Introduction—A Pair of Governance Models or More?

Abstract

This introductory chapter frames the background to the current debate on internet governance, which consists of intersecting developments and historical conditions. It looks at the legacy of the multistakeholder model that was developed alongside the co-invention of the Internet by Anglo-American scientists, technologists and enthusiasts from the 1960s. It accounts for the unexpected mass take-up of the internet across non-English speaking and non-democratic spheres from the mid-1990s. It then brings to bear China’s emphatic support for the multilateral model of internet governance since 2010. Although many of the Internet’s earliest adopters envisioned it being a democratising force for democratisation, they failed to realise that the internet’s spread could equally have the opposite effect of curbing liberal discourses and diminishing humanitarian values. It sets the scene to examine how two of the smaller Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia and Singapore, have governed the Internet in their respective domestic spaces over the past three decades, and what influences and lessons they hold for global internet governance.