World Summit on the Information Society: Catalyst for Transnational Advocacy and a Milestone for Multistakeholder Global Governance

This chapter presents a detailed case study of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and highlights the historic steps it took to include civil society and non-state actors. For many analysts, WSIS signaled a shift in the power relations between state and non-state actors. In practice, however, the effective participation of civil society lagged substantially behind this lofty rhetoric. Nonetheless, the chapter highlights the catalytic role played by WSIS in stimulating the creation of numerous Transnational Advocacy Networks (TANs), and explores the contestation between the top-down Civil Society Bureau (CSB) and the bottom-up Civil Society Plenary (CSP). This chapter sets the stage for subsequent chapters by highlighting the key policy issues left unresolved by WSIS—Internet governance and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and development—which presaged the two institutions created by the UN to address them.