The Constituent Community Doctrine for Multistakeholder Internet Governance

Zenodo Description Who Is the Community? Toward a Constituent Community Doctrine for Multistakeholder Internet Governance develops a doctrinal framework for testing claims made in the name of “the community” within Internet governance institutions. Multistakeholder organisations routinely describe policies, decisions, and institutional outcomes as community-developed, community-led, or supported by community consensus. Yet the term “community” is often left undefined, even where it is used to justify the exercise of authority. This paper argues that participation, expertise, representation, consultation, and decisional authority are distinct forms of institutional standing and should not be treated as interchangeable. The paper introduces the Constituent Community Doctrine, under which the legitimacy of a community claim depends on identifying the relevant constituent community, explaining how that community was constituted, tracing authority through the decision-making process, distinguishing the authority actually conferred from the authority later claimed, accounting for materially affected constituencies, and preserving competent review. The paper develops a structured vocabulary that includes the Community Authority Chain, Community Authority Ladder, Conferred Community Mandate, Claimed Community Mandate, Mandate Inflation, Mandate Decay, Community Compression, Community Gerrymandering, Authority Migration, the Expertise Jurisdiction Principle, the Dependency-Legitimacy Principle, the Community-Claim Principle, the Independent-Judgment Principle and the Constituent Community Modernisation Protocol. A central distinction is drawn between a mandate actually conferred by a constituent community and the broader mandate an institution may later claim in that community’s name. The doctrine treats material divergence between the two as a governance defect requiring explanation, correction or review. The framework is model-neutral and does not prescribe universal voting, a single stakeholder structure, or one institutional design. It is intended as a diagnostic and constitutional tool capable of application across standards bodies, naming and numbering institutions, regional Internet registries, membership organisations, advisory structures, and other hybrid governance systems. The paper also applies the doctrine to three institutional case studies: the IETF IANAPLAN process, an APNIC NRO Number Council election, and the ICANN .AMAZON proceedings. These applications demonstrate how community claims can be tested against the actual source, scope, and movement of authority. The paper is intended for scholars, policymakers, Internet governance practitioners, technical community participants, institutional boards, accountability bodies, and others concerned with the legitimacy of multistakeholder decision-making. Suggested keywords: Internet governance; multistakeholder governance; institutional legitimacy; constituent community; community mandate; mandate inflation; mandate decay; ICANN; IETF; APNIC; regional Internet registries; accountability; governance doctrine; institutional authority; bottom-up governance.