Publication

This paper identifies countries likely to act as swing states in the global Internet governance debate. This debate, initiated in the 2012 World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), has divided countries over two different visions for internet governance: a bottom-up model driven by various stakeholders, and a top-down model driven primarily by governments and with a central role for the International Telecommunications Union. The authors perform an empirical analysis on the basis of countries’ voting records in the WCIT and a range of other relevant indicators, and come up with a core group of 30 states that could decisively influence the global debate process.