process. So if I think Milton’s argument to close WSIS and when he said what the WSIS process has produced to the end, then you reach a point where you say, okay, leave everything in the hand of the private sector. The rest will be managed by a battle between the government of the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America. And the rest of the world doesn’t matter. So I think this is more or less not what the majority in the world wants to see. So probably this is the reality. It’s very close to the reality, unfortunately. So we see the tech oligarchs and we see the geopolitical battle. But to have this mix of multilateral and multistakeholder mechanisms is more or less an alternative and has some potential. So this is not the solution to the problem. We should not overestimate what the WSIS process can produce. But it is a very additional instrumental channel and to manage certain problems in the right direction. That’s why I fully support when Bill argues it’s a process. It’s not one event or the IGF also was not one annual conference. It’s a process.

Jyoti Panday: And if I understand this, then I’m in favor for WSIS plus 30 and probably also for WSIS plus 40. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I’ll take one online question. It’s from Sivabrahmanyan Muthuswamy. He’s asking if the internet barriers between geographies get firmly established, how would America sell motor cars to China? through the post office and AT&T? I’m not sure what the question here is, but I’m obliged to read it. I will use my moderator’s, Jamal, why don’t you go ahead first?

Audience: Thanks, I’m really enjoying this discussion. And as a cranky old Belgian, I’d like to add a bit of support to the discussion around the idea that this is a process. For me, this is an experiment, and Rome was not built in a day, that’s what they say, and the internet governance space will not be, the governance mechanisms will not be designed in 20 or 50 years, this is a big thing, and there’s a lot of tensions that are fighting in different ways. My question to the panel is more about expectations of all of the stakeholders that are involved. What I’m hearing is that many people see these different spaces as being able to achieve different things, and I’m wondering if you could reflect on what expectations do you think have been set by these different actors, that the states will be able to still be states, and that the civil society will still be able to be global civil society, but they might have some impact, they might have impact through states, what are the expectations of all these different actors that are in this space, and do they think that they’ll be able to suddenly become global governance rule makers without actually thinking about all of those different types of expectations that are being put in this pot, whether you’re talking about WSIS, the IGF, or other spaces? That’s a bit the question. I don’t know if it’s a question, but hopefully it’s something to think about, and cover. Thank you, Jamal. I’ll also add my question to the pile, which is, like Alexander, you talked about that there is multi-stakeholder cooperation happening around cybersecurity, around content moderation.

Jyoti Panday: multi-stakeholder as a model is not tied to WSIS and IGF and if these alternate forums have actually grown and evolved around certain specific issues then should we look at other alternate models where this kind of convening could happen or should we put all our eggs in the same basket which is WSIS and IGF and is this part of the evolution of IGF where it doesn’t diminish its role it continues not really ruffling feathers but there are other venues that are you know willing to ruffle feathers more and are also multi-stakeholder and we should create the space for them yes the question the panelists can go in any

Alexander Klimberg: order they like Alexander thank you for those excellent questions especially the way what actors might perceive they might want to require from this I think is interesting I think it comes back to where if you look in political science where multi-stakeholder is located it’s very often assigned to deliberative democracy models not consultative democracy so when you look at people that come up and say IGF needs to be decision-making organization because if you don’t make decision if it’s not legally binding it means nothing and that is the opposite philosophical model of what deliberative democracy basically means which is just by talking about something you’re part of decision-making process even if you don’t have the final vote you can disagree with it but it’s it is an outlook and it is a view and essentially I would think many people say that IGF fulfilled that obligation fulfilled that mission over the past so by simply having con topics to discuss and circling topics and providing a sounding board for ideas fulfilled a certain important function you have on in the previous session basically aired that governments don’t come to the IGF as much because they’re not getting the answers that they they want and some of the feedback on that was well maybe they should go someplace else to solve their operational issues And I think there’s two different discussions there. It’s not that they come here to have necessarily or they should come here to have operational issues solved, but they come here to get ideas on the bigger topics or understand questions from other constituents they don’t normally talk to and similar. And that was my understanding of what the IGF was supposed to be from the beginning, was really an information exchange platform. And I do think that this job has been sufficiently fulfilled in the past. The danger that I also heard from the previous panel was that there were actually a number of new actors, perhaps, or people who want to apply to be heard here and to speak and who don’t get the chance to do so. And I think that partially might lead to a question of redimensioning the IGF around maybe more tightly oriented topics or with a more structure to make it more bottom up, but certainly to change it slightly to make it more responsive to the needs of some constituents who feel like they haven’t been heard. And I don’t mean single individual. I don’t mean civil society organizations necessarily or the Global South overall. I mean individuals who feel they make submissions three, four times and don’t have a chance to speak. And I think that process alone of involving those individuals in the topic also helps in the discussion, helps effectively lower the pressure on the entire discussion around the role of technology and political systems and, in my preference, the role of technology and democracy, because without these voices being able to communicate their frustrations or their concerns or also where they think the technology is developing, I think we end up staying in the silos that we are all basically trapped in by virtue of how busy we are and can’t get out. So IGF, being at IGF, for me, I consider myself a tourist internet governance space. This is my chance to get out of the cybersecurity bubble and hear interesting things. I wish more people from internet governance would go to the cybersecurity bubbles and listen to what they’re talking about. But essentially, until that happens, Internet Governance Forum is a good place for us to meet.

Jyoti Panday: Thanks. Thanks, Milton. Yeah, so I see the IGF conversation melding into the WSIS conversation.

Milton L Mueller: I think that’s one of the more interesting questions that we’ve raised here is what would it mean for the IGF if the WSIS was ended? And I believe that… If the UN General Assembly says, can obtain consensus on we’re going to stop WSIS and we’re going to continue the IGF, then that would mean that IGF would not be diminished, would not be delegitimated, and we could continue working on that. Of course, I would like to see whatever reform, and I think if there is a consensus on this panel, it is that WSIS cannot stand pat. It has to be reformed and improved in some way. So I think that’s progress. But if it is going to be reformed, then what direction is it going to take? And I agree with Alex that the IGF should not be a decision-making forum, that it should be completely equal status, multi-stakeholder, and go back to that ideal, and that it’s okay to be anchored in the UN as long as that doesn’t mean it becomes state-dominated. But I think the people who want to continue WSIS have sort of an obligation to tell us exactly what this reform is and how feasible it is if it is going to be reformed. I just haven’t heard any coherent ideas about that, frankly. And so if you hate me, and by the way, somebody in the Secretariat told me that everybody on the leadership panel hates me because of our article calling for the end of WSIS, which I found amusing, and I think none of them are in the audience. So our leaders are not leading and are not listening. But if you really are outraged by this call for ending WSIS, then tell us what we’re going to do that’s going to make things better. Tell us how we’re going to reform WSIS and make it a coherent and politically feasible

