> Yet another example of multi-stakeholderism is the standardization of Internet protocols themselves. Because a specification controls implementation behavior, the standardization process can be seen as a single point of control. As a result, Internet standards bodies like the IETF allow open participation....

This cuts to the heart of it. In my book "The Big Bucks" the characters live through this, and in the 80s it was very often assumed that "multi-stakeholderism" meant a government-chartered body like the CCITT. In fact, in 1990, the federal government actually mandated OSI via GOSIP (there was no commercial Internet then). The consensus on the internet-history mailing list is that by then the war was already over, and TCP had won.

After all, governments MUST be the proper place to balance all the competing interests, mustn't they? So why didn't it work?

Well, TCP was "simple" enough that anyone could implement it, whereas OSI had a whole bunch of "profiles" to accommodate what everyone wanted. As a result, interoperability was impossible as a practical matter.

Network operators didn't even try, since TCP had Interop conferences where vendors came and proved themselves TCP citizens. OSI had nothing remotely comparable. With IETF, things didn't become standards until you had multiple interoperating implementations.

It's a different world now, though. The stakeholders are not all grad students and defense company network administrators. However, a government-sponsored "standards" organization won't work any better now than it did then.