ABSTRACT
As the internet continues to grow in importance, its relationship to commerce, science, government affairs, and political advocacy becomes more evident, as does its global nature. The internet is at once deceptively simple and staggeringly complex. With relative ease, you can click a few buttons on a hand-held device or laptop computer and view highly detailed audio, video, and textual information from nearly every country in the world. Almost effortlessly, you can make a perfect copy of that information and send it to a friend or collaborator six time zones away. The technical protocols, security mechanisms, and underlying infrastructure of the internet, while quite complex, have remained hidden from the average user. The global policy processes that
make these possible have become known as “internet governance,” and they involve a diverse group of national and international institutions. This chapter seeks to clarify the structure and relevance of these institutionalized policy processes related to global internet governance and to explore the potential for information and communications technologies (ICTs) to enable more effective participation in them by developing countries and civil society participants.
