Digital Self-Determination for the South? Legitimacy in the Regional Internet Registries

How might low-income countries shape their own development in our emergent global digital society?

This research examines a significant innovation in the governance of development: the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).

These bodies – for Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America-Caribbean – make rules by assembling nongovernmental actors from the regions themselves. The RIRs thus break new ground by being regional, citizen-based, and south-led.

Can this formula promote a more fair and sustainable development?The study explores this question with a focus on legitimacy and legitimation.

We (a team of researchers at the University of Gothenburg and in the three regions) study how far participants in these RIRs regard these regimes to be empowering and effective. We also examine the practices used by the RIRs to obtain their legitimacy.

Evidence is gathered through 425 mixed-method survey interviews of RIR boards, staffs, and multistakeholder communities during 2021-22.

Academic analyses and policy reports then follow in 2023.The research makes important contributions to theory (in terms of regional multistakeholder regimes in development governance and their legitimacy), empirics (in terms of the concrete operation of the RIRs), methodology (in terms of large-scale comparative surveys), capacity (in terms of building much-needed south-based research expertise on Internet governance), and policy (to help RIRs and their constituents grapple with these new ways of governing).