William Drake: idea. because the world’s governments are going to do what they’re going to do and they don’t care what we’re saying. So the WSIS process will happen. They will adopt a statement and the processes will continue. I just want to flag two things real quick. One, the IGF thing. I think IGF should get a permanent mandate. I mean, that would give it a lot of independence. It would increase our ability to actually take on controversial issues if people weren’t always terrified that the IGF is going to lose its political support. Remember in 2007, we couldn’t talk about critical internet resources. Now we can’t talk about this and we can’t talk about that. I mean, there’s so many issues that become verboten because we’re terrified that some governments will object and the UN will pull the rug out from under us. So we need to make the IGF more independent if we can. But the problem is, I think realistically, governments are not going to agree to do that unless they get something in return. And that could mean like more enhanced cooperation stuff. We could have a whole new trajectory of work. The G77 in China are pushing that. We’ll see what happens. That would be, I think, a big waste of time. We could agree on that. Last point I just want to flag, because this is an academic meeting. Part of the question, I think, in thinking about WSIS, sometimes people talk about WSIS and they dismiss it because it’s a non-binding kind of normative type of thing. There’s a sort of difference between rational choice-based theory and constructivist type theories in the way we think about these things. I tend to come from a more constructivist side. I look at this process and I say that the WSIS contributed greatly to institutionalization at the global level of internet governance and digital governance issues around the world. All around the world you saw governments and NGOs and others build up capacities, build up resources, et cetera, around this stuff that didn’t exist before 2003, 2005. There was collective learning. as we all adjusted to each other and learned about these issues conceptually constituted a space. All that happened through WSIS. And if WSIS can somehow continue to be vibrant in that regard, if somehow we could have a process under WSIS that would look to the future, try to think about digital environment, the relationship between Internet governance and digital governance, things like that, it could be really useful. Unfortunately, I don’t see governments having the vision to do that. I think we’re all, we’re in hunkered down mode, the budgets are collapsing, the geopolitical conflicts are increasing. It’s going to be a miracle if the WSIS process just gets through the UN General Assembly and we adopt the text. So this is not the time probably for bold revisioning, but you’d like to think that if the thing continues that there’d be some way to leverage it, that we could find some way to use it and leverage it to expand that aspect. I’ll stop. No bold reimagining, incremental improvements.

Jyoti Panday: Avri, you agree?

Avri Doria: I’m not sure that I agree with doing nothing bold. I find it hard to say no, no, but what I really wanted to say is I think that there is a big role for discussion of further separation of IGF from WSIS. That dependency should eventually disappear. IGF should have a long life, should be more independent. In other words, it really should be multi-stakeholder all the way up to the top. It should not be a top-down UN unto the multi-stakeholders, but rather it should really become what it was meant to be, a multi-stakeholder organization, and that means initiation does not mean ruling. And if we can get just that notion across, that just because you start something doesn’t mean you get to control it for all eternity. and to the point of, we really want the IGF to be multi-stakeholder, not UN-run. UN participating, but not UN-run.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you, Avery. Pari?

Pari Esfandiari: Thank you. I think we underestimate the achievement of visas and IGF. I think IGF has achieved a lot. It brought a lot of conversation to the fore and has changed the context. It’s a place where discussions take place. And then it starts to evolve in other spaces, as we have seen. So visas itself, it has been, in my opinion, beyond its original mandate, which it has achieved. It’s also achieved a lot of, it has a lot of achievement. So I think we shouldn’t underestimate the achievement so far. But yes, there is need for evolution, for it to evolve and influence more. In terms of IGF and visas separation, as I said, I, to some degree, support the independence of IGF, but I don’t think they should be completely separated. I think they serve different functions. One is experimental, the other one is connective. We need both innovation from IGF and a structure from visas to build a coherent and inclusive governance future. The risk isn’t IGF independence. It’s losing the anchoring framework that links it to broader digital cooperation. So this will weaken its influence in broader global policy dialogue. So to me, we’ve got to keep the connection, but some degree of independence I definitely support.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you. And with that, we’re over time. I would like to thank all my panelists for indulging in our provocation and bringing their thoughtful insights. Thank you for the audience for your participation and amazing questions and onwards to the next panel discussion. you

Nadia Tjahja: Hello everyone, my name is Nadia Chakhia from the United Nations University Institute for Comparative Regional Integration Studies. And it’s my pleasure to introduce the next presenter because their research is incredibly important to continue the discussion on stakeholder participation in internet governance processes. We started this afternoon with a discussion about whether WSIS should end. And where they discussed the past and the future, I want to talk about right now. Over the last few months, the Internet community has been discussing the WSIS modalities. In essence, how can stakeholders contribute to the discussions about the future of the Internet? And we’re just about to go into a new round of consultations. Therefore, this research is extremely timely in reflecting about how stakeholders were able to contribute in recent bottom-up and top-down processes. And what are the lessons learned to improve meaningful participation in Internet governance? I would like to give the floor to Jacqueline Bigato, who will be presenting the co-authored research on reframing Internet governance, the struggle of multistakeholderism in the face of multilateralism. Please.

