Internet governance institutions frequently invoke “the community” as a source of legitimacy. The Constituent Community Doctrine asks which community, what authority it possessed, what mandate it conferred, and whether the authority later claimed remained within those limits.

This article is a public introduction to the Constituent Community Doctrine developed in the full working paper. It does not reproduce the paper’s complete controlled definitions, doctrinal propositions, analytical tests, remedies or forensic applications.

The complete publication develops the distinction between the Conferred Community Mandate and the Claimed Community Mandate, together with the related concepts of Mandate Inflation, Mandate Decay, the Community Authority Chain, the Community Authority Ladder, the Community-Claim Principle, the Expertise Jurisdiction Principle, the Dependency-Legitimacy Principle, the Independent-Judgment Principle and the Constituent Community Modernization Protocol.

The doctrine is intended as a model-neutral framework for examining how Internet governance institutions identify their constituent communities, derive authority, exercise bounded functions and justify claims made in the name of “the community.” It does not advocate universal voting or a single institutional structure and remains subordinate to applicable law, bylaws, contracts, charters and other constitutive instruments.

Internet governance institutions routinely speak in the name of “the community.” Policies are described as “community-developed”, and decisions are justified by community-consensus. Boards, councils, working groups, advisory bodies, technical experts, governments, businesses and civil society actors each claim, at different moments, to represent or express the will of “the community”.

The language is so familiar that it often passes without examination, yet “the community” is not a self-defining constitutional category.

It may refer to those who participate in an open process, those who possess formal voting rights, those who contribute technical expertise, those who operate critical infrastructure, those represented through stakeholder groups, those materially affected by a decision, or some combination of these constituencies. These groups may overlap, but they are not interchangeable. They do not necessarily possess the same authority, face the same consequences or derive their standing from the same source.

The multistakeholder foundation of Internet governance recognizes differentiated roles. The Tunis Agenda defines Internet governance as the development and application, by governments, the private sector and civil society “in their respective roles,” of the principles, rules, procedures and programs shaping the Internet. It also states that Internet management encompasses technical and public-policy issues and should involve all stakeholders and relevant international organizations. The framework therefore recognizes participation across sectors, but it does not establish that every participant possesses the same jurisdiction or decisional authority. (ITU)

This creates a foundational problem for multistakeholder governance. An institution may conduct an open consultation, receive extensive technical input, follow its internal procedures and still make an imprecise or disproportionate claim about what “the community” authorized. Participation can be genuine without being representative. Expertise can be indispensable without being sovereign. Consultation can be meaningful without creating decisional authority. A procedurally valid process can therefore produce an invalid description of its own legitimacy.

The question is not whether multistakeholder governance should be retained. It should. The question is whether its claims of community authority can be made more precise, reviewable and constitutionally disciplined.

That is the purpose of the Constituent Community Doctrine, developed in the full working paper, Who Is the Community? Toward a Constituent Community Doctrine for Multistakeholder Internet Governance. The complete paper is published as Version 3.8 and is available through its permanent DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21416365.

From participation to constituent authority

The doctrine begins with a basic distinction: not every participant in a governance process is a constituent of the relevant decision, and not every constituent possesses the same kind of authority.

The relevant community must therefore be identified in relation to the function being governed and the decision being made. A technical standards process may legitimately assign substantial weight to engineers with specialised competence. A number-resource policy process may be constituted around resource holders, network operators and participants in a regional policy community. A decision involving indigenous rights, public policy, competition, national sovereignty or widespread user dependency may require recognition of constituencies that do not occupy the same institutional position as technical participants.

There is no single universal Internet community possessing identical authority over every issue. There are multiple communities, constituted for different purposes and operating within legal, contractual, technical and institutional boundaries.

The doctrine calls the community possessing relevant standing in relation to a particular governance function the constituent community. It is the body of persons, institutions, affected interests or recognized stakeholder groups whose authority, participation, representation or protection is relevant to the legitimacy of the decision at issue.

This is not an argument for universal voting. It does not demand that every Internet user participate directly in every technical or institutional decision. Such a model would be neither workable nor desirable. The doctrine instead requires an institution to identify the relevant constituent community, explain how it was constituted, distinguish the forms of authority operating within it and ensure that the claim made in the community’s name does not exceed what the process can support.

The central question is therefore not simply: Was the process open?

It is: Who constituted the relevant community for this decision, what authority did that community possess, and what exactly did it authorize?

Conferred mandate and claimed mandate

The word “mandate” is frequently used in Internet governance, but it conceals two different ideas that must be separated.

