Democracy and global governance: the wager of the Internet Governance Forum

This contribution addresses the challenges posed to governing arrangements by global transformations characterized by diversity, dynamics and complexity (Kooiman 2003). Such transformations bring new concerns, expectations and criticism related to the possibility of a more democratic conduct of world politics, as well as new questions concerning the desirability and preconditions for democratic developments at the supra-national level. In this context, we need to acknowledge the centrality of communication to global transformations: information and communication technologies have profound impact on political processes ; communications have become an object of global public policy ; governing global communications is not only a challenge but also a test-bed for new regulatory practices. It is thus more and more relevant to develop an in-depth understanding of how problems are framed, actors interact and public purposes are produced and circulated in communication-related fields, especially if we are to include a democracy-oriented concern in our analyses (Raboy & Padovani 2010). Building on a series of recent research efforts aimed at clarifying “how is global communication governance being structured?”, I here discuss the democratic challenge of media and communication governance by looking at trans-national governance networks (TGNs) operating in the context of Internet Governance (IG), to apply and test an analytical framework that combines different dimensions. The present reflection focuses on TGNs specifically in (and around) the Internet Governance Forum (IGF); it discusses the democratizing potential of their discursive interactions in a multi-actor setting and addresses the very possibility of considering multi-stakeholderism as an emerging norm that fosters democratic practice in the governance of communication, also through actors’ use of digital technologies.