Inclusive Anticipatory Governance: Internet Technologies & Absorptive Capacities

• In Event: Future Directions in the Politics of Data and Internet Governance

Abstract

Focusing on U.S. nanotechnology, Guston (2014) wrote about the need for anticipatory governance. This led to increasing research in the fields of environmental policy, food security, genomics and health. Each field shares characteristics with internet governance: interrelationships among technologies and politics, connections between local and global, rapidly changing and converging technologies, cultural and geopolitical differences, and uncertainties. Yet the internet governance field has scant work on anticipatory governance with a few exceptions. Chatham House is leading discussions on inclusive cyberspace governance (Taylor and Hakmeh 2022). There is also incipient research in the artificial intelligence arena (Kolliarakis & Hermann, 2020). The backdrop of the pandemic has added challenges for these research areas, highlighting inequalities and divisions, setting the scene for the research reported here that brings inclusive anticipatory governance (Yu, et. al., 2021) to the fore in internet-related governance studies. Anticipatory governance itself refers to “governance processes in the present that seek to use anticipation to engage with uncertain futures in order to guide action in the present.” (Muiderman et. al. 2022,1) Three elements emerge as key to anticipatory governance: foresight (tools and capacity-building regarding the future); engagement (idea exchange usually among experts and policymakers); and integration (institutional processes and capabilities development reflecting values or norms). This paper addresses anticipatory governance frameworks from related fields as they may apply to global internet governance interconnections. Additionally, Muiderman et. al. (2022) in their analyses of anticipatory governance highlight the roles of political negotiation in these processes. Key questions arise: what organizations or institutions are involved in such negotiations; to what extent are negotiations inclusive? Indeed, most anticipatory governance studies limit their scope to technology experts and relevant policymakers. Thus, this paper contributes by examining understudied questions of inclusion in anticipatory internet governance processes where inclusion is not merely focused on technical experts and policymakers. It recognizes that for organizations to participate in inclusive governance processes, they must have awareness that such processes are occurring and equally important, capacities for coping with anticipatory governance processes (Croxatto, 2020). Such capacities include requisite knowledge and interorganizational learning to engage effectively. There is also little work that addresses the connections between multistakeholderism (Raymond & DeNardis, 2015) and anticipatory governance in internet governance policy and politics venues. In highlighting this connection, the paper analyzes organizational boundary-spanning and adds treatment of organizations’ absorptive capacities regarding anticipatory governance processes and emerging/converging internet-related technologies. Methods used include a review of anticipatory governance literatures and the limited relevant inclusive anticipatory governance research. Based upon content analyses from the review as well as research conducted by this author related to cybersecurity governance policies and inclusion, a new framework for inclusive and anticipatory internet governance is crafted. Extending beyond multistakeholderism, it focuses on interorganizational processes, and recognizes cultural and geopolitical contexts as well as interconnections with technologies themselves. Findings highlight implications for inclusive absorptive capacity-building at organizational levels and recognition of interorganizational learning processes especially regarding the three elements of anticipatory governance: foresight, engagement and integration. For each level, it identifies critical success factors for inclusion in such processes, outlining what internet governance can learn from related fields and vice versa regarding inclusive anticipatory governance frameworks/implementation. References:
Croxatto, C. et. al. 2020. How networked organizations build capacity for anticipatory governance. Futures 116.Guston, D. 2014. Understanding ‘anticipatory governance. Social Studies of Science 44 (2). Kolliarakis, G. & Hermann,eds. 2020. Towards European Anticipatory Governance for Artificial Intelligence. DGAP Report, 9. Muiderman,K. et. al. 2022. The anticipatory governance of sustainability transformations:Hybrid approaches and dominant perspectives, Global Environmental Change, 73. Raymond, M. and DeNardis, L., 2015. Multistakeholderism: anatomy of an inchoate global institution. International Theory, 7(3). Taylor, E. & Hakmeh, J. 2022. Cyberspace4all: towards an inclusive cyberspace governance. Journal of Cyber Policy. Yu, H. et. al., 2021. Toward inclusive global governance of human genome editing. National Academy of Sciences Nov, 118.

Author

• Nanette S. Levinson, American University-SIS