A Conferred Community Mandate is the decision-specific authority actually granted by a constituent community. It may be granted expressly through a vote, formal delegation, charter, policy-development process or representative mechanism. It may also arise implicitly from a settled institutional framework, provided that the source, scope and limits of the authority can be demonstrated.

The conferred mandate is necessarily bounded. It authorizes an institution, office, representative body or governance process to perform a defined function within identifiable legal, functional, representative, temporal and jurisdictional limits. It cannot be broader than the authority possessed by the community granting it, and it cannot override superior legal or constitutive instruments.

A Claimed Community Mandate, by contrast, is the authority that an institution, decision-making body or representative subsequently asserts that it possesses in the name of the community. It appears in statements such as “the community has decided,” “the Internet community supports this position,” or “this outcome reflects bottom-up consensus.”

The two mandates should normally correspond. The authority claimed after a process should substantially reflect the authority actually conferred through that process. But correspondence cannot be assumed merely because the word “community” is used.

The distinction creates a necessary institutional audit:

• What authority was actually conferred?
• By which constituent community?
• Through what instrument or process?
• For what function and period?
• What authority is now being claimed?
• Is the claimed mandate broader, older, differently sourced or more representative than the conferred mandate permits?

This is where the doctrine moves beyond participation and begins to test legitimacy.

An open process may confer a mandate to develop recommendations, but not to make a final decision. A technical body may possess authority to assess operational feasibility, but not to resolve political rights. A stakeholder group may select a representative without authorizing that person to speak for all Internet users. A historical community may have constituted an institution for one specialized function, while the institution now performs functions carrying much wider economic, political or social consequences.

The governance defect arises when the claimed mandate no longer corresponds to the mandate actually conferred.

Mandate inflation

The doctrine describes the material expansion of a claimed mandate beyond the authority actually conferred as Mandate Inflation.

Mandate inflation occurs when an institution represents a limited, conditional or function-specific authorization as a broader community endorsement. It may arise where consultation is presented as consent, participation as representation, technical advice as decisional authority, silence as approval, or the support of a narrow institutional constituency as the position of “the Internet community.”

It does not necessarily require bad faith. It may emerge gradually through institutional language, inherited assumptions, administrative convenience or repeated compression of a complex process into a simple public statement. Yet the absence of bad faith does not eliminate the governance defect.

Consider a process in which a working group is authorized to develop a recommendation. The working group’s mandate may be legitimate and clearly bounded. A board may be required to give the recommendation substantial or presumptive weight. But if the board treats that presumption as eliminating its own decisional responsibility, the character of the authority has changed.

The institutional finding in such a case may be expressed precisely:

The Board converted a rebuttable institutional presumption into decisional authority without demonstrating the independent judgment required by its governing framework.

This is not merely an objection to an outcome. It concerns the authority chain through which the outcome was reached. Advisory authority, technical authority, presumptive authority and final decisional authority are distinct. One must not be converted into another without a lawful and reasoned basis.

The .AMAZON Independent Review Process provides a clear illustration of this distinction. The review panel recommended that the ICANN Board re-evaluate the applications and exercise “objective and independent judgment” concerning whether well-founded, merits-based public-policy reasons justified their rejection. ICANN’s later Board materials repeated that requirement. The significance lies not only in the underlying dispute but in the proposition that consensus advice or a strong institutional presumption could not, standing alone, substitute for the Board’s assigned judgment. (ICANN)

The corresponding Independent-Judgment Principle requires that where a governing body receives advice, recommendations, presumptions or community-developed outputs, it must still exercise the independent judgment assigned to it by the applicable framework. Deference may structure that judgment, but it does not erase it unless the governing instrument expressly makes another body’s determination binding.

Mandate inflation is therefore not only rhetorical. It can occur within the decision-making structure itself.

Mandate decay

A community mandate is not necessarily perpetual or self-renewing.

Institutions evolve. Technologies change. Dependencies expand. Functions become more politically, economically or socially consequential. The populations affected by institutional decisions may become far broader than the community that originally constituted the organization or granted its authority.

The doctrine calls the weakening of the relationship between an inherited authorization and the authority presently exercised Mandate Decay.

Mandate decay does not automatically terminate institutional authority. Stability and continuity are essential in Internet governance, particularly where critical coordination functions are involved. But material changes in institutional purpose, technology, scale, dependency, representation, affected populations or governing framework create an increasing obligation to review and, where necessary, revalidate the mandate.

An institution originally constituted by a specialized operational community may later make decisions affecting national economies, fundamental rights, market access, public infrastructure or millions of users who have no practical route into its governance process. That does not mean the original community loses all authority. It means the institution can no longer rely on historical legitimacy alone.

The larger the dependency, the greater the burden of justification.

