1
Participation in International Governance Regime by the “Rest of the World”:
An Analysis of ICANN
I. Introduction
This paper explores the participation, policy agendas, and effectiveness of
representatives from outside of North America and Europe in ICANN (The Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)’s processes. ICANN is an important and
interesting example of how the Internet and e-commerce are creating new forms of
international governance. ICANN is a private corporation, newly created at the end of
1998. It controls the assignment of domain names and IP addresses, critical resources
needed for identifying Internet users and interconnecting them. ICANN could have been
even more revolutionary than it turned out to be, as its initial founders originally tried to
create a system of individual membership that would conduct global elections to appoint
half of its Board of Directors. This attempt was resisted and eventually defeated,
however, by ICANN’s management.
ICANN is important as a precedent for three interrelated reasons. First, it was
created rather pointedly as an alternative to existing intergovernmental organizations,
notably the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). By relying on a private sector
corporation that enters into a privileged relationship with the US government, it bypasses
and in some ways threatens the hegemony of established intergovernmental institutions.
Thus, it reflects a continuing power struggle between actors who want to avoid existing
international institutions and the established international organizations and their
constituents, who do not want to be bypassed and rendered irrelevant by new
developments. Second, and related, ICANN was created as an experiment in private
sector-based international governance and is sometimes put forward as an example of
“industry self-regulation.” A private, contract-based regime was viewed as a way to
create a global jurisdiction for setting and enforcing policy without relying on
Page 1 of 23 
Convention