Standardization as Governance Without Government

Industry-led technical standardization is often cited as an example for governance without government and the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project is often presented as a particularly successful case of such private governance. Succeeding the spectacular failure of the government-led high-definition television standardization project in European, the successes of the industry-led DVB Project have often been cited as evidence for the superior governance capacity of private industry. While the commercial and engineering success of the DVB Project is unequivocal, this paper raises the question whether it has been equally successful from a governance point of view.