This paper takes a relatively long term view of international organizations and the European Union in the complex and uncertain internet governance ecosystem, beginning with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and its crafting of an institutional innovation, the Internet Governance Forum, convened for the first time in 2006 in Athens, Greece. Using case study data from our research project on international organizations involved in internet governance, it reports and analyzes findings from the Council of Europe (COE).
Particular attention is paid to the COE role in the multistakeholder approach to Internet governance, highlighted in WSIS outcome documents and especially to the trajectory of such roles and any accompanying tensions and possibilities. The paper tracks a non-linear trajectory from a regional international organization as a region-wide coordinating mechanism for nation-state members to a global stakeholder itself. In so doing, the paper provides data regarding initial outcomes of this trajectory with special reference to power and possibilities of regional international organizations in the decade ahead.
