Specific Issues for Discussion
Under the Tunis Agenda, the IGF has nurtured multistakeholderism for the past 20 years. Discussing various issues on the Internet in a forum attended by a wide range of stakeholders has been effective in understanding the issues and considering solutions.
After the GDC, the IGF will continue, as will multistakeholderism that it has fostered. However, according to the GDC ZERO draft, after the GDC, many of the topics that the IGF has dealt with will move to other initiatives and processes. As Doria (2023) suggests, multistakeholderism can be characterized by several maturity levels. Some will take the IGF-style multistakeholder approach, while others will remain in multistakeholder consultation (consultation only). There is also a wariness of the use of the new phrase multistakeholder cooperation (even weaker) to describe
multistakeholderism (Konstantinos Komaitis, 2023).
On the other hand, multistakeholderism that has been adopted in the IGF arena may not be equally valid for all issues of a different nature: the scope of issues raised by Internet governance is too broad, the stakeholders involved are too diverse, and national interests are too intricate.”” The scope of issues raised are too broad, the stakeholders involved are too diverse, and the national interests too conflicted”” (Milton Mueller, 2023). Because such issues are Under the GDC, the meaning of multistakeholderism may change if issues that have been discussed under the common umbrella of Internet governance are divided.
We will consider how multistakeholderism will (or won’t) change at such a turning point.
