Marc Holitscher (marc@holitscher.org)

Marc is a research associate and co-founder of the UIS. He is currently employed as head assistant and lecturer at the Department of International Relations at the Center for Comparative and International Studies of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Before finishing his dissertation in spring 2003, Marc worked as a member of the Editorial Committee of the Swiss Political Science Review and published as a journalist on several Internet-related topics.

His research interests include the increasing capability of the private sector to act as a key alternative producer of governance functions in international affairs, or the increasing willingness (need?) of traditional nation-states to share their powers with private actors in this domain respectively.

In his dissertation, Marc asks why hybrid governance arrangements in the field of the new communications technologies develop on a global scale and what the driving forces are. The theoretical framework of his work combines recent approaches to global governance with positive theories of regulation. Against this background, Marc explains why ICANN was finally founded as an international private organization while any intergovernmental solution has been successfully avoided by the US-government.

(You can download the dissertation in full-text from here. German only.)

Marc has organized a widely recognized debate on Internet Governance that has been published in the Swiss Political Science Review.

For additional information, please go to http://www.holitscher.org/