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<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010>Jefsey,</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN class=804434014-19082010>While
your note below seems to be making some useful points it demonstrates to my mind
precisely one of the major hesitations I have concerning shifting away from
existing approaches to democracy/the governance of governance into any of the
alternatives currently being discussed in forums such as this one, especially
where the main argument is that somehow the technology is forcing these changes
upon us.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN class=804434014-19082010>We are
having a discussion on quite fundamental issues of very broad significance and
relevance and in the midst of this we are bombarded with technical jargon,
references to highly specialized and even arcane areas of expertise and
documentation, and undefined acronyms and neologisms and we are expected that
somehow we are to take this seriously as arguments of more general import. (Or
what would be even worse, nod sagely as though we understood and passed these
along as useful contributions.)</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN class=804434014-19082010>If you
can translate what you have below into any of the official languages of the UN
it would I think be a useful place to begin.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010>Tks,</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=2 face=Arial><SPAN
class=804434014-19082010>Mike</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px" dir=ltr>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr lang=en-us class=OutlookMessageHeader align=left><FONT size=2
face=Tahoma>-----Original Message-----<BR><B>From:</B> jefsey
[mailto:jefsey@jefsey.com] <BR><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, August 19, 2010 12:57
AM<BR><B>To:</B> governance@lists.cpsr.org; Jeremy Malcolm;
governance@lists.cpsr.org; Michael Gurstein<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re:
[governance] multistakeholderism<BR><BR></FONT></DIV>At 05:05 19/08/2010,
Jeremy Malcolm wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite">I haven't been participating in
this discussion, because I don't want to stick too much of an oar in while
I'm co-coordinator, but I've been avidly reading and there have been many
pearls of wisdom exchanged. I'll just pipe up briefly here to add one
short +1 to this, and to make a couple of related
remarks.</BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Interesting debate. However, I do not want to
harp on that too much, but democracy seems to be an <B>outdated concept</B>
that is related to a period of prevalent dialogue calling for an elected chain
of dialogue from bottom to top. With the demographic growth, and its implied
direct horizontal relational consequences, we entered a polylogue period
(people talking to everyone on behalf of everyone), and to facilitate this
polylogue we created the Internet. This is new, and we are learning from
experience as to what <B>polycracy </B>may mean and how one "governs",
together with each other, a 7++ billion multicolor, multicultural,
multilingual, multifaith, etc. States UN, in turn resulting from and dependent
on a developing set of new technologies.<BR><BR>The WSIS offered a panel of
different, and probably prophetic, insights:<BR><BR>- individual<B> people
centrism<BR><BR></B>- <B>dynamic coalitions</B>: everyone can join/quit them
to promote/defend a position<BR><BR>- <B>enhanced cooperations </B>(to be
worked on) to carry common tasks - where the current IESOCANN failure is, due
to the still prevailing ICANN "Class IN" centrism make-believe. However, the
enhanced cooperation mechanism is something that we will probably have to
consider soon enough due to the <B>principle of subsidiarity</B> becoming the
third founding principle (through the IDNA2008 illustration) of the Internet
architecture (after the <B>principle of adaptability</B> as a result of the
principle of permanent change - RFC 1958; and the <B>principle of
simplicity</B> - RFC 3439).<BR><BR>- <B>multistakeholderism</B>. However, in
mainly quoting the governance <B>regalian space</B>, <B>civil society</B>,
<B>private sector,</B> and international bodies, they overlooked three key
missing stakeholder classes: <B>money</B>, <B>users,</B> and <B>adminance</B>.
