Who’s behind the wheel? Assessing the Autonomy of Internet Regulatory Agencies from Corporate Interests.

Despite the increasing importance of regulatory agencies in global politics (Coen and Thatcher, 2005; Mattli and Woods 2009; Büthe and Mattli, 2011), knowledge of their institutional-formal and informal autonomy from corporate interests remains strongly limited. This paper investigates the extent to which regulatory agencies are autonomous from corporate interests as well as the determinants of agencies’ informal autonomy in the context of internet governance. To this end, it uses a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative analysis of twelve global internet agencies and eleven interviews with senior officials of these agencies. The findings primarily suggest that informal autonomy from private interests is determined by the complexity of the policies developed by the agency (where more complex policies weaken autonomy), the level of media attention accorded to the agency (which increases autonomy), and the agency’s age (which weakens autonomy). Assessing autonomy from corporate interests is of crucial importance for overcoming the democratic deficits of global forms of governance (Take 2012; Ewert et al. 2018). Furthermore, the present paper contributes to expanding our knowledge on the little-known global internet agencies which, to an important extent, work beyond the purview of democratic accountability (Christou et al. 2020).