This is the Dependency-Legitimacy Principle: as the number and diversity of persons, networks, economies and public systems dependent upon an institution increase, the institution’s obligation to account for materially affected constituencies also increases. Dependency does not automatically create voting rights, but it creates a legitimate claim to recognition, procedural protection, explanation and review.

Mandate inflation and mandate decay are related but distinct. Inflation concerns the expansion of a claimed mandate beyond what was conferred. Decay concerns the weakening of an otherwise valid mandate through time and changed circumstances. An institution may suffer from one, both or neither.

The community authority chain

The doctrine also rejects the idea that authority is a single, undifferentiated substance.

In most Internet governance processes, authority moves through several institutional layers. A community may establish a policy process. Participants deliberate. Experts provide technical assessments. A working group formulates recommendations. An advisory body raises public-policy concerns. A board exercises final legal authority. Courts, regulators or independent review bodies may remain competent to examine particular aspects of the outcome.

Each stage possesses a different jurisdiction.

The Community Authority Chain traces authority from its source through each institutional layer to the final decision and public claim. At every stage, the inquiry is whether the actor possessed authority exercised, whether that authority remained within its defined limits and whether its output was accurately represented at the next stage.

The IETF’s response to the IANA stewardship transition illustrates the importance of identifying the operational community, the relevant function and the institutional mechanisms through which authority is expressed. RFC 7979 identifies the protocol-parameters community, describes the IETF’s open processes, explains the role of rough consensus, identifies the IESG and IAB’s respective functions and distinguishes the IETF’s responsibilities from those of the names and numbers communities. It demonstrates that “community” becomes meaningful when tied to a defined function, procedure and authority structure. (RFC Editor)

The same point appears in the APNIC region’s NRO Number Council election framework. APNIC’s procedures state that the regional address-policy community seats three individuals on the NRO Number Council, while distinguishing between a position selected by the APNIC Executive Council and positions elected through the community process. APNIC’s voting materials also define which members and authorized contacts may exercise particular voting entitlements. The relevant “community” is therefore not an abstract global public; it is institutionally constituted through specific regional, membership and electoral rules. (APNIC)

This leads to an Expertise Jurisdiction Principle. Expertise justifies authority within the field of competence to which the expertise relates. It does not automatically create general representative or constitutional authority.

Engineers may be best placed to assess whether a protocol is technically sound. Network operators may be best placed to explain routing consequences. Economists may analyse competition effects. Indigenous communities may possess unique standing regarding their names, heritage and cultural rights. Governments may carry public-policy responsibilities. Courts and review bodies may determine legal or constitutional compliance.

A legitimate multistakeholder system does not erase these distinctions. It coordinates them.

The failure to distinguish authority types is one of the principal sources of institutional confusion. Technical credibility may be transformed into political authority. Participation may be transformed into representation. Advisory influence may be transformed into final judgment. Procedural compliance may be transformed into substantive legitimacy. The doctrine requires each transformation to be identified and justified.

“Community” as a proportional claim

The doctrine does not prohibit institutions from using the word “community.” It requires proportionality.

A claim should be no broader than the evidence supporting it. Where a policy was adopted by eligible members of a defined regional institution, the institution should say so. Where a recommendation emerged from participants in an open working group, it should be attributed to that process. Where an advisory committee expressed a view, that view should not automatically be described as the position of the entire Internet community. Where materially affected constituencies were absent, underrepresented or institutionally unable to participate, that limitation should be acknowledged.

This is the Community-Claim Principle: every institutional claim made in the name of a community should identify, expressly or by clear implication, the community being invoked, the basis of its authority, the process through which its position was determined and the limits of the resulting mandate.

The principle is not semantic formalism. Public language affects institutional power. Once a decision is described as “the will of the community,” disagreement may be delegitimised, review may appear anti-community and institutional discretion may be concealed behind collective language.

Precise attribution preserves accountability. It shows who participated, who represented, who advised, who decided, who was materially affected and who retained final responsibility.

Community compression and boundary manipulation

Institutions frequently compress several distinct constituencies into one abstract community. This may be administratively convenient, but it conceals important differences in standing and authority.

The doctrine calls this Community Compression: the treatment of multiple communities with different interests, roles and authority as though they formed one homogeneous decision-making body.

Compression may obscure the differences between members and non-members, participants and materially affected persons, operators and users, technical experts and public authorities, or regional constituencies and global dependencies. It can make a process appear more representative than it is.

A more serious defect arises when the boundary of the relevant community is drawn or altered in a manner that predictably privileges a desired outcome. This is Community Gerrymandering. It may occur through eligibility rules, membership classifications, nomination requirements, participation costs, procedural timing, constituency design or selective recognition of affected parties.

