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Gaining a Stake in Global Internet Governance

The EU, ICANN and Strategic Norm Manipulation

Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK, g.christou{at}warwick.ac.uk

Seamus Simpson

Department of Information and Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University, Faculty of Humanities, Law and Social Science, Geoffrey Manton Building (off Oxford Rd), Manchester M15 6LL, UK, s.simpson{at}mmu.ac.uk

The global governance of the Internet and the influence that the EU is able to exert in international governance institutions are two important topics that this article brings together in the context of the EU's relationship with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), created in 1999 to manage strategically valuable technical resources and functions of the Internet. Employing Schimmelfennig's model of rational action in international institutional contexts, the article explores how the EU acted to secure its interests within an organizationally constrained environment. While ICANN was formed through an essentially rationalist process where the EU accepted a less than first-best outcome in return for a stake in its governance, a dialectical relationship thereafter developed where the EU accepted and adapted ICANN's key norms but also asserted its material interests through rhetorical action due to its relatively weak position at ICANN's inception.

Key Words: EU • governance • Internet • ICANN • norms

European Journal of Communication, Vol. 22, No. 2, 147-164 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0267323107076765


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