That Consensus Behind Governing the Net

Abstract

Internet Governance: The New Frontier of Global Institutions. By John Mathiason. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. 178 pp., $140.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0415774024). Will the Internet governance story become a new model for reaching international agreement, applicable to several other issue-areas and alternative to the nation-state (Westphalian) model or will it remain a “one-time phenomenon”? With similar reservations, Mathiason concludes his volume on Internet Governance by leaving it to further research to provide the answer to those crucial questions. However, after reading the book, it is clear that Mathiason leaves little doubt that Internet governance will become a model. Mathiason's volume joins a growing body of literature on the Internet and its impact on the discipline of International Relations. This is a new avenue of research, different from the early approach of international communications pioneers, such as de Sola Pool (1990) and Mowlana (1997). Several scholars now focus specifically on the Internet; the authors belonging to this “new wave” of research and whom have focused on Internet control and governance include, among others, Shapiro (1999), Mueller (2002), Zittrain (2004), Giacomello (2005), and more recently, Goldsmith and Wu (2006). Curiously, of all social scientists, international relations scholars from the various schools (for example, Eriksson and Giacomello 2007 …