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At 05:05 19/08/2010, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite 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outdated concept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 type=cite class=cite 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></body>
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