Understanding WSIS: An Institutional Analysis of the UN World Summit on theInformation Society

Hans Klein, Associate Professor

12/04/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2005)

World summits are dogged by a fundamental question: what are they good for? Do they produce social and political change commensurate with their enormous cost in money and policy makers' time? True, at least one world summit has yielded a major result: the 1992 Earth Summit produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that led to national commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Other summits, however, have not had such clear-cut results. The question remains: is a world summit a vehicle for meaningful social and political change? In this article, the author proposes a conceptual framework for addressing this question, and applies it to WSIS. From that analysis, he concludes that summits can make a significant contribution to social change. Summits present opportunities, making valuable resources available for political advocacy. However, they are just one element needed for change; also needed are candidate policies that provide those opportunities and policy advocates with the influence to realize those opportunities. When all those elements come together, significant results can be achieved. Evidence of summits' power can be seen in the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), which challenged the global Internet governance regime.