Jaqueline Pigatto: Thank you so much, Nadia. And hi, everyone. It’s very nice to be here. I’m Dr. Jacqueline Bigato from Sao Paulo State University. Also representing my co-authors Mark Datzgeld and Laura Silva from the same institution. This is my first GigaNet Symposium, so I’m very honored to present this paper. Okay, so this paper follows up on a paper we published in 2021, in which we explored polarity in Internet governance. So, what we call the tripolar approach for Internet governance. We analyzed the models of US, European Union and China and their spheres of influence. And then, last year, we had a very interesting case that was the initial idea for this paper regarding two processes that happened on the same year, the NetMundial Plus 10 and the Global Digital Compact of the United Nations. So, these both processes spotlighted this growing tension between the multistakeholder and the multilateral model. And we did this brief analysis on the two processes in terms of consultation and participation. Oh, thank you. Sorry. And you will use this methodology, quantitative and qualitative analysis. OK, so we have some fundamental questions that we started to think for this paper. The first one is about a shift from bottom-up governance to a state-led multilateralism. This is a phenomenon that we’ve been observing for the last, I think, 10 years. And this brought up another question for us regarding the balance or the concepts of Internet governance and digital governance. Because 20 years ago when we were talking about WSIS so far, we talked a lot about Internet governance. But now we used to use the term digital governance. And we questioned if this would be a shift for this more multilateral approach, not just of the UN, but also other policy forums that are discussing digital governance as the G20, the G7, OECD, other international spaces, and of course the UN system in total. And the other question is how do state-led versus this community-led consultations unfold. So we started to question the role of the stakeholders and what makes their inputs matter. Especially because in the end of these two processes, neither of them was broadly accepted, we can say. NetMundial Plus10 had limited governmental participation and engagement, and the GDC sidelined no state actors in final phases of negotiations. So, for our theoretical framework, we had some assumptions based on literatures about what stakeholderism is, about being open, decentralized, non-binding, with participation from civil society, technical community, private sector, academia, and government. And of course, multilateralism being state-centric, more formal, with binding outcomes, with emphasis on issues such as national security and economic priorities. So we based our approach in the assumptions that multilateralism has more legitimacy through sovereignty related to traditional power, and that multistakeholderism, there’s this legitimacy through inclusivity in a model that everyone agrees. And of course, remembering the famous paper by Janet Hoffman about multistakeholder being a fiction put into practice. And then we have this legitimacy dilemma of inclusivity and enforceability. We also had this analytical lens of the tripolar approach to power within Internet governance, so competing legitimate interests with different designs to establish control. So the US with the technical sector and an infrastructure dominance, and this very market freedom approach. The EU with this normal setting, with transnational reach, very human-centric, human rights approach, more like regulatory, democratic way. And the Chinese sphere of influence that directed state supervision, with some predictability, very planned, and very proximity with the central governments and the private companies. We are not saying that every state agrees with the multilateral model per se. We have different views on how stakeholder engagement can happen. So this is why we thought this could be like a continuity of our previous paper. But also here on this one, we tried to… adds the Brazilian view as a global south leader that tries to bridge multistakeholderism and multilateralism. So, for our methodology, we analysed the submissions, basically, of the two processes, and we have some quantitative results here. In the case of NetMundial Plus10, we had more submissions from civil society, and for the GDC, we have more submissions by governments, but also an expressive participation from civil society in some processes that are totally different in terms of procedures and how this participation was enabled. So, here’s the comparative of the two processes. And then, I want to focus more on the discussion of our qualitative analysis. For stakeholder categories that are not coherent, that’s the first topic that we analysed about civil society, and even governments are often fragmented. So, for instance, in Brazil, we have different government bodies kind of disputing digital policy issues, and this calls for future research on the participation dynamics of these actors, of these stakeholders. The second point is that this governance crisis also mirrors broader democratic challenges that, as we’ve been discussing in the previous panel, because there’s a clear public demand for deeper civil society inclusion in global decision-making. So, this is not just on internet governance issues, but also in environmental issues, for instance. And on the third point, we have blurred lines between procedural and substantive issues. I believe there’s some kind of confusion, especially for new stakeholders that are Now, starting now to engage with these processes about what we are discussing, if this is a governance institutional approach to how we are dealing with these issues. So this is like mostly the discussion that we had on the previous panel on the WSIS Plus 20, also the Global Digital Compact and their relation, how these processes are connecting with each other. And also there’s another part of this discussion that is the substantive issues. So if you are talking about data protection, platform accountability, freedom of expression, innumerous topics. So I think there’s a discussion here, and I would like to hear from the audience about if there’s a consensus on the understanding of internet governance, if it’s more related to governance procedure, that actual topics of management and use of the internet. And if this is related to the other question that I made earlier about, we call it internet governance or digital governance. And of course, there’s the topic about the IGF that we are analyzing, if this is still a main stakeholder venue. Of course, there is this global consensus and recognition on the role of the IGF, but it lacks strong government participation to bridge this gap that exists between multistakeholder and multilateral processes. And the policy decisions continue to happen in closed state-led forums and not in this multistakeholder environment. Thank you very much for your presentation. I have one more just to finish. We have this point of institutional innovation that is crucial. So here we bring the role of the ODET, the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies, and these challenges of enabling this inclusive negotiation format. to oversee participatory and transparent implementation of the GDC. So, to finish, some of our recommendations are basically to develop a hybrid governance model and invest in more incapacity building for underrepresented groups. And the dialogue needs to be more dynamic if stakeholders are actually to keep pace with innovation and also to have enforcement decision-making. We have some future research directions that we’re going to discuss this, but in the sake of time, I’m going to finish and we can have the Q&A and maybe some of these questions and other questions. So, I can stop here. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Nadia Tjahja: The question has been raised to you, your ideas about Internet governance or digital governance. There’s also been a question about the consistency of understanding. Are there any questions or comments regarding this from the audience? I see Professor Muller, please take the floor. Just a question about your… Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.

Milton L Mueller: Your definition of multi-stakeholder, reading that carefully, I see that ICANN and the Regional Internet Registries would not qualify as multi-stakeholder organizations because they make binding decisions and their decision-making process is centralized. So, what would be the implications of that for your analysis?

Jaqueline Pigatto: Okay, thank you so much, Professor Muller. You’re absolutely right about ICANN being a multi-stakeholder model and have binding decisions. I think, actually, we misformulated that on the slides, but we are thinking that major multi-stakeholder processes are usually non-binding. And it’s more related to public policy issues of internet governance and not technical issues such as ICANN and other multi-stakeholder spaces that deals with that.

Milton L Mueller: Yeah, if I could intervene in that. I think ICANN does make public policy issues. I think that’s one of the things that came out of our last debate is that this idea that it’s just making technical decisions is completely wrong. I mean, everybody who’s involved in ICANN knows that when it makes a decision about who has the right to a name, when it resolves trademark domain name conflicts, when it requires the or does not require the publication of personal information for the who is, these are all public policy decisions. And the whole point of multi-stakeholder governance is that these policy decisions are made by non-state actors. And that’s, I think, that’s why I don’t like the term multi-stakeholder is because it confuses, you know, participation with decision-making authority. Anyway, I’ll shut up.

Jaqueline Pigatto: No, you’re absolutely right about this confusion of participation and decision-making. I think there is some confusion and this includes government actors about public policy issues that are more close to the final users of the Internet and these technical matters that are not so close. So now we are seeing this environment of digital governance discussing more issues of public policy that are close to the people, the final users. And this, I think, is where major discussions on multi-stakeholder or multilateral are happening. But yeah, I think we have a phase, we had a phase of discussing Internet governance with ICANN and in technical issues that is more consolidated. But this is not, we are not seeing the same thing for these new issues of public policy more close to the user.

Nadia Tjahja: Thank you very much. In the meantime, I would also like to encourage those who are online to leave your questions in the chat. We are very keen on having this conversation not only with the people in the room but people globally. It is also a discussion for you. In the meantime, I would like to ask Professor Shaheen, would you like to unmute yourself? Hi, I assume you can hear me because I can hear myself, so

Audience: that works. Thank you very much. It rolls on very nicely from the previous discussion that we had that Milton was part of, and I’d like to echo that kind of discussion around multilateral, multi-stakeholder, which is the main aim of your paper, with a comment and then there is a question behind it. Sorry, but I’ll try and be brief. It felt to me that in the descriptions that you put on the slides, at least, you were mixing up the who and the what, and that might already help you to think about when you’re talking about, you know, multilateral institutions or whatever, or multi-stakeholder institutions, you’re talking about a series of actors, but you’re also talking about what those actors do. It seemed to me to be a bit mixed in the paper, at least, and I’m wondering what you thought about that. I have two questions though, and they’re both related to the tripolar thing, which I understand was from a previous paper, but I’m going to come back to it if I’m allowed to. I find it interesting. I also find in a global setting, you know, the global discussions that we’re having right now, to focus on three main powers, if you like, and to say that everything is driven by these three powers is problematic. I would also like to say that the characterization of those is very difficult. It’s not as easy just to say China is an empire in the digital world, right? Particularly with the European Union perspective, that’s the one I’m most familiar with. You talk about the EU being human-centric. Well, actually, if humans are functioning elements of an economy, then it’s human-centric, right? But it’s not social human-centric, it’s more economic human-centric. So I’m thinking about things like that. And the question behind that is, in the tripolar model, can you think of maybe a quadripolar model, a pentapentamodel, you know, are there different, do you need to think in terms of poles, is the essential question. Do you really need to say there are three great powers and where does the UN fit into that or where does the global model fit into that? Thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, we can look back to the definitions

