<incom> CfP: Global Internet Governance Academic Network, 1st annual conference

[Ralf Bendrath]

Hi all,

I have been involved in this effort to start a more systematic academic 
discussion on internet governance (which is more narrow than the 
incommunicado focus, so no competition intended.) We are looking forward 
to proposals from academics on this list. The deadline is soon, but you 
don't have to deliver a written paper.

This academic meeting will hopefully also become a place to discuss issues 
that will be neglected by the official IGF for political resons. Hope to 
see many of you in Athens!

Best, Ralf


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Please distribute as appropriate

Call for Proposals

Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet)
First Annual Conference
Divani Apollon Palace & Spa Hotel
Athens, Greece
29 October 2006


The Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) is an emerging
scholarly community initiated in Spring 2006.  Its four principal
objectives are to: support the establishment of a global cohort of
scholars specializing on Internet governance issues; promote the
development of Internet governance as a recognized, interdisciplinary
field of study; advance theoretical and applied research on Internet
governance, broadly defined; and facilitate informed dialogue on policy
issues and related matters between scholars and Internet governance
stakeholders (governments, international organizations, the private
sector, and civil society).

In this context, the GigaNet plans to organize conferences to be held on
site prior to the annual meetings of the new Internet Governance Forum
(IGF). The first such conference will be held on 29 October 2006 in
Athens, Greece prior to the inaugural IGF meeting  <www.igfgreece2006.gr>.
  The final program, when available, will be posted on the IGF website
<www.intgovforum.org> and on the websites of relevant academic
organizations.  Attendance at the conference will be free of charge and
open to all registered IGF participants.

This is a call for proposals from scholars interested in speaking on one
of the three round table panels to be held at the conference.  The panels
are described in the preliminary program below.  The Program Committee
will select four to five speakers per panel drawing on the following
materials to be provided by applicants: 1) a one page maximum description
of the proposed presentation indicating its specific relevance and
value-added to the panel in question’s thematic focus; and 2) a one page
summary curriculum vitae listing in particular the applicant’s current
institutional affiliation(s), advanced degrees, scholarly publications
relevant to Internet governance, and web sites, if available.

These materials should be emailed directly to the respective panel chairs
listed below by no later than Monday, 25 September, midnight GMT.  The
Program Committee will notify applicants of its decisions via email by 4
October. The selected speakers will give ten-minute presentations, after
which there will be open discussion with audience members. While this is
not required, speakers are welcome to provide a written text or Power
Point presentation to be linked off of the conference web page.


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Preliminary Program and Roundtable Panel Descriptions


9:30-9:45   	Welcome and Overview
Wolfgang Kleinwächter, University of Aarhus, Denmark


9:45-11:15	Theorizing Internet Governance: The State of the Art
Chair:  	Peng Hwa Ang, Singapore Internet Research Center
		Email: tphang [at] ntu.edu.sg

In recent years, scholars have begun to analyze Internet governance issues
using the theoretical tools of their respective academic disciplines.
While issues surrounding ICANN have attracted particular attention, there
also has been significant work done on the international governance of
digital international trade and intellectual property, privacy, security,
speech, and other topics.  Such research often has been rather specialized
and geared toward the distinct audiences interested in each issue-area,
which limited intellectual cross-fertilization. These topics are related,
and Internet governance should be seen as a broad but coherent field of
study that merits elaboration and support.  Mapping the landscape of
relevant theoretical perspectives is an important first step toward this end.

The purpose of this panel is to consider questions such as: What aspects
of Internet governance are uniquely interesting and worthy of scholarly
analysis?  How has Internet governance been addressed by scholars in the
social sciences, humanities, law, and other disciplines, and which
theoretical approaches seem to be the most promising for which issues and
dynamics?  Do these efforts point to the emergence of a coherent research
agenda and the cumulative development of new knowledge? Are there
barriers---intellectual, institutional, and other---that might have to be
overcome to advance that agenda?  How can Internet governance develop into
an interdisciplinary scholarly field that is taken seriously by academics
and also capable of providing useful inputs to the Internet Governance
Forum and other policy development institutions?  What lessons can be
learned, if any, from other fields defined by the object of
inquiry/dependent variables rather than by shared theories and independent
variables, e.g., "communication studies," "information studies," and
"women's studies"? Are there national or cultural differences in the ways
scholars approach these matters, and if so how might these be reconciled?


