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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Milton<br>
<br>
There is no effort to artificially separate the economic aspects of our
lives from social, political and cultural. They are thoroughly
enmeshed. <br>
<br>
The point is whether we agree or not that large scale global share
capital is structurally organized to be insulated as much as possible
from human qualities. (Do you deny that global capital and financial
systems systematically follow this logic as resulting in higher and
higher efficiency of capital organization and movement - and
increasingly so, of which the recent financial meltdown was one
result, making it necessary for the world community to sit up and take
notice. The corrective measures were in the form of greater 'political'
controls/ regulations - which denotes real human quality checks on
increasing disconnection of finance/ capital from human systems.)<br>
<br>
If this is so, how would you say that such global share capital should
have a political say or STAKE, as part of MS political systems, which
need to be dealing with real human (ok, individual if you want!) issues
and human situations. <br>
<br>
</font><font face="times new roman">>But how would you feasibly and
productively lock anything or anyone associated with _all_ corporations
in the ICT >industry from a public dialogue of that sort?<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">One intends to lock
no one away from public dialogs, but only from exercising political
role as parts of proposed MS structures. This back and forth and
confusion between right to be part of a public dialogue and having
political legitimacy in an MS structure is one of the most important
confusions in MS discussions.</font><br>
<font face="times new roman"><br>
sooner or
later the school district is going to purchase some >products.
public
monies are going to be allocated and spent. Expertise which is
concentrated in business (for a >good reason - the expertise is
valuable) will ahve to be tapped.</font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><br>
This is the second most significant confusions in MS discussions
(partly because this model id often seen to come from a background of
technical governance) when ' a source of expertise' is confused with a
party with real/ live political interest/ stake and thus probably
political legitimacy. I expect you to agree that having expertise on a
subject, which can and should always be tapped for decision making,
does not translate in any way to a political stake. I also saw
references to this confusion in Bertrand's MS formulation - 'anyone who
has something to contribute should be let in' kind of. Also goes
against Ostrom's principle 1 of common resources management concerning
definition of real stakes of a party in a governance issue. <br>
<br>
Parminder <br>
<br>
</font><br>
Milton L Mueller wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:75822E125BCB994F8446858C4B19F0D701C79C6D1B@SUEX07-MBX-04.ad.syr.edu"
type="cite">
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<div dir="ltr"><br>
>Parminder:<br>
>I agree with Milton's doubts whether the MS framework contributes
anything new </div>
<div style="direction: ltr;">>(in a positive sense) for organising
our political systems. What does the term
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>stakeholder
groups bring in beyond what we already know as 'interest groups',
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>a
basic and a widely used concept of representative democracy. Unless
those
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>arguing
for MS-ism as the basic new governance form clearly articulate a
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>response
to this question, it is difficult to go any further in this discussion.
</div>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">To repeat myself, I do see a value in
the MS concept as a transitional principle that opens up and slightly
democratizes inter-governmental organizations. Other than that, you are
exactly correct, in a fundamental political science sense, that we are
dealing with interest groups. And that raises some very important
issues, which i superficially discuss below.</font></p>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><br>
>Bertrand (in response to Milton):<br>
>Do you actually mean a sort of "personal sovereignty" principle,
that would enable individuals to gather in >numerous human
groupings, including nations, but also business and non-profit entities
?</div>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">My answer: Yes, exactly, and the
quotation from Kofi Annan cited was a good expression of my view, which
sparked such a negative reaction, about governance institutions being
servants of the individual rather than the other way around. </font></p>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><br>
>Parminder:<br>
>This brings me to the gorilla-in-the-room question of MS-ism - the
role </div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">> </font>and
legitimacy of big business in political structures.
</div>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">As I will try to explain below, I
don't think this question is restricted to MS-ism advocates. It is a
question that permeates discussions about the validity and legitimacy
of all democratic, open forms of government.
</font></p>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><br>
>It is important to discuss how, at a theoretical level,
organization </div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>into
a business unit is very different from political interest based
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>collectives
- governments, or non-gov bodies. Again, this is a
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>principal
issue that needs to be clarified by Ms-ists. The conflation
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>of
'interests' and structures of business organization - especially of
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>the
trans-global share capital based kind - with human organisations
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>and
collectives with shared 'lifeworld' (a world that subjects may
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>experience
together) based interests is very problematic, and
</div>
<div style="direction: ltr;"><font face="times new roman">></font>requires
clarification.
