Opening Multilateralism: Two Pathways to Digital Legitimacy

As digital technologies reshape global power, the rules that govern them are increasingly negotiated in multilateral fora. But if these bodies are to deliver legitimate and future-proof governance frameworks for the Internet, AI, cybersecurity, and data, their processes must adapt – expanding participation to include the wider set of actors whose expertise is indispensable.

Multistakeholderism – the principle that governments, civil society, academia, the technical community, and the private sector should work together on digital policy – is not new. It is foundational to the Internet itself. Stakeholder engagement is both an inherent good – enhancing openness and inclusivity – and an instrumental one, improving outcomes and legitimacy.

Too often, however, multilateralism and multistakeholderism are cast as competing models of legitimacy: states vs. stakeholders. In reality, the two can, and must, complement one another. A helpful way to think about how is through two tracks of integration:

• State-led openings (vertical integration), where stakeholder perspectives are fed through governments – via national consultations, advisory bodies, or inclusion in official delegations. This makes openness part of a country’s digital foreign policy.
• Institutional openings (horizontal integration), where stakeholders engage independently with multilateral institutions through structured participation channels created by the institutions themselves.

Both tracks already exist in practice, but are applied unevenly. Looking at how each has worked, especially in Internet governance, where multistakeholderism has the deepest roots, shows both the possibilities and the limits.

State-Led Openings: Stakeholder Voices in Digital Foreign Policy

There are valuable precedents for feeding stakeholder input into government’s foreign policy positions on Internet governance. Brazil’s CGI.br, a permanent multistakeholder body, has shaped both national and international Internet policy since 2003. The UK’s Multistakeholder Internet Governance Group has, for over a decade, brought in civil society and industry to inform the UK’s government ITU and WSIS positions, with members regularly joining government delegations. More recently, Australia created a dedicated advisory group to shape its approach to the WSIS+20 review. These are examples of stakeholder perspectives becoming a systematic part of digital foreign policy.

Other governments have applied the principle more narrowly, opening their delegations to experts for specific Internet governance negotiations: Estonia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US have at times included non-governmental representatives in their delegations to the UN’s Commission on Science and Technology for Development (2024, 2025)* or ITU conferences. These moments are valuable, but because they are not embedded systematically, they often depend on political will at the time and disappear at the next meeting.

Beyond Internet governance, the picture is more uneven. Notably, when it comes to cybersecurity, Canada and Chile have convened consultations with academic and NGO experts alongside UN cyber discussions. And further afield in the AI domain, in preparation for the India AI Impact Summit 2026 the Indian government ran stakeholder consultations and has decided to establish multistakeholder working groups to contribute to the Summit outcomes. Meanwhile, at the national level, many governments have run consultations on cybersecurity and AI strategies, drawing on industry, civil society and academic expertise. These processes show that multistakeholder engagement is neither novel nor impractical.

But here lies the gap: while robust consultations happen for national digital policy, and while stakeholder inclusion has been tested in foreign policy for Internet governance, the two have not yet converged into a consistent approach to digital foreign policy beyond Internet governance. Closing this gap is one of the most pressing challenges, and opportunities, for state-led integration.

Institutional Openings: Independent Stakeholder Participation

The second track is when institutions themselves create space for stakeholder voices to enter independently, without passing through governments. Internet governance has pioneered this model with technical bodies such as ICANN and the IETF, and deliberative platforms such as the IGF, embedding inclusive practices into their processes.

Examples exist in multilateral settings, too – the World Summit on the Information Society (2003, 2005) and the Working Group on Internet Governance that followed, gave stakeholders an active role in shaping key outcomes such as the definition of Internet governance and the Tunis Agenda. The WSIS+10 review introduced a multistakeholder preparatory platform to build consensus across different groups. Today’s WSIS+20 review is testing a new approach, by creating an Informal Multistakeholder Sounding Board (IMSB) to channel independent advice from across stakeholder groups, alongside consultations.

Other institutions have also tried to adapt. The ITU, an intergovernmental organisation where states are the decision-makers, has nevertheless created avenues for participation by non-governmental actors, including through sector membership and expert groups. One example is its AI for Health initiative with the World Health Organization, which brought external expertise into technical standard-setting.

When it comes to digital policy at the UN, the picture is mixed. The negotiations of the UN Cybercrime Convention accredited more than 200 civil society groups, academics, and companies as observers, but opportunities to substantively shape outcomes were limited. The Global Digital Compact began with wide consultations and thematic dialogues, but many stakeholders felt that their contributions were not fully reflected in the final text.

Lessons can be drawn from regional multilateralism as well: the European Union (EU) carried out a robust consultation process with stakeholders to create the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the EU AI Act and to review implementation. Meanwhile, the Council of Europe’s process for a binding AI treaty allowed stakeholders to submit written input and attend plenary sessions, but kept text-based negotiations among states. These experiments demonstrate that opening space is possible, but that the depth of participation varies widely.

The next wave of global processes will be a crucial step in consolidating these precedents. The new UN cybersecurity mechanism, the Global Digital Compact follow-up, and the recently launched UN AI Dialogue will need to embed independent stakeholder participation from the outset if they are to produce legitimate and durable outcomes. Independent participation is no longer an open question; it is a proven necessity. The task now is to make it consistent and substantive, rather than partial or symbolic.

Turning Rhetoric into Practice

What emerges today is not a story of simple success or failure, but of experimentation. Governments and institutions are testing ways of integrating stakeholders, with uneven ambition and impact. Political will, institutional design, and sustained commitment determine how far these efforts go.

For institutional openings, practical guidance already exists. The São Paulo Multistakeholder Guidelines and documents like the Five-Point Plan for an Inclusive WSIS+20 Review provide actionable criteria for transparency, access, and participation. Drawing on them can help move from ad hoc experiments to more systemic practice.

For state-led openings, the lessons lie in precedent. Countries that have embedded stakeholder engagement in their digital foreign policy – through permanent bodies like CGI.br, standing advisory groups like the UK’s, or robust domestic consultations – offer blueprints that others can adapt. The challenge is consistency: too often, these practices remain confined to Internet governance or to one-off national strategies, rather than becoming a standard feature of foreign policy across digital domains.

If states are serious about building legitimate frameworks for digital governance, they must lead not only on substance but on process: embedding stakeholder engagement at home, and making it a cornerstone of their digital foreign policy.

The Bottom Line

In the digital age, legitimacy will hinge on how states integrate non-governmental voices, whether through their own digital foreign policy or independently through institutional channels. Multilateral institutions cannot meet this challenge alone. But with a committed shift toward multistakeholder diplomacy, they won’t have to.

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Footnotes:

* Commission on Science and Technology for Development, Twenty-eighth session Geneva, 7–11 April 2025 List of participants, E/CN.16/2025/INF/1