The crucial and contested global public good : principles and goals in global internet governance

Demands for a more democratic, transparent and accountable management of theinternet were strong when preparing for the World Summit on the Information Society Review(WSIS Review), held in 2015. Partly in response to criticism, the United States initiated aprocess for transferring responsibility for domain names from the United States to the InternetCorporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Increased accountability was amongthe key motivations for this change. ICANN practices what have subsequently been termedmulti-stakeholder governance. This article finds that this form of governance is preferable to anintergovernmental governance model both in terms of transparency and accountability.