Jaqueline Pigatto: of stakeholder and multilateral actors that you mentioned, but I’m gonna answer the question of the tripolar approach. Yeah, I agree that it’s problematic to focus just on three models. This was like a study case that we did three years ago, four years ago. And we were trying to like map some different models of governance based on the state’s actor. So that’s, this is where the EU, China, United States were the actors most preeminent international space in general, and that’s why we started the analysis with this tree. But I think we have different models, like we could include like India, Russia, Brazil. And of course, Brazil, since we are Brazilians, we are more close to the model, but I think there’s a lot of proximity with the EU model in terms of a rights based approach for digital governance. And the question about the UN, I think it’s like a million dollar question because that’s what we’re trying to figure it out, especially this year with the business negotiations in the Global Digital Compact. I see that actors in general are trying to complement multilateralism with multistakeholderism, but we don’t know how to have an effective multistakeholderism, because we have these consultations like the UN did with the Global Digital Compact, that they listen to every stakeholder but in the end you have the negotiations close to state actors, and the same thing is happening right now with the negotiations for the AI Panel and the Global Dialogue that emerged from the GDC. So I think the challenge is to try to conciliate these demands of stakeholders with these final negotiations of states, and I think the ODET has this special role to try to coordinate this, that’s like one of the final questions of our paper, and I think that’s where UN needs, because they are proposing to be that actor that will try to coordinate all these efforts, and the discussion that we are having on the last panel was also bringing to this, like we have this architecture of WSIS and the IGF that emerged 20 years ago, basically in Geneva, and now we are having this change of UN processes to New York, that’s a holder

Nadia Tjahja: approach, different approach, so yeah, I don’t have a clear answer, but yeah, I think that’s about it. Great, so we’ll take, is there anything online? Then we’ll take one last question, please sir.

Audience: Thank you very much, my name is Rolf Eppel, University of Zurich, and here I should say for about eight years I was member of the Steering Committee of GIGNET and serving as Vice Chairman on the Milton. My question is relatively short, I was wondering when listening to your presentation whether your definition of enforceability is not really too narrow? because not only governmental regulations are enforceable, also contractual duties and obligations are enforceable. And if you see multi-stakeholderism as a social contract, then we might come to the conclusion that agreements within the social contracts could be enforceable.

Jaqueline Pigatto: Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Yeah, I think we could think about that a broader concept of enforceability totally because we are looking more at how states are dealing with these issues. But even when states do have like a hard law or something, that’s difficult to actually enforce in practice. So how could we cooperate with other actors to enforce that or especially thinking about private sector, big techs and et cetera. But yeah, we will definitely think about that.

Jyoti Panday: Thank you. Great, thank you all very much for your questions. And of course, to our presenter for answering the questions and presenting the work. I hope that we were able to come together and learn more of all the research that we’ve been contributing today. And hereby, I would like to end this particular section, but I please urge you to stay as I hand over my session now to the chair of the program committee, Sophie Hoogenboom. Thank you.

Jamal Shahin: Hi. Thanks. I am Sophie, but my name is also Jamal. We, a tradition that we started in our last steering committee meeting was to say that we would have an open mic session at the end of all our steering committee meetings. Well, today is not a steering committee meeting per se, formally, but it is a meeting of GigaNet members. All GigaNet members are online or here, or some of them are online or here, and we wanted to have 18 minutes and 19 seconds of an open mic session. The idea behind this is to see what people in the GigaNet community would like for us to do in terms of things that GigaNet does, what people would like to help co-organize, what people would like to help share, what people would like to organize themselves or just participate in. And so we thought that the best thing to do would be to just open up for a few minutes, see if there are people who have ideas for our community and that are willing to share them with us. Is that right? That sounds more or less a good angle for the next open mic session. Everybody is familiar? Should everybody just pass them, introduce themselves briefly? Do we start? Yeah. Okay. All right. So, Tricia,

Jyoti Panday: you want to introduce yourself and say the role that you have in. And then we do the

Trisha Meyer: introductions and then we’ll go to the questions. I’m Tricia Meyer. I’m a professor in digital governance and participation at the Vrije Universiteit. at Brussels, a colleague of Jamal’s, Sophie’s, Nadia’s, and I’m the Vice-Chair currently.

Milton L Mueller: My name is Milton Mueller, I’m a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Director of the Internet Governance Project, and I am the Communications Director of GIGNET.

Sophie Hoogenboom: Hello everyone, my name is Sophie Hochemo, I’m a PhD student at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, as well as the United Nations University in Bruges, and currently I’m here as my role as the Chair of the Programme Committee. This was also the first time that I was involved with GIGNET, and of course we did a bit of an alternative programme then compared to the other years, so I would also be very curious to hear opinions about that.

Jamal Shahin: Hi, I’m Jamal Shaheen, Chair of the GIGNET Academic Network, and also working at the Universities of Amsterdam and Brussels.

Berna Akcali Gur: So my name is Berna Akjolugur, I’m a lecturer at Queen Mary University, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, and I’m currently the Membership Committee Chair of GIGNET. Maybe I would introduce Joerg online, is he online? Does he want to introduce himself, or should I do it for him? Joerg Desai is our Treasurer, and he is online from Mumbai.

Jyoti Panday: Did you say there was a question online, Tricia? You need to mic yourself. I’m not sure if Mark is able to unmute, if you’d like to raise the question yourself. I’ll just wait for a moment. Okay, I’ll read it out. Mark Datteskelt had a few comments for the previous point of helping out his co-presenter.

Trisha Meyer: But specifically for this particular open mic session, he said, are there any plans to increase Giganet’s visibility in fora other than the IGF?

Jamal Shahin: That would be a great step. It’s a bit difficult if Mark’s mic doesn’t work, because I would like to know what fora. I mean, let’s, you know, Milton, who should also, we should also mention that Milton is one of the founding members of Giganet, and has been a chair as well, may have some ideas and can tell us about the origins of Giganet, particularly within the context of the IGF. Do you want to say a bit about why we were set up in the context of the IGF, Milton? Well, I think what Mark may be asking is, could we break out of the IGF and be more prominent and visible as an academic association outside of the IGF?

Milton L Mueller: Yeah, our history is definitely that our origins were tied to the IGF and our annual symposium. And I don’t know, after five or six years, we debated detaching the two and decided we definitely did not want to do that. And also there was, we do have alliances with other academic institutions and conferences. So for example, Gig Arts is kind of an annual academic conference on internet governance. that kind of evolved out of Giganet, but is separately run more like a kind of a program committee without a membership and all of that. But we typically affiliate with them and sometimes regional like Joanna’s regional conferences and have had endorsement by Giganet and before that we’ve held conferences in Korea and North America. So if I think what you’re leading towards Mark is if you want to form a conference in Brazil and to get the endorsement of Giganet for your conference, we’d certainly be open to that.

Nadia Tjahja: Nadia? If I could add to that at EuroDIG and YouthDIG, there is a session where Giganet comes and presents what Giganet does to the YouthDIG community and some of the European stakeholders and explain how they can contribute, how to get involved and how to contact a membership chair. It may be worthwhile adding to all of this by saying that we do have an endorsement policy.

