The Emergence of Multistakeholder Internet Governance Based on Democratic Values

ABSTRACT

How can and how should we govern a global resource like the online space? How can stakeholders (governments, businesses and civil society) participate on equal footing and “in their respective roles”? And how can democratic values inform all governance practices, when the constituency is potentially everybody, most decisions are highly complex and interdependent and when the shared resource is a conglomerate of private and public assets? These are the questions scholars and practitioners in the internet governance field explore and experiment with since the UN World Summit of the Information Society in 2003 brought internet governance to the attention of diplomates and governments around the world. In this seminar Max Senges will review the historic development of internet governance as well as discuss current challenges and opportunities in building an effective governance ecosystem for the transnational digital space.

 

SPEAKER BIO

Max Senges (1978) works as Program Manager for Google Research and Education, where he leads an Internet of Things program and is also managing the Faculty Research Awards in the Policy & Standards field under Vint Cerf. He participates in the internet governance sphere since the first WSIS 2003 and bootstrapped the IGF Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles between 2008 and 2010.

More recently he has published “Internet Governance as our shared responsibility” and “Ensuring that Forum Follows Function” in “The Roadmap for Institutional Improvements to the Global Internet Governance Ecosystem” jointly with Vint Cerf, Patrick Ryan and Rick Whitt.

Senges holds a PhD in philosophy from the Information and Knowledge Society Program at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) in Barcelona as well as a Masters in Business Information Systems from the University of Applied Sciences Wildau (Berlin).