3
The Evolution of GMCP Institutions
Introduction
This chapter has two purposes. The first is to introduce the main institutions that currently shape the carriage and content aspects of media and communication policy at the global level, either directly or indirectly. The second is to discuss how the institutional landscape of global media and communication policy (GMCP) has changed over the past thirty to forty years, and to suggest how it may evolve in the decade ahead, as a result of the interplay between technological, economic, social, and political forces.
The first of these purposes will be achieved by presenting a series of short profiles of five institutions that have well-defined roles in GMCP: the International Telecommunication Union (ITU); the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); the World Trade Organization (WTO); and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition, there will be a brief discussion of emerging multi-stakeholder governance structures, such as the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which are not yet fully institutionalized but may be harbingers of things to come.1
The second purpose will be achieved by constructing an account of the main trends and developments that have taken place in the GMCP institutional domain over the past three to four decades in response to the emergence of a series of policy paradigms. These paradigms ...