The problem is not that every community boundary must include everyone. Governance requires boundaries. The problem is whether the boundary is functionally justified, legally permissible and proportionate to the decision being made.

A community cannot be defined solely by the people who already agree with the institution invoking it.

A doctrine of testing, not institutional substitution

The Constituent Community Doctrine does not prescribe a single governance model. It does not require every institution to adopt identical stakeholder categories, voting structures or accountability mechanisms. Nor does it displace applicable law, bylaws, treaties, contracts, charters or judicial authority.

Its role is diagnostic and constitutional.

It asks institutions to identify the source of their authority, define the relevant community, distinguish participation from representation, trace authority through the decision-making chain, compare conferred and claimed mandates, account for materially affected constituencies and preserve a competent route for review.

The doctrine can therefore be applied across membership organisations, standards bodies, naming and numbering institutions, regional Internet registries, technical coordination bodies, public-private partnerships, governmental advisory mechanisms and other hybrid governance systems.

It can also operate at different stages.

Before a process begins, it can assist in designing participation and representation. During deliberation, it can clarify the jurisdiction of experts, advisory bodies and decision-makers. At the point of decision, it can test whether the authority exercised matches the authority conferred. After the decision, it can assess whether the institution’s public claim accurately describes the process and whether review remains available.

This becomes especially important during institutional stress. Litigation, receivership, emergency elections, political intervention, technical-continuity claims, external reform proposals and attempted capture often reveal that an institution’s understanding of “the community” was never sufficiently defined. Under normal conditions, ambiguity can remain hidden. Under stress, it becomes decisive.

• Who may vote?
• Who may nominate?
• Who speaks for members?
• Who represents affected networks?
• Which institution retains legal authority?
• Can technical continuity justify extraordinary governance measures?
• Does consultation with selected stakeholders constitute community consent?
• Can a temporary administrator inherit the full political mandate of the institution?
• Can an external body claim to act for a wider community without recognized delegation?

These are constituent-community questions.

Multistakeholder governance needs constitutional precision

For decades, the multistakeholder model has been defended against two principal alternatives: exclusive governmental control and concentrated private control. That defense remains important, but it is no longer sufficient.

The model must also be capable of examining its own internal claims.

“Bottom-up,” “community-led,” “open,” “inclusive” and “consensus-based” are not self-validating terms. Each describes a procedural or institutional quality that must be connected to a defined source of authority. Without that connection, the language of community can conceal rather than demonstrate legitimacy.

The future of multistakeholder governance will depend not only on preserving participation, but also on clarifying constitution.

Institutions should be able to answer, with precision:

• Who is the relevant community?
• How was it constituted?
• What authority did it possess?
• What mandate did it confer?
• What mandate is now being claimed?
• Has that mandate been inflated or weakened by time and institutional change?
• Which actors advised, which represented, which decided and which remain competent to review?

These questions do not undermine the multistakeholder model. They make it more defensible.

The Internet does not need a single universal community empowered to decide every issue. It needs institutions capable of identifying the right community for the right function, respecting the limits of each community’s authority and describing their decisions honestly.

That is the constitutional discipline the Constituent Community Doctrine seeks to provide.

Author’s Note:

This article introduces the independently published working paper, Who Is the Community? Toward a Constituent Community Doctrine for Multistakeholder Internet Governance, Version 3.8.

The complete paper, including its controlled definitions, doctrinal propositions, analytical tests and forensic applications, is available through the permanent DOI:

Permanent DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21416365
Zenodo record:https://zenodo.org/records/21416365
Author’s website:https://amindayekh.com/who-is-the-community/

References:

1. World Summit on the Information Society, Tunis Agenda for the Information Society, particularly paragraphs 34 and 35.
2. Amin Dayekh, Who Is the Community? Toward a Constituent Community Doctrine for Multistakeholder Internet Governance, Version 3.8, 2026.
3. Internet Engineering Task Force, RFC 7979: Response to the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group Request for Proposals on the IANA Protocol Parameters Registries, August 2016.
4. APNIC, NRO Number Council Election Procedures.
5. APNIC, NRO Number Council Voting.
6. ICANN Independent Review Process Panel, Amazon EU S.à r.l. v. ICANN—Final Declaration, 11 July 2017.
7. ICANN Board, Approved Resolutions—Regular Meeting of the ICANN Board, 10 March 2019.

Copyright Notice:

Copyright © 2026 Amin Dayekh. Some rights reserved.

This article may be shared with attribution and a link to the original publication. The underlying working paper is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution—NonCommercial—NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

The working paper may be copied and redistributed in its original and complete form for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author. Adaptations, translations, abridgments, modifications, derivative publications and commercial use require the author’s prior written permission.