Civil Society Participation under Most Favourable Conditions: Assessing the Deliberative Quality of the WSIS

Abstract

When the United Nations (UN) World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) took place in Geneva in 2003, its innovative multi-stakeholder design was widely praised. The inclusion of non-state actors developed into one of the defining and legitimizing goals of the summit. The WSIS ought to be ‘the scene of a new world dialogue, a new form of international communication based on the values of responsiveness, exchange, solidarity and sharing’.1 The WSIS symbol is a flower, whose four petals around the dot on the ‘i’ represent governments, international organizations, businesses and civil society organizations (CSOs), which all contribute to the common vision of an ‘Information Society for All’.2 CSOs,3 as well as other observers, actively participated during the whole preparatory process, as well as at the summit, by contributing to the drafting process of the policy documents. Indeed, when it became apparent that the summit would not be a success with regard to substance, the WSIS strived more forcefully to promote the announced multi-stakeholder approach. The participation of civil society actors aimed to allocate legitimacy to the policy output.