Enhanced Cooperation in Governance

Abstract

The concept of enhanced cooperation in Internet governance arose with the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. In the years since the Tunis Agenda was written, “enhanced cooperation” has remained subject to differing interpretations. To assist with ongoing discussions on how to further implement enhanced cooperation in international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet, this paper presents an overview of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) documents and provides of description of a selection of activities in the Internet governance space where governments work with other stakeholders on issues related to international public policy. The selection of activities described in this paper demonstrate that enhanced cooperation is a viable process for considering and arriving at policy in ways that are more likely to be viewed as legitimate by all stakeholders. The alternative — limiting participation to a subset of stakeholders — may result in less robust public policy that fails to be viewed as legitimate by those left out of the process.