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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On Thursday 14 March 2013 02:12 PM,
William Drake wrote:<br>
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<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> Bill<br>
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All 'agreements' where unequal power is leveraged to obtain
unequal gains bother me. (Parminder) <br>
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<div>Fair enough, it's a principled stance, albeit one that
would seem to require being permanently and pervasively
bothered.(Bill)</div>
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:) Dear Bill, Living by principles can be a very happy life.... Yes,
my organisation takes it as a starting point that there is
structural injustice of very deep and inhuman kind in many if not
most of the things around us, and we should try to address them in
the small ways we can. And we constantly check our acts and
positions against this - whether they are aimed at ameliorating
these structural injustices. And I have met some of the happiest
people I know in this line of work, so please do not essentialize.
(P)<br>
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<div> But back to where we started, I recognize that you feel
that universal multilateralism is inherently better than
smaller-n collaborations, and for certain classes of problems
I'd agree with you. (B)<br>
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In my earlier email I have clearly stated what kind of uni/
pluri-lateralism I resist..... and I quote " The bilateral and
plurilateral agreements that I problematize are the ones of the
typical pick and choose variety taken up by counties like the US,
and also such established plurilateral processes like the OECD that
intend to engage in 'global' rule making. (There are indeed genuine
cultural links based grouping like Council of Europe that has done
considerable normative work.)"<br>
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Is it not clear enough? I have not made exclusive multilateralism an
article of faith as you allege below. Indeed I think that there
should be closer trade ties and agreement among South Asian
countries (and also in other regions). This discussion is in the
clear context of the extant situation whereby OECD countries for
instance do policy work on Internet issues in a manner that brings
up de facto global rules, but oppose multilateral systems to deal
with same issues in the same matter... Bill, why dont you just
discuss this specific issue, rather than we go round and round on
all possible typifications and peripheral categories - which
discussion will always be endless.<br>
<br>
You recently joined the civil society advisory group of the OECD's <span
class="st">Committee on Computer,Information and Communication
Policy (CCICP) </span>- which is OECD's Internet policy related
organ. You must be aware that there is a clear desire to export OECD
recently developed "Principles for Internet policy making' to non
OECD countries. A great lot of work is being done in this committee
that you are well aware of which is distinctly Internet policy
related work...... Why then when we try to discuss a similar
committee at a multilateral level you seem to come up with so many
doubts about whether there at all are any Internet policy issues
that are not already being taken up at other forums and need a
special Internet policy related committee.<br>
<br>
OECD has more than 40 other committees, on trade, IP, practically
every area of activity for which there is a UN/ muti-lateral body
...... Why dont you ever ask the same question to OECD's CCICP about
the need for a specialised Internet policy related body. And even if
you are not into question asking, why do you bother - and you have
been rather insistent - to work with CCICP, when by your logic such
a body should in fact not be required (the logic you use when we try
to discuss a similar body at the multilateral level). Are these not
obvious questions? <br>
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And of course there is the question of multistakeholder
participation. As you know UN CIRP proposed a stakeholder
participation model which is distinctly more evolved, and better,
that CCICP's. So, why anti multistakeholder allegations against UN
CIRP and desire to work with CCICP. (Lets consider a UN CIRP minus
the CIR oversight functions, for this discussion, which is also IT
for Change's proposal. )<br>
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OK, even if you do not want to get into CIRP territory, and we are
to stick to the plurilateral versus multilateral discussion;<br>
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Since we can see that OECD's CICCP deals with Internet policy
matters, and not only the Internet is essentially global, OECD
members have a distinct desire to make outputs of CICCP (and CICCP
plus processes) into *global* rules, and since there is no current
multilateral body dealing with issues that CICCP deals with, do you
agree that a similar body at the multilateral / UN level is a good
idea, or is indeed very much needed. If you do not think so, what
are your reasons.<br>
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If we pursue these lines we may be more focussed on why
uni/plurilateralism versus multi-lateralism is being discussed here,
and our discussions may be more fruitful.<br>
<br>
parminder <br>
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<div> I guess we would disagree on the other classes, and on
whether that 'better' also includes by definition a greater
propensity to the sort of overarching principles and norms you
value and a lower propensity toward power games and relative
gains. On these points I'd argue it's preferable to be guided
by empirical analyses than by a priori assumptions, and that
whether multilateralism or minilateralism is more functionally
effective and politically palatable in a given case may depend
on a variety of factors—issue area properties, linkages to
other policy spaces, institutional capacity, etc. Sometimes
big just works less well and smaller is more beautiful, and a
lot of the effort that's gone into devising more diverse
arrangements over the past 30 years or
so—plurilateral/regional/transgovernmental/public-private/multistakeholder
etc—cannot be explained simply as a drive to maximize power
and exclude less powerful states, especially insofar as the
latter are often participants. Nor is it necessarily the case
that the expansion of architectural options comes in a hard
binary way at the expense of multilateral institutions; their
roles instead have been rearticulated in a more diverse
topography, as per the WTO in a world of varying trade
agreements. Anyway, I'm sure I can't persuade you, but I
think it's fair to ask that you not just assume that anyone
who expresses reservations about omnibus multilateral
'oversight' etc. must be doing so because they favor imperial
power relations and domination etc. If you make absolute
fealty to multilateralism an article of faith you're going to
be bothered by a lot of colleagues a lot of the time and give
short shrift to alternatives that merit due consideration…</div>
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<div>Cheers</div>
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<div>Bill</div>
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