Abstract
Internet governance scholars and members from the Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen collaborated on this volume to produce an interdisciplinary discussion surrounding data governance and polycentrism. The three-part approach, divided as a focus on theories and concepts of studying digital date governance (part I), controversies surrounding digital date governance (part II), and technology, protocols, blockchain, and AI (part III) aims to create an argument surrounding the usefulness of the polycentric approach to addressing and understanding new digital technologies and modes of data governance. In chapters 1 and 2, contributors present the Ostrom/Bloomington conception of the polycentric system and point to the usefulness of it as ‘the capacity for spontaneous self-correction …, self-organization and interaction among diverse stakeholders.’ The volume concludes by averting attention to potentialities of future work within multistakeholderism, sociological theory, temporality and normative concerns.