Jamal Shahin: You can find it on the website and we do like to partner up with additional conferences, but that the root of Giganet is essentially tied to the IGF for better or worse. And there are other conferences that take place. We’re also a community that is very multi disciplinary and so many of us participate in different spaces where we also do, you know, organize panels and things like that that sometimes fall under the remit of Giganet. So I think, you know, that maybe we could do more to get people to mention Giganet when they go to things, but I think we are quite visible as a members and people working in that space. But thanks for the question, Mark. Are there more questions? Mark is able to unmute now in case we’d like to have… He said we can take other questions and he doesn’t want to monopolise the time, but he can actually intervene if we would like that. Are there any more questions from members of the community here?

Trisha Meyer: Sure. Okay. Siva asks, what proportion of GIGNET membership comes from outside of America and Europe? Has there been sufficient outreach worldwide?

Berna Akcali Gur: Well, you can explain the mechanisms we have, the membership committee… So, that would be a question to me. We have not done a study as to where… A regional study as to where our members come from. But, you know, our membership is open to anyone who applies. And from my observation, that it is definitely not monopolised by North America. We have quite a few members from Europe, Asia. Increasing number of applications come from Africa. So, I would definitely not perceive GIGNET as a… as consisting of members mainly from North America. I think it had started that way with its collaboration from European academics, but it is definitely reaching out to a broader geography. And, yeah, we would like to do more. You know, if we have more of these sessions, I think we would definitely have a more diverse membership. And I encourage all of you to apply so we have a more diverse membership. I think because as the membership committee chair, you also have a committee… Yes, thank you, yes. So I would like to shortly explain how we decide on membership applications. So we have our youngest member is leaving. So okay, so there’s an online form. You fill in the form and every month, there are five members to our membership committee. We meet and we evaluate these applications. So if you’re an academic, established academic with publications in the internet governance field, then you qualify for membership. If you are an emerging academic, then you would need a sponsorship letter from your PhD supervisor or a current member to become a full member. And if you are in the internet governance field, but more active in as a civil society organization, then you become an observer. Being an observer means that you will be added to our mailing list. You will essentially be like a member, you just cannot nominate yourself to take a role in the steering committee. So there isn’t much of a difference in terms of how you benefit from the activities of GigaNet. If you have any questions, I’m here for three days. If you see me around, you can ask me questions. Thank you.

Jamal Shahin: Membership is important, but only in the sense that, you know, as a global organization, we do try and make sure that we reach out to all parts of the world. If there are people who would like to join, but think, oh no, that’s not the case. We are an open organization and really want participation and engagement from all parts of the world. Yes. Also, I think one thing we need…

Berna Akcali Gur: to emphasize is that it is a multidisciplinary group. So we have lawyers, social scientists, engineers, and you know we are open to academics from all sorts of backgrounds.

Jamal Shahin: Thank you. Tricia, was there another question you sent?

Trisha Meyer: I think I’d invite Mark who continues to have some comments perhaps to unmute if you’re able to do that now to continue the discussion on the on visibility of GIGNET. And then I would have a question. Go ahead Mark. Thank you. I hope you can hear me now. Yes. Just complimenting on what I was saying before and thank you for all the insights in the chat. It is the GIGNET is pretty much the reference when it comes to academia in our field. And

Audience: while I see examples of how it has penetrated in some other regions, when I speak from the LAC region in particular, there is very little awareness of its presence here as an example. And I would be willing to bet that in some other regions there’s also that lack of awareness. So as the project keeps expanding, I would say that GIGNET is gaining more visibility within the IGF environment. It would be interesting if at some point in the plans that the committee is leaning towards to think about this issue. I don’t think it’s a top priority or anything, but I do think that is something that should be on the roadmap, how to raise awareness and bring the different papers to other regions. regions, right? So how to showcase the actual work, not only, hey, here’s how to get involved, not just outreach, but how to bring this research to other regions and raise awareness of the research being done. Thank you.

Jamal Shahin: I think you’ve just volunteered for the role of Giganet ambassador to the LAC region. Is that correct, Mark? But it’s definitely an interesting way of thinking. And, you know, for me, one of the things that really makes the Giganet important, the annual symposium important is that we are able to sit in a space that is, you know, dominated by a lot of different stakeholders. Maybe there’s a few people in the room who normally aren’t listening to academics talking about things. So we have a translation issue that we need to get across, but we also need to ensure that this space is heard in those different, by those different stakeholders. And I think that’s important. And for that, I would maybe like to ask a question to the people who’ve been organized and that was Sophie, actually, who’s been organized in the session. And maybe it’s a broader question also for the community. Have you felt that, you know, this kind of way of organizing the program this year, although it’s been very fast because, you know, we’re used to six months more time for Giganet, but although it’s been quite fast, do you think that this is a format or did you find this interesting and have other people found this interesting to actually organize these panels and bring together these different experiences throughout the session?

Sophie Hoogenboom: Yeah, just to give some context for those who are not aware of how we did things in the previous years, but normally we have a paper call and a reviewing process. But because the last IGF was, of course, in December in Saudi Arabia, we didn’t have the time to do it this year. So out of necessity, we were forced to think about alternative ways in how to design this program. And that’s why we came up with different variations. So, for example, the panel discussion that we had after lunch, but also to include a research project in its entirety as one session. I would say personally, but I would love to hear the opinions from the wider community. But I was very enthusiastic about this, both these like different sessions. So I would say that we should continue to explore these different forms. I think also, especially by including different research projects or academic projects. It’s also a way to bring in more members to our community that are maybe not aware of the existence of GigaNet. However, I would also say that just to make sure that we continue to have an open academic rigorous forum. I do think that we should continue with the official paper call and the reviewing process. Also, because I do think that we have to be wary that we are not continuously inviting the same people or the people that are already active in our community. And I think an open paper call is the way to inspire people that are not involved yet to apply and to try. But I would also love to hear your opinions, because as I said, this was the first time that we did it in this way. So I look forward to hearing your opinions now or later this week.

Jamal Shahin: Thanks, Sophie. Are there any more insights or experiences or thoughts that people in this room or in the virtual room may have? Dennis is taking the open mic, literally.

Audience: Yes, go ahead. Take an open mic. If I may do it like this. Thank you. So as someone who submitted a proposal for a set panel, I think we enjoyed it tremendously. Thank you again for everyone to making this possible. And the chair, Tricia, thank you so much. I think what I liked about this year’s setup is the mix of… things. So the fact that we, because I’ve done, I think presented three papers where it was only the paper call and it was nice, it was really good, but you have very long days of the same kind of setup of all changing, and so having a roundtable, having a set research project presenting results, I think that’s a nice mix-up of things, so really enjoy that.

