An Improbable Coalition: How Businesses, Non-Governmental Organizations, Investors and Academics Formed the Global Network Initiative to Promote Privacy and Free Expression Online

This is an investigation into organizational motivations for participation in a multi-stakeholder initiative to protect online privacy and freedom of expression and the factors that shaped the policies it produced. The research seeks to better understand emerging approaches to the governance challenges of an increasingly interconnected and technologically enabled world.;The Global Network Initiative (GNI) was launched in 2008 and consisted of internet and communications technology companies, non-governmental organizations, investors, and academics. There had been more than a decade of explosive growth these technologies and governments were both enthusiastic and eager to exert control over them. Regulatory environments were characterized by uncertain and often ineffective legal regimes governing expression and privacy, and companies found themselves torn by conflicts among laws, policies, practices, markets, and human rights standards. In practice, companies needed to determine how to anticipate and respond to government requests to limit content or provide access to personal data. The coalition aimed develop a more immediate, adaptable, and systematic approach to encouraging and supporting responsible corporate behavior --- and better human rights outcomes --- regarding online privacy and expression. The perceived relationship to legislation varied from complement to substitute, precursor to regulatory avoidance. Government attempts to control public access to information and to gain government access to private information have long raised concerns. The issues are exacerbated by a host of legal uncertainties around internet and related new media technologies, and a general lack of transparency into the mechanisms that effectively govern free expression and privacy online. Fueled by soaring information and communications technologies penetration and use, increasing government awareness of the private sector's role (and vulnerabilities) in communications, and resulting breaches of user trust and rights, addressing these issues has become an increasingly prominent, pressing, and shared priority since the mid 2000s.;Beginning in 2006 and continuing for over two years, organizations participating in the GNI development process created a multi-stakeholder model organized around principles, implementation guidelines, and an accountability regime. It was based on collaborative learning, proactive planning, robust process, policy engagement, and external evaluation of overall company compliance. This approach sought to help companies enact policies to anticipate and respond to situations in which local law and practice differ from international standards for the rights to privacy and free expression online, to raise public awareness and stakeholder understanding of these issues, and to foster adoption of public policies that address the gaps.;Using a multi-observation case study, this research investigates the participant organizations' motivation to develop this approach to governance and the formation of the policies generated through the resulting negotiations. The data comes from thirty-one interviews, diverse primary and secondary sources, and two years of participant observation. The framework for evaluation is derived from the interrelated factors Philip Pattberg (2007) associates with the development of co-regulatory models: macro-systemic change, problem structure, organizational resources, and new models.;Micro factors of problem structure, including public sector regulation capacity and interconnectedness, and particularly organizational resources, including interests, experience, and prioritization, offered the greatest power to explain the difference between implementers and organizations who either did not participate or helped design the GNI, but chose not implement it. Problem structure was helpful in understanding participation in the design process, and organizational resources offered insights for both the nature of participation and for policy implementation. In terms of macro factors, macro-systemic change was similar for most parties, although there was an influential divergence in problem prevalence among companies. New models varied modestly, but affected the nature of participation, rather than overall likelihood. An inductive exploration into the policy implementation process echoed the prominent role of micro factors, including the importance of trust and organizational factors, and the relevance of multiple stakeholders participating in the negotiations. Individual and organizational experience, an aspect of organizational resources, substantially influenced the accountability model, a key innovation of the process and a surprise.;The work offers insight into the creation and development of new mechanisms for addressing gaps in global governance particularly in the domain of information and communications technologies, noting that government content requests continue to rise rapidly alongside government attempts to access data. The insights are relevant for the creation and development of individual multi-stakeholder processes, as well as a for consideration over wide range of existing and emerging domains in which society's needs are ill served by traditional governance mechanisms.