Global Standard Setting in Internet Governance

The book addresses representation of the public interest in Internet standard developing organisations (SDOs). Much of the existing literature on Internet governance focuses on international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The literature covering standard developing organisations has to date focused on organisational aspects. This book breaks new ground with investigation of standard development within SDO fora. Case studies centre on standards relating to privacy and security, mobile communications, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and copyright. The book lifts the lid on internet standard setting with detailed insight into a world which, although highly technical, very much affects the way in which citizens live and work on a daily basis. In doing this it adds significantly to the trajectory of research on Internet standards and SDOs that explore the relationship between politics and protocols.

The analysis contributes to academic debates on democracy and the internet, global self-regulation and civil society, and international decision-making processes in unstructured environments. The book advances work on the Multiple Streams Framework (MS) by applying it to decision-making in non-state environments, namely SDOs which have long been dominated by private actors. The book is aimed at academic audiences in political science, computer science, communications, and science and technology studies as well as representatives from civil society, the civil service, government, engineers and experts working within SDO fora. It will also be accessible to students at the postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

Alison Harcourt, Professor of Public Policy, University of Exeter,George Christou, Professor of European Politics and Security, University of Warwick,Seamus Simpson, Professor of Media Policy, University of Salford

Alison Harcourt is Professor of Public Policy at the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter. She is also Director of the Centre for European Governance. Alison specialises regulatory change in digital markets and interested in solutions to regulatory problems based around the citizen/consumer and/or civil society voice. She has written on the regulation of traditional and new media markets and internet governance at EU and international levels contributing to the literature on agenda setting, regulatory competition, soft governance, Europeanisation and policy convergence.


George Christou is Professor of European Politics and Security at the Department for Politics and International Studies. His main research interests include the EU's role in conflict resolution, with specific interest in Cyprus and Turkey; European Neighbourhood Policy; the EU as an actor in Internet Governance and the political economy of European and Global Internet Governance; and the EU's Cyber Security Policy/The Politics and Governance of International Cybersecurity.


Seamus Simpson is Professor of Media Policy in the School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford. He has written extensively on European and global communications policy matters and his work has been funded by the ESRC and the European Commission. He is a past Chair of the International Communication Association (ICA), Communication Law and Policy Division and Board of Directors member of the ICA. He is currently Senior Editor at the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication (OUP) and Academic Management Committee member of the AHRC North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership.