PROJECT IG3T - WORKSHOPS
Workshop 4 - Friday, June 12, 2009 (Paris, France) - 9:00 to 18:00
Forms of execution and institutionalisation of Internet governance

Led by Françoise Massit-Folléa (ENS-LSH,Vox Internet II, France)

Global Internet governance, as a form of techno-political regulation, suffers from a democratic deficit that is particularly obvious as multiple devices are intended to reduce it. The creation of Fora (Forum des Droits sur l’internet, Forum sur la gouvernance de l’internet …) is one of the means by which civil society is supposed to exert an influence on the development of standards and decision-making. However, an empirical examination of their organisation and operations reveals important gaps: don't these authorities ultimately legitimise the existing techno-political practices and neutralise some of the dynamics of collective action? At the same time, the technical choices incorporate values and interests that can be contradictory. It is thus important to consider:

a) the problems arising from the idea of a global ethics for the Internet and the sectorial realities of its governance;

b) the unveiling of the necessary prerequisites that have underpinned Internet governance since the nineties and the conditions that would make agreement possible between the market-related aspects, the public policies and the “common good”; and

c) the organisation of normative pluralism in contextual devices in which ethics and policies are brought up to date.

Programme

08:30

Welcome

09:00

Introduction
Françoise Massit-Folléa (FMSH)

  Session 1 - Chair: Françoise Massit-Folléa
09:30 The Institutionalization of the Net
Herbert Burkert (University of St Gall, CH)
10:30 Towards a typology of Internet Governance devices
Romain Badouard & Francesca Musiani (PhD students), with Cécile Méadel (CSI-ENSMP) and Laurence Monnoyer-Smith (Technical University of Compiègne)
11:30 Institutionalizing without Institutions? Self-Organization, Hierarchy and Power on the Web
Bernhard Rieder (Université Paris 8)
12:00 Buffet
  Session 2 - Chair: Paul Mathias (Collège International de Philosophie)
14:00 Gleaning as Governance : Histories of Use from rural to digital Spaces
Eva Hemmungs-Wirten (University of Uppsala, SE)
15:00 The Importance of Search-engines for Internet Governance
Marcel Machill (University of Leipzig, DE)
16:00 Democracy and global Governance, the wager of the Internet Governance Forum
Claudia Padovani (University of Padua, IT)
17:00 General discussion