(Page 9 of 15) - ICANN, International Institutions, and Development authored by Levinson, Nanette.

provided critical commentary on ICANN-related developments and policy issues. Such
perturbations are common in the early stages of institutionalization, especially when the
institution in question influences or controls resources related to a major international
engine of economic potential.

Even within the United States government, various agencies have demonstrated
possibly conflicting behavior with regard to the new institution. At one point or another
during the first ten months of ICANN’s existence, the U.S. Department of Commerce,
the Department of Justice, and the U.S. Congress all were involved with policy issues
arising out of ICANN’s founding; each agency or organization’s involvement has not
necessarily been complementary to the other. For example, the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Commerce, chaired by Representative Bliley whose
home state provides headquarters for NSI, held hearings in July 1999 on ICANN using
the possibly controversial title, “Is ICANN out of control?” As a part of the hearing, the
committee chair asked specific questions of the U.S. Department of Commerce and of
ICANN.

Institutional Change Processes

Thus, the convergence of telecommunications-related technologies and the growth of
the Internet as an international phenomenon as discussed above provide evidence of
technological discontinuity. As a result of these discontinuities and their related
characteristics of uncertainty and ambiguity, the US Department of Commerce
dominated control of Internet domain names ended in 1998, an example of
deinstitutionalization at work. The creation of the new private sector organization
ICANN and the first five years of its existence provide evidence of incremental steps for
institutionalizing a new and different entity to deal with Internet domain names.

In 1999 I wrote: “The challenge, of course in the next stages of ICANN’s
institutionalization is to observe how it actually realizes such a consensual process
involving governments and individuals. In particular, it will be important to see to what
extent ICANN also involves in its membership process constituencies from all parts of
the world, including those less likely to have access to the Internet. Industry players are
already on the scene and their own concern with influencing Internet-related incomes is
clear…” The first years of ICANN’s existence highlight the flow of ideas shaping
ICANN as an infant institution. Institutionalization processes, as discussed earlier, are
incremental in nature and rarely occur in abrupt form.

What brings about incremental change in an institution? One answer is the introduction
and adoption of an innovation which is patterned in one organizational field and then
introduced to another. A second answer is the emergence of an innovation resulting
from conflicting isomorphic pulls which produce new structures (Ghoshal and Westney,
1993). Patterns of embeddedness—multiple connections at multiple levels to other
individuals and organizations—explain the usual stability of institutions. Tracing the
patterns of ICANN’s increasing embeddedness with other organizations contributes
significantly to our understanding of ICANN’s stability, buffering it from temporal shocks
and fads. Examples include the following: formal connections between ICANN and