[governance] Reflections on making Internet governance democratic and participative

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 20/05/2015 3:19 am, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> I would be very interested in in your thoughts about this:
>
> Reflections on making Internet governance democratic and participative
> by Norbert Bollow and Richard Hill
>
> http://bollow.ch/papers/democratic_and_participative.pdf
>
>
> Abstract: Recent events have made clear that there is a conflict
> between the demand that global governance must be democratic and the
> ideology of multistakeholderism

Opening the abstract with a reference to the "ideology of
multistakeholderism" gives us the first hint about where this is going...

> which underlies the status quo of
> Internet governance. This paper examines to what extent this conflict
> is real (as opposed to being a matter of misunderstandings and/or
> intentional misrepresentations of the other side's positions),

Perpetrated in large part by the authors, which again suggests that we
might not expect a particularly impartial examination of the topic...

> and it
> reflects on how the underlying problem of making Internet governance
> democratic as well as participative can be solved.

Then once you get into the paper itself, the fever pitch of its
condemnation of multi-stakeholderism is underlined by the use of "?!" to
end the second and third paragraphs, which leads into the ad hominem
attacks.  (This paper just gets better and better!)

It then claims that the rift that JNC members have opened "can be
well-characterized as a rift between pro-multistakeholder and
pro-democracy viewpoints", which I suppose it can, if you skip over the
rest of that page which immediately contradicts itself by quoting
advocates of multi-stakeholder processes explaining how these are simply
intended to extend democratic principles at the global level.

Then we move into denialism about the implications of bandying about
words at the United Nations.  Apparently, "Whenever a word has a
well-established literal meaning, and it is commonly used in the sense of
that meaning, then it has that meaning everywhere where that literal
meaning makes sense".  I am grateful for the authors' deep insight into
diplomatic language, because I had the mistaken impression that when
Chen Xu of China spoke at the Global Conference on Cyberspace saying the
Internet governance needs to be promoted "in line with principles of
multilateralism, transparency and democracy", he meant something
different by "democracy" than what I would mean.

The next part is my favourite paragraph in the whole paper because it's
so unintentionally funny, so I'm just going to set it out without comment:

"In the present case, we think that the main reason for the resistance
to proposals for using the word “democratic” as part of normative
international documents on Internet governance is that our opponents
know that we are serious advocates for democracy, and that we will not
be satisfied when just a bit of lip service is given to democracy. We
insist that Internet governance must be made democratic in actual reality."

Then we slide into a democracy 101 lecture, which moves into the novel
claim that the only way to stop global governance processes from being
captured is to anchor them in the United Nations.  Well, that's a
testable proposition and probably the first useful part of the paper, in
that it's the first clear statement of what JNC actually believes,
rather than hand-wavy claims like that they are such serious advocates
for democracy!?

Some of the other points that follow, such as about the reliance on
English in existing processes, are also good (and valid criticisms of
some existing multi-stakeholder processes, though not of the ideals that
underlie them). In all seriousness I did also find "at the heart of the
sociodynamics of the ideology of multistakeholderism is the desire of
members of the Internet 'technical community' to be able to prevent or
at least minimize the risk of state action that interferes with the
Internet" to be a valid critique of ISOC's position, which I have also
(despite being an evil multi-stakeholderist) always criticised.  However
it's certainly not valid as a broader critique of, say, the
multi-stakeholder models that governments support.

The paper concludes with what is, in light of the previous incendiary
criticisms by JNC of civil society groups' participation in initiatives
such as NMI, a surprising concession that "Incremental improvements are
valuable
and helpful even where they do not fully achieve the desired objective
that all Internet governance
must be democratic and participative".  I can't argue with that, but it
really does shine an uncomfortable light on JNC's mode of engagement
with its civil society colleagues, which has frequently been destructive
and alienating.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Senior Global Policy Analyst
Electronic Frontier Foundation
https://eff.org
jmalcolm at eff.org

Tel: 415.436.9333 ext 161

:: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World ::

Public key: https://www.eff.org/files/2014/10/09/key_jmalcolm.txt
PGP fingerprint: FF13 C2E9 F9C3 DF54 7C4F EAC1 F675 AAE2 D2AB 2220
OTR fingerprint: 26EE FD85 3740 8228 9460 49A8 536F BCD2 536F A5BD

Learn how to encrypt your email with the Email Self Defense guide:
https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20150520/200f5593/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 244 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20150520/200f5593/attachment.sig>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t