Jamal Shahin: Thanks, Dennis. It’s great to hear that the experience was mutually beneficial and pleasurable. We have two seconds left. No, we don’t. Are there any other comments or questions or anything before we welcome you warmly to the BI event? I hope you’ve all registered for the event. If you were on the GigaNet mailing list, you would have received the registration details that were passed through. We will all be meeting around six o’clock to have a wonderful collaborative event in a very nice setting in the middle of Oslo, where Milton will be talking again, along with two other colleagues from different networks. 6.30. Well, if I say 6, I might be there at 6.30, so that’s so idiot. Okay, so without further ado, I think I want to say thank you very much to Sophie for putting everything together, and to all the other members of the ESC that really made this happen, and to all of the speakers today, and to all of the people that were engaged, and also all the wonderful people at the back who made sure that we could hear ourselves and the others whilst everything was

Jyoti Panday: working. So thanks a lot to everybody. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Cliff Lynch, I’m glad you could join us today and we’ll be getting started in about a minute. Cliff Lynch, I’m glad you could join us today and we’ll be getting started in about a minute. Cliff Lynch, I’m glad you could join us today and we’ll be getting started in about a minute. Cliff Lynch, I’m glad you could join us today and we’ll be getting started in about a minute. So, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

Agreement points

WSIS needs reform and evolution, cannot remain static

Speakers

– Alexander Klimberg
– Pari Esfandiari
– Avri Doria
– Sophie Hoogenboom

Arguments

leaving it static would be a good way to kill it

WSIS should be reimagined to meet today’s realities, not ended out of habit or abandoned due to changed context

WSIS needs analysis and reform rather than ending – fix what works, replace what doesn’t

it needs to evolve, but WSIS certainly should continue

Summary

Multiple speakers agreed that WSIS cannot continue unchanged and requires active reform and evolution to remain relevant, though they disagreed on the specific nature of those reforms.

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Multi-stakeholder model represents an evolving form of democracy under pressure

Speakers

– Alexander Klimberg
– Avri Doria
– Pari Esfandiari

Arguments

I also believe that it is an evolution of democracy to continue in the multi-stakeholder model

Multi-stakeholder model is evolving democracy that can keep WSIS running despite attacks

Geopolitical consensus supporting multi-stakeholderism is under strain from national agendas

Summary

Speakers recognized that multi-stakeholder governance represents a new democratic model that, while under attack and facing challenges, has potential for growth and development.

Topics

Legal and regulatory

IGF should have more independence from current constraints

Speakers

– William Drake
– Avri Doria
– Milton L Mueller
– Pari Esfandiari

Arguments

IGF should get permanent mandate to increase independence and ability to address controversial issues

IGF should become more independent from WSIS to be truly multi-stakeholder from top to bottom

IGF independence is necessary evolution, not existential risk

I do support some degree of independence because I think that would help it to be more innovative and more experimental

Summary

There was broad agreement that IGF needs greater independence to be more effective, though speakers differed on the degree of separation needed from WSIS and UN oversight.

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized that WSIS serves broader purposes beyond Internet governance and that institutional frameworks remain necessary even if imperfect, as the underlying problems would persist without them.

Speakers

– William Drake
– Wolfgang Kleinwachter

Arguments

WSIS is more than ICANN – involves 11 action lines with 39 UN entities working on digital transformation

Closing WSIS wouldn’t make digital governance problems disappear, just as closing COP conferences wouldn’t eliminate climate change

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Both speakers expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of traditional multilateral UN processes, though they proposed different solutions – Mueller favoring market-based approaches and Doria advocating for multi-stakeholder transformation of existing systems.

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Avri Doria

Arguments

UN multilateral processes don’t significantly contribute to digital economic development compared to market liberalization

Multi-stakeholder model needs to infect and eventually replace multilateral systems

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers agreed that IGF’s primary value lies in its role as a forum for dialogue and information exchange rather than as a decision-making body, emphasizing its deliberative democratic function.

Speakers

– Alexander Klimberg
– William Drake

Arguments

IGF should remain as information exchange platform for deliberative democracy, not decision-making

IGF should not be a decision-making forum, that it should be completely equal status, multi-stakeholder

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Unexpected consensus

ICANN makes public policy decisions, not just technical ones

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Jaqueline Pigatto

Arguments

ICANN makes public policy decisions, not just technical ones, challenging narrow definitions of multi-stakeholder governance

there is some confusion and this includes government actors about public policy issues that are more close to the final users of the Internet and these technical matters that are not so close

Explanation

Despite their different overall positions on WSIS, both Mueller and Pigatto agreed that the distinction between technical and policy issues in Internet governance is problematic, with ICANN clearly making policy decisions that affect users.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Need for institutional processes despite their limitations

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Wolfgang Kleinwachter

Arguments

it’s okay to be anchored in the UN as long as that doesn’t mean it becomes state-dominated

to have this mix of multilateral and multistakeholder mechanisms is more or less an alternative and has some potential

Explanation

Despite Mueller’s call to end WSIS, both he and Kleinwachter acknowledged the need for some institutional framework to address digital governance issues, suggesting that complete abandonment of multilateral processes isn’t desirable.

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Overall assessment

Summary

The speakers showed surprising consensus on several key points: WSIS needs reform rather than continuation unchanged, multi-stakeholder governance represents an evolving democratic model under pressure, and IGF requires greater independence. However, they disagreed significantly on whether WSIS should be ended or reformed, and on the relative value of multilateral versus multi-stakeholder approaches.

Consensus level

Moderate consensus on procedural and structural issues, but fundamental disagreement on institutional futures. This suggests that while there’s agreement on problems and general directions for change, there are deep philosophical divisions about the role of state versus non-state actors in digital governance that make comprehensive reform challenging.

Different viewpoints

Whether WSIS should end or continue

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Alexander Klimberg
– William Drake
– Avri Doria
– Pari Esfandiari

Arguments

WSIS should end as it’s a distraction from real digital governance challenges like US-China fragmentation

WSIS provides legitimacy to multi-stakeholder model and ICANN management

WSIS is more than ICANN – involves 11 action lines with 39 UN entities working on digital transformation

WSIS needs analysis and reform rather than ending – fix what works, replace what doesn’t

WSIS should be reimagined to meet today’s realities, not ended out of habit or abandoned due to changed context

Summary

Mueller advocates for ending WSIS entirely, viewing it as a distraction from real challenges. Klimberg strongly opposes ending it due to legitimacy concerns for ICANN. Drake emphasizes its broader UN mandate beyond internet governance. Doria and Esfandiari favor reform and reimagining rather than ending.

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Role of UN multilateral processes in digital economic development

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– William Drake

Arguments

UN multilateral processes don’t significantly contribute to digital economic development compared to market liberalization

Global digital divide issues remain important for developing countries through UN bodies

Summary

Mueller argues that UN processes are ineffective for digital development, citing the Digital Solidarity Fund’s minimal impact compared to market liberalization. Drake contends that UN bodies like UNDP make meaningful differences for digital inclusion in developing countries where markets alone don’t solve problems.

Topics

Economic | Development

Level of IGF independence from WSIS

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Avri Doria
– Pari Esfandiari

Arguments

IGF independence is necessary evolution, not existential risk

IGF should become more independent from WSIS to be truly multi-stakeholder from top to bottom

IGF and WSIS serve different but complementary functions – experimental vs connective

Summary

Mueller and Doria advocate for significant IGF independence from WSIS, with Doria wanting complete separation from UN control. Esfandiari supports some independence but warns against complete separation, arguing they serve complementary functions.

