Multi-Equal Stakeholderism (was Re: [bestbits] Joint civil society endorsements for London meeting of High-Level Panel)

[Anja Kovacs]

Coming to this thread late, but I did wanted to thank McTim and all others
for clarifying the origins of the multi-equal-stakeholder term for me, and
also for the interesting discussion following that. I can see now how it
founds its way into a letter directed at the ICANN CEO :)

Though like Jeremy, I am not convinced of the usefulness of the term, at
least not if people want to hold it up as *the* model to aspire to. I agree
with those who say that multistakeholderism does not, and should not, look
the same everywhere. Multi-equal-stakeholderism could then be seen as one
of the shapes it can take, but it needn't necessarily be the only one.

Best regards,
Anja


On 1 December 2013 10:03, McTim <mctimconsulting at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 10:00 PM, Jeremy Malcolm <jeremy at ciroap.org>wrote:
>
>> On 1 Dec 2013, at 7:19 am, McTim <mctimconsulting at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  , since many would say the IETF is not multi-stakeholder all,
>>>
>>
>> I've never met anyone who has ever said that.  Are you actually trying to
>> make that claim?
>>
>>
>> Hardly just me, a lot of people were saying so during the last IGF; it
>> was a recurring theme that the term "multi-stakeholderism" had become
>> meaningless because it was being applied to anything and everything.
>>  Although this came through strongly at a number of workshops, i
>> particularly recall that it came up at the pre-event "Technical standards
>> and metrics for measurable impact of multi-stakeholderism" (
>> http://www.internet-science.eu/igf-workshop-2013).  I don't have time
>> right now to look for specific references, but I suspect this observation
>> may have also been made by CIGI (who were co-organisers of that pre-event)
>> in their series of papers at
>> http://www.cigionline.org/series/internet-governance.  This is not to
>> say that the IETF isn't procedurally open, but it isn't multi-stakeholder
>> in any meaningful sense.
>>
>
>
> Except of course that people from all of the artificial WSIS SGs
> participate, which is the definition of MSism in the WSIS sense.
>
>
>>
>> Hence the emergence of a range of more specific terms of which
>> multi-equal stakeholderism is only one, and not even the ugliest.
>>
>>  Stakeholder groupings are artificial boundaries imposed on us at WSIS
>> by government types.
>>
>> It is NOT the way Internet policy has been made during the first 3
>> decades of Internet existence.
>>
>>
>> And they never claimed to be multi-stakeholder back then, either.
>>
>> Though it's still a work in progress, our session at the Best Bits
>> meeting in Bali towards defining multi-stakeholderism made the point very
>> clearly that it required a balancing of power differences between
>> stakeholder groups.  This is vital, otherwise the perspectives of the
>> powerless are simply drowned out.
>>
>
> If everyone is equal, then no one's voice is drowned out.   The notion of
> "power" only comes into play when you buy into intergovernmental
> (ITU/OECD/UNCTAD/$IGO) processes.
>
> I've been a WG Chair in a RIR PDP, and the only power is that of the
> individual, speaking for themselves about what they think is in the best
> interest of the Internet.  Google or the USA has no more power in these
> processes than you and I.  I think that BB and CS in general should embrace
> this kind of equality, not shun it in favor of intergovernmental processes
> where we have to beg for seats at the table in order to talk about the
> shape of other tables where actual policy work is being done.
>
> rgds,
>
> McTim
>



-- 
Dr. Anja Kovacs
The Internet Democracy Project

+91 9899028053 | @anjakovacs
www.internetdemocracy.in
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