</div>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">As a realist and student of
historical processes, I cannot accept the implied rigid distinction
between economic and political humanity, or between a nice, human
collective lifeworld and an impersonal, evil, inherently exploitative
economic world. It's all part of humanity. Most obviously, the ability
to share, organize and pool wealth to produce the things humans want
and need is an inescapable part of society. The corporation is a form
of collective organization; share capital is a way of broadening and -
yes - democratizing the ownership and benefits of economic production.
Labor unions are also a form of collective economic organization. Given
too much power, both a corp or a union can become abusive and gain
harmful forms of economic restraint on the rest of us. The problem is
that once you set up a form of government that is representative of the
interests, desires and visions of the people you also allow them to
organize in ways that further or defend their economic (as well as
social, political, cultural, etc.) interests. I don't see any way to
detach the two. </font>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">Go back to your specific example of
Microsoft and its participation in Indian ICT education programs. I
don't know the specifics so forgive any factual errors. OK, so sure, it
would be relatively easy (well, not easy in practice, but easy in
theory) to identify and avoid some simple forms of corruption:
Microsoft pays local board of ed administrator a bribe, suddenly the
schools all go Windows and lock themselves into a specific vendor's
product. Obviously we don't want to allow that. But how would you
feasibly and productively lock anything or anyone associated with _all_
corporations in the ICT industry from a public dialogue of that sort?
sooner or later the school district is going to purchase some products.
public monies are going to be allocated and spent. Expertise which is
concentrated in business (for a good reason - the expertise is
valuable) will ahve to be tapped. The people - both in the government
and outside the government, both in corporations and as final consumers
- all have some kind of an "economic" interest in that money, not just
corporations. The government bureaucrat may have an "interest" in
expanding his share of the public budget; the competitor of Microsoft
may have an interest and benefit economically from excluding MS; an
individual or end user might have an economic interest in receiving
some of that money whether they need it more than someone else or not. </font></p>
<p> </p>
<div style="direction: ltr;">
<p><font face="times new roman">If you could "assume away" economic
interest and restrict political dialogue to some Olympian grotto where
philosopher-kings considered all options in a disinterested way, well,
we wouldn't be talking about this species.
</font></p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">Democracy would be all too easy if
this problem didn't exist. I guess you have to trust the ability of
people to make sense of things in an open environment.</font></p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="times new roman">There's an interesting book about
this problem I read back when I started considering these issues. It's
called
<span id="btAsinTitle">The People's Lobby: Organizational Innovation
and the Rise of Interest Group Politics in the United States,
1890-1925. Elisabeth Clemens.
</span></font></p>
<p> </p>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Bertrand de La Chapelle wrote: </div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">Milton,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Do you actually mean a sort of "personal sovereignty"
principle, that would enable individuals to gather in numerous human
groupings, including nations, but also business and non-profit entities
? so that the unifying governance unit becomes stakeholders of various
sizes but with equal status instead of three (or four) separate and
siloed stakeholder groups ?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>B.<br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Milton L
Mueller <span dir="ltr">
<<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:mueller@syr.edu">mueller@syr.edu</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
________________________________________<br>
From: Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond [<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:ocl@gih.com">ocl@gih.com</a>]<br>
<div class="im"><br>
> - governments: law and order<br>
> - business: economy and money<br>
>- civil society: conscience<br>
><br>
>Any social ecosystem requires all three to work. Take one out and
either<br>
>the system will fail, tear itself apart, or reach an untenable
extreme.<br>
>That's why I believe in multi-stakeholderism.<br>
<br>
</div>
Nice formulation, Olivier. But suppose we called it "popular
sovereignty" and "individual rights" instead of "multistakeholderism" -
would that not allow individuals, in various aggregations, to produce
the appropriate mix of law, order, economy and conscience? Is not the
division into three estates (with millions of individuals overlapping
and participating in two or more at the same time) artificial?<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
--MM____________________________________________________________<br>
</font>
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<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
____________________<br>
Bertrand de La Chapelle<br>
Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for
the Information Society<br>
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes/ French Ministry of
Foreign and European Affairs<br>
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32<br>
<br>
"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de
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("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")<br>
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