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Nature of ICANN’s decision-making authority

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Jaqueline Pigatto

Arguments

ICANN makes public policy decisions, not just technical ones, challenging narrow definitions of multi-stakeholder governance

Multi-stakeholder legitimacy comes from inclusivity while multilateral legitimacy comes from sovereignty

Summary

Mueller challenges Pigatto’s framework by arguing that ICANN makes binding public policy decisions (trademark conflicts, WHOIS data), contradicting her definition of multi-stakeholder processes as non-binding. This highlights disagreement over what constitutes technical versus policy decisions.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Unexpected differences

Academic definition of multi-stakeholder governance

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Jaqueline Pigatto

Arguments

ICANN makes public policy decisions, not just technical ones, challenging narrow definitions of multi-stakeholder governance

Multi-stakeholder legitimacy comes from inclusivity while multilateral legitimacy comes from sovereignty

Explanation

This disagreement was unexpected because it emerged from an academic presentation rather than the main policy debate. Mueller’s challenge to Pigatto’s theoretical framework revealed fundamental disagreements about how to categorize existing institutions like ICANN within academic models of governance, highlighting the complexity of distinguishing technical from policy decisions.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Legitimacy source for WSIS continuation

Speakers

– Alexander Klimberg
– Milton L Mueller

Arguments

WSIS provides legitimacy to multi-stakeholder model and ICANN management

WSIS should end as it’s a distraction from real digital governance challenges like US-China fragmentation

Explanation

The disagreement over whether WSIS provides legitimacy to ICANN was unexpected given both speakers’ support for multi-stakeholder governance. Klimberg sees WSIS as essential protection for ICANN’s legitimacy, while Mueller argues ICANN has established its own legitimacy independently and WSIS may actually be counterproductive.

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Infrastructure

Overall assessment

Summary

The main areas of disagreement centered on: (1) whether WSIS should end or be reformed, (2) the effectiveness of UN multilateral processes for digital development, (3) the appropriate level of IGF independence, and (4) theoretical frameworks for understanding multi-stakeholder governance

Disagreement level

Moderate to high disagreement with significant implications. While most speakers agreed on the need for change, they fundamentally disagreed on the direction and extent of that change. The disagreements reflect deeper tensions between those who see multilateral UN processes as necessary but flawed versus those who view them as fundamentally ineffective distractions from real governance challenges. These disagreements have practical implications for the future of global internet governance institutions and could influence policy decisions about WSIS continuation and IGF independence.

Partial agreements

Similar viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized that WSIS serves broader purposes beyond Internet governance and that institutional frameworks remain necessary even if imperfect, as the underlying problems would persist without them.

Speakers

– William Drake
– Wolfgang Kleinwachter

Arguments

WSIS is more than ICANN – involves 11 action lines with 39 UN entities working on digital transformation

Closing WSIS wouldn’t make digital governance problems disappear, just as closing COP conferences wouldn’t eliminate climate change

Topics

Legal and regulatory | Development

Both speakers expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of traditional multilateral UN processes, though they proposed different solutions – Mueller favoring market-based approaches and Doria advocating for multi-stakeholder transformation of existing systems.

Speakers

– Milton L Mueller
– Avri Doria

Arguments

UN multilateral processes don’t significantly contribute to digital economic development compared to market liberalization

Multi-stakeholder model needs to infect and eventually replace multilateral systems

Topics

Economic | Legal and regulatory

Both speakers agreed that IGF’s primary value lies in its role as a forum for dialogue and information exchange rather than as a decision-making body, emphasizing its deliberative democratic function.

Speakers

– Alexander Klimberg
– William Drake

Arguments

IGF should remain as information exchange platform for deliberative democracy, not decision-making

IGF should not be a decision-making forum, that it should be completely equal status, multi-stakeholder

Topics

Legal and regulatory

Key takeaways

There is emerging consensus that WSIS should not end but needs significant reform and evolution to remain relevant

The multi-stakeholder model is viewed as an evolving form of democracy that requires protection and development, despite being under attack

IGF should gain more independence from WSIS while maintaining some connection, with a permanent mandate to address controversial issues

Real digital governance challenges stem from US-China fragmentation and digital sovereignty assertions rather than traditional internet governance issues

WSIS legitimacy rests on its ability to convene diverse actors and provide institutional pluralism, not just Western consensus

Academic research shows tension between multi-stakeholder (inclusive, non-binding) and multilateral (state-centric, binding) governance models

GIGNET as an academic network needs better global outreach while maintaining its multidisciplinary and IGF-rooted identity

Resolutions and action items

GIGNET to explore alternative program formats mixing panels and research presentations alongside traditional paper calls

GIGNET membership committee to continue welcoming diverse global applications and improve outreach to underrepresented regions

Academic community to develop hybrid governance models and invest in capacity building for underrepresented groups

Stakeholders to focus on separating procedural governance issues from substantive policy topics in internet governance discussions

WSIS process participants to work toward incremental improvements rather than bold reimagining given current geopolitical constraints

Unresolved issues

How to effectively reform WSIS – specific mechanisms and feasibility of proposed changes remain unclear

Whether to call it ‘internet governance’ or ‘digital governance’ and what this terminology shift means for institutional approaches

How to balance IGF independence with maintaining legitimacy through UN anchoring

How to make multi-stakeholder consultations meaningful when final negotiations remain closed to non-state actors

How UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies will effectively coordinate inclusive implementation of Global Digital Compact

What constitutes effective measurement of WSIS impact on digital development and global digital divide reduction

How to prevent WSIS from becoming static while avoiding the risks of opening negotiations in current hostile geopolitical environment

Suggested compromises

Commit to ‘digital development goals’ as addition to SDGs to maintain WSIS consensus while addressing US concerns

Develop hybrid governance model that combines multi-stakeholder inclusivity with multilateral enforceability

Maintain IGF-WSIS connection but with increased IGF independence and permanent mandate

Focus WSIS on coordination among existing UN programs rather than creating new bold initiatives

Separate internet-specific governance issues from broader digital policy topics to reduce scope conflicts

Reaffirm Tunis Agenda fundamentals while allowing procedural reforms to increase multi-stakeholder participation

Accept that some policy decisions will happen in closed state-led forums while strengthening multi-stakeholder consultation processes

I somehow have a hard time thinking that negotiations today would be easier than in 2003 to 2005. I don’t know if anyone thinks it would be easier… Rather than the continuation of the IGF or even the WSIS action lines, the most important contribution of this process in my opinion is the legitimacy that it imparts to the Internet community and to the multi-stakeholder model overall.

Speaker

Alexander Klimberg

Reason

This comment reframes the entire debate by shifting focus from WSIS’s operational effectiveness to its symbolic and legitimizing function. It introduces the concept of ‘inadvertent consequences’ and warns against opening a ‘Pandora’s box’ by dismantling existing frameworks.

Impact

This fundamentally changed the discussion from whether WSIS works to what happens if it’s removed. It forced other panelists to address the legitimacy question and consider unintended consequences, leading to a more nuanced debate about institutional preservation versus reform.

A better question is… How can WSIS be reimagined to meet today’s realities? I don’t think WSIS should end, but I also don’t think it can continue unchanged… Like technologies, institutions must adapt, and WSIS in terms of its broad ecosystemic, not just its historical documentation, is more relevant than ever, if we are willing to reimagine it.

