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Foundations, Pitfalls, and Assessment of Multistakeholder Governance

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Legitimacy, Power, and Inequalities in the Multistakeholder Internet Governance

Abstract

This chapter investigates the concept of multistakeholderism by drawing on contributions from global and transnational governance studies, focusing on the theoretical relationship between multistakeholderism and legitimacy. The rapid spread of multistakeholderism among governance studies and practices relies on its potential to establish legitimate authority at the global level, in which inclusive deliberative processes replace the legitimacy derived from electoral mechanisms. However, the concept of multistakeholderism reveals a structural weakness in dealing with the dimension of power, leading to governance practices that undermine less well-resourced actors. In reviewing the existing literature on the categories of input, throughput, and output legitimacy, this chapter identifies a set of legitimacy standards that a multistakeholder initiative needs to satisfy to fulfill the promises of multistakeholderism and avoid being considered merely a rhetorical exercise masking practices of domination.

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Palladino, N., Santaniello, M. (2021). Foundations, Pitfalls, and Assessment of Multistakeholder Governance. In: Legitimacy, Power, and Inequalities in the Multistakeholder Internet Governance. Information Technology and Global Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56131-4_2

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