ABSTRACT
The Tunis summit left much of Internet governance open for discussion. The list of problems left unresolved was fairly long. Instead, it launched an audacious experiment in multi-stakeholder governance at the international level for which there is little precedent. The Internet Governance Forum was, in many ways, a compromise between those who wanted a vigorous, authoritative and intergovernmental institution to oversee the Internet and those who wanted no oversight at all. The compromise was based on the premise that if policy questions were discussed in an open, multi-stakeholder space, they could lead to a kind of order that only a partnership between governments, the private sector and civil society could achieve. From 2006 until the end of 2007, the experiment has begun to unfold. Two forums have been held, in Athens in November 2006 and in Rio de Janeiro in 2007. They have been considered successful, but, as Jeanette Hoffman, one of those involved in advising on IGF management, put it in a private conversation, it is still fragile. If successful, it can provide a model for similar substantive areas. If
unsuccessful, it can set back the idea that governance can go beyond the nation-state. To make an appraisal, we should start by looking at the processes that have been followed in the first two years of the experiment.