Speaker

Pari Esfandiari

Reason

This comment elegantly reframes the binary question of ‘should WSIS end’ into a more constructive discussion about institutional evolution. The Gramsci quote about ‘the old world dying and the new world struggling to be born’ provides a powerful metaphor for the current moment.

Impact

This shifted the entire panel away from a simple yes/no debate toward a more sophisticated discussion about institutional adaptation. It established ‘reimagining’ as the central theme and influenced subsequent speakers to focus on reform rather than elimination.

The world is big. The world has 193 countries… There are 11 action lines that are all involving 39 different UN entities and processes, each of which has a vast constellation of expert communities and NGOs… So there’s a lot of people in the world who are involved in a lot of things other than ICANN.

Speaker

William Drake

Reason

This comment provides crucial perspective by highlighting the scope and scale of WSIS beyond the narrow internet governance community’s concerns. It challenges the ICANN-centric view of internet governance and emphasizes the broader development agenda.

Impact

This broadened the discussion significantly, forcing participants to consider WSIS’s role beyond technical internet governance. It led to a more comprehensive understanding of the stakeholders involved and shifted focus toward development and capacity building issues.

I sharply disagree with Alex, that the consequences of ending WSIS would be serious… There’s no legal basis for ICANN or anything else in WSIS… And the reason most of us entered into this process at that time was precisely to defend the model of governance by non-state actors.

Speaker

Milton Mueller

Reason

This comment directly challenges the legitimacy argument and introduces a historical perspective about the original purpose of WSIS engagement. It also introduces the crucial point about geopolitical fragmentation and digital sovereignty as the real challenges facing internet governance.

Impact

This created a direct intellectual confrontation that energized the debate. It forced Alexander to clarify his position and led to a deeper discussion about what actually legitimizes internet governance institutions. It also introduced the theme of US-China digital decoupling as a more pressing concern.

I think the only way to kill WSIS is to leave it as it is and ignore it. But if you really want to kill it, you know, you can’t do anything. What you got to do is preserve it because we really do need, countries do need, that incentive, that ability to find their path to the development goals.

Speaker

Avri Doria

Reason

This paradoxical insight that neglect is more dangerous than active opposition provides a profound understanding of institutional dynamics. It suggests that institutional death comes through irrelevance rather than active termination.

Impact

This comment became a turning point that several participants referenced later. It crystallized the emerging consensus that WSIS needs active engagement and reform rather than passive continuation or active termination.

We in our paper we described the fate of the digital Solidarity Fund… it was a tenuous corrupt bureaucracy that raised six million dollars which is about one one hundredth of a percent of the amount of capital you need to actually start building networks in the developing world… development is going to come from fundamentally from liberalizing capital flows and investment.

Speaker

Milton Mueller

Reason

This concrete example provides empirical evidence for the argument about UN ineffectiveness in digital development, challenging romantic notions about multilateral development aid with hard numbers and economic reality.

Impact

This shifted the discussion toward concrete evidence and economic analysis, forcing proponents of WSIS to defend its actual achievements rather than its theoretical potential. It elevated the debate from ideological to empirical grounds.

WSIS was the first forum to formally recognize the participation of Global South, not as aid recipient, but as a governance actor. I think that was a big achievement that we shouldn’t undermine… True equity requires WSIS to move beyond representation towards structural reform, linking capacity building with agenda setting.

Speaker

Pari Esfandiari

Reason

This comment provides a crucial post-colonial perspective on WSIS’s significance, highlighting the difference between participation as recipients versus actors. It introduces the important distinction between representation and actual influence.

Impact

This added a critical dimension about power dynamics and Global South agency that hadn’t been adequately addressed. It influenced the discussion toward questions of meaningful participation and structural reform rather than just procedural inclusion.

Overall assessment

These key comments transformed what could have been a simple debate about institutional continuation into a sophisticated discussion about legitimacy, institutional evolution, and global governance dynamics. The most impactful comments reframed the central question from ‘should WSIS end’ to ‘how should WSIS evolve,’ while introducing crucial perspectives about unintended consequences, Global South agency, and the difference between symbolic and substantive institutional functions. The interplay between these comments created a dialectical progression that moved the discussion from binary thinking toward nuanced analysis of institutional adaptation in a changing geopolitical landscape. The debate ultimately revealed the complexity of global governance reform and the tension between idealistic multilateral aspirations and pragmatic institutional effectiveness.

How can WSIS be reimagined to meet today’s realities with AI, platform dominance, fragmented infrastructure, and geopolitical challenges?

Speaker

Pari Esfandiari

Explanation

This addresses the core challenge of adapting legacy frameworks to current digital governance challenges including emerging technologies and power dynamics.

What specific analysis is needed to determine which WSIS action lines and programs are effective versus those that need to be fixed or replaced?

Speaker

Avri Doria

Explanation

This systematic evaluation is crucial for evidence-based reform of WSIS rather than wholesale continuation or termination.

How can global trade relationships be leveraged to address the fundamental problem of digital fragmentation between major powers like the US and China?

Speaker

Milton Mueller

Explanation

This explores alternative governance mechanisms beyond WSIS to address geopolitical tensions driving digital sovereignty assertions.

What are the specific tangible accomplishments and metrics from WSIS reviews that demonstrate concrete impact on telecommunications access and digital development?

Speaker

Milton Mueller

Explanation

This calls for empirical evidence to support claims about WSIS effectiveness in bridging the digital divide.

How can multi-stakeholder models be better integrated into multilateral UN processes to make them more participatory rather than top-down?

Speaker

Avri Doria

Explanation

This addresses the fundamental tension between inclusive participation and effective governance in international institutions.

What would IGF independence from WSIS look like in practice and what are the risks and benefits?

Speaker

Multiple speakers (Milton Mueller, Pari Esfandiari, Avri Doria)

Explanation

This explores structural reforms to internet governance institutions and their potential consequences for legitimacy and effectiveness.

How can stakeholder expectations be better managed across different governance forums to avoid disappointment and improve effectiveness?

Speaker

Jamal (audience member)

Explanation

This addresses the mismatch between what different actors expect from governance processes and what they can realistically deliver.

Is there consensus on the understanding of internet governance versus digital governance, and how does this distinction affect institutional approaches?

Speaker

Jaqueline Pigatto

Explanation

This conceptual clarification is important for determining appropriate governance mechanisms for different types of digital issues.

How can GIGNET increase its visibility and outreach beyond the IGF, particularly in underrepresented regions like Latin America?

Speaker

Mark Datteskelt (online participant)

Explanation

This addresses the geographic and institutional reach of academic networks in internet governance.

What is the demographic breakdown of GIGNET membership by region, and how can outreach be improved globally?

Speaker

Siva (online participant)

Explanation

This seeks empirical data on diversity and inclusion within academic internet governance networks.

How can the role of the UN Office for Digital and Emerging Technologies (ODET) be evaluated in coordinating inclusive participation in digital governance processes?

Speaker

Jaqueline Pigatto

Explanation

This examines new institutional mechanisms for bridging multilateral and multi-stakeholder approaches.

What are the participation dynamics of fragmented stakeholder groups, including different government bodies within the same country competing over digital policy?

Speaker

Jaqueline Pigatto

Explanation

This calls for deeper research into the internal complexity of stakeholder categories in governance processes.