PRIVATE AUTHORITY IN INTERNET GOVERNANCE: NAME AND DOMAIN REGIMES IN THE LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT

This paper offers comparative research on four different models of multistakeholder governance for the critical resources of the Internet (v. g. national top-level domains or ccTLDs) in Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico, while engaging with the ongoing debate over Internet governance and its relations with emerging forms of private authority. Based on an extensive range of interviews with governmental and non-governmental actors, it argues that multistakeholderism may function as a specific rule of authority for the national regimes of Internet Governance. This hypothesis suggests a profound transformation in the modern structures of governing since heterarchy replaces hierarchy in the building of regulatory arrangements.