Abstract
What could be the contribution of Ostrom's analysis in the field of Internet governance? We first justify our appeal to the model of institutional choice, showing that the Internet system is no longer just in an obvious logic of private property and in a clear logic of public goods, but now in a new logic of appropriating limited resources, as defined by E. Ostrom (including energy and environmental resources). We then analyze the Internet governance institution as a regime of low legitimacy (combining libertarian self-regulation, normative co-regulation and organized multi-regulation) and the governance of Wikipedia as a collective consensus system approach (involving mutual vigilance control of conflicts and graduated sanctions). Ostrom's analysis on self-organizing systems can finally justify the legitimacy of local control for the Internet (operational decisions, collective choice and constitutional choice) and the necessary reflexivity for the choices (in what Ostrom called multiple local arenas where these rules are developed).