11:15-11:30	Coffee break


11:30-13:00 	“Enhanced Cooperation” and Interaction among Stakeholders
		in Internet Governance
Chair:  	Milton Mueller, Syracuse University, USA
		Email: info [at] internetgovernance.org

In addition to creating the Internet Governance Forum, the Tunis Agenda
calls for "enhanced cooperation" among governments. This language
originated with the European Union's June 2005 criticism of US unilateral
control of ICANN. The EU claimed that the WSIS statement constituted, "a
worldwide political agreement providing for further internationalization
of Internet governance, and enhanced intergovernmental cooperation to this
end" and that, "Such cooperation should include the development of
globally applicable principles on public policy issues associated with the
coordination and management of critical Internet resources."

The purpose of this panel is to consider questions such as: What are the
causes of US-EU tensions over Internet governance? What institutional form
might such a "new cooperation model" for deliberations among governments
take? How viable is the distinction between "day-to-day management of the
Internet and "public policy?" What, more generally, is the role of
national governments in Internet governance in relation to other
stakeholder groups? What implications might “enhanced cooperation” have
for civil society and multistakeholder participation? How might such a
philosophy lead to changes in the structure or processes of ICANN?
Proposals outlining any other approach that provides insight into this
aspect of the political battles over Internet governance are welcome.


13:00-14:30  	Lunch break


14:30-16:00	The Distributed Architecture of Internet Governance
Chair:  	William J. Drake, Graduate Institute of International
		Studies, Geneva, Switzerland
		Email: drake [at] hei.unige.ch

As the WSIS agreements recognized, Internet governance involves much more
than ICANN or the collective management of naming and numbering. Internet
governance also includes the development and application of
internationally shared principles, norms, rules, decision-making
procedures, and programs in a variety of other issue-areas, e.g. technical
standardization, cybercrime and network security, international
interconnection, e-commerce, e-contracting, networked trade in digital
goods and services, digital intellectual property, jurisdiction and choice
of law, human rights, speech and social conduct, cultural and linguistic
diversity, privacy and consumer protection, dispute resolution, and so on.
These activities take a variety of forms and are pursued in a
heterogeneous array of settings, including governmental,
intergovernmental, private sector, and multistakeholder organizations and
collaborations. In parallel, the international regimes and related
frameworks they establish vary widely in their institutional attributes,
e.g. the collective action problems addressed, functions performed,
participants involved, organizational setting and decision making
procedures, agreement type, strength and scope of prescriptions,
compliance mechanisms, power dynamics and distributional biases, etc.  But
while there is now broad recognition that the architecture of Internet
governance is highly distributed, there has been little systematic
scholarly analysis or policy dialogue about its precise nature and
implications.

The purpose of this panel is to explore and clarify some of the lingering
ambiguities, including questions such as: Which governance mechanisms are
relatively more or less important in shaping the Internet¹s evolution and
use?  How well do these mechanisms cohere, and are there tensions and gaps
between them? Are there crosscutting issues that merit consideration from
analytical and programmatic standpoints?  Are there generalizable lessons
to be learned by the distinct communities of expertise involved in
different issue-areas with regard to best practices and institutional
design?  Does the distributed architecture pose any challenges with
respect to the effective participation of less powerful stakeholders and
the global community¹s ability to govern in an effective and equitable
manner?  Looking beyond formalized collective frameworks, under what
circumstances, if any, may private market power or spontaneously
harmonized practices constitute forms of Internet governance? What is the
current role of governance mechanisms for international
telecommunications, and what might that role become in a future marked by
convergence and potentially non-neutral next generation networks?


16:00-16:15   	Coffee break


16:15-17:45  	GigaNet Business Meeting
Moderator: 	Avri Doria, Luleâ University of Technology, Sweden


17:45-18:00 	Closing



-- 
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Dipl. Pol. Ralf Bendrath
Universität Bremen
Sonderforschungsbereich 597 "Staatlichkeit im Wandel"
Linzer Str. 9a, D-28359 Bremen, Germany
Tel.  +49 (421) 218-8735
Fax   +49 (421) 218-8721
official: http://www.state.uni-bremen.de
personal: http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~bendrath