<BR><BR>--- <B>Adminance</B> is what provides its technical soil to Governance
(standards, operations, structures, training, maintenance, etc.). <BR><B>---
Users</B> are the people who are the center of the whole thing (far away from
CS, which deals with principles, while Users deal with reality).<B> <BR>---
Money </B>is still currently a decimal non-digital transaction memory tool
that is devastated by the emergence of the digital ecosystem and is totally
out of tune with it, and with the emerging polycracy (hence the current
financial crisis and corruption wave [Russia: 50% of the GNP]). <BR><BR>-
the<B> IGF decision making tool</B>. Certainly the least understood
proposition to date. While the main concept is still "coordinated cooperation"
(by US, ICANN, UN...), the IGF is NOT a place for <B>coordination </B>(with
voted motions influenced by lobbies and sponsors), but rather a place for
"<B>concertation</B>" (French/EU meaning), i.e. where <B>everyone </B>can come
to a better, mutually informed,<B> personal </B>decision.<BR><BR>In such a
system, stability can only proceed from what Buckminster Fuller called
"<B>tensegrity</B>" (integrity based on a balance between tension and
compression components).,This is probably a notion that we should explore
better as a multilateral continuation of the East/West Cold War coexistence
and further US globalization attempt.<BR><BR>jfc<BR><BR><BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=cite cite="" type="cite">I agree that civil society must
promote the adoption of a framework for further democratising global
governance (for which "multistakeholderism" is just a convenient and
slightly inaccurate shorthand), beyond the Internet governance regime, in
which it is really just a test-bed.<BR><BR>Agreeing with Wolfgang, and
disagreeing slightly with Parminder, for me the inclusion of the three
stakeholder groups in multi-stakeholder structures has never been about
increasing the power of the private sector, but on the contary, balancing
it. The private sector already has the ear of governments, and by
promoting multistakeholderism we ask nothing more than for the same
privilege.<BR><BR>In Internet governance, we already have a good basic
starting point for such a framework in the WSIS process criteria and the
IGF's (unfulfilled) mandate to assess the performance of Internet governance
institutions against these criteria. Beyond that, the framework is
being taken forward by efforts like the UNECE/CoE/APC Code of Good Practice
on information, participation and transparency in Internet governance
(already referred to in this thread, <A href="http://www.intgovcode.org/"
eudora="autourl">http://www.intgovcode.org/</A>).<BR><BR>Other regimes are
very far behind. I have just written a paper in which I argue for the
development of global principles for governance of the global regime on
intellectual property, in view of the threat of ACTA, whose negotiators not
only flout basic principles of democratic global governance, but also feign
ignorance that they are doing so. One of our workshops (Parminder's)
will deal with this in detail too.<BR><BR>My fear, though, is that whilst
Internet governance is, as I've said, just a test-bed for
multistakeholderism, if it doesn't soon prove its value then it will not
only have been born there but will die there as well, and end up with no
more currency in global governance discourse than communism or
anarchism.<BR><BR>In this respect I respectfully can't agree with Ginger
(another reason I'm piping up now!) about the need to constrain the IGF from
producing "results". The fears about "the pressure of negotiations or
the need for an agreed-upon end 'result'", whilst not unfounded, should be
systematically confronted and addressed rather than fatalistically
accepted.<BR><BR>It is more important that multi-stakeholderism works (and
for us, not just for the incumbent powers) rather than that it doesn't rock
the boat. And by "works", we mean that we need to have an appreciable
impact on shaping actual public policy decisions at a global level. At
the moment, we quite simply don't (research presented at last year's
workshop on "Identifying the Impact" demonstrated this, and the UNSG's
recent remarks also acknowledge it). <BR><BR>In fact there are many ways in
which the power of governments and other powerful actors to screw up the
process can be defused. I've written about these ad nauseum and I
don't intend to do so again here, but read again the summary I wrote for the
IGP for a refresher if you are interested (<A
href="http://internetgovernance.org/pdf/MalcolmIGFReview.pdf"
eudora="autourl">
http://internetgovernance.org/pdf/MalcolmIGFReview.pdf</A>).<BR><BR>With
that out of the way, I'll re-lurk and leave you all to continue these very
productive and interesting discussions.</BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE></BODY></HTML>