[bestbits] Outcome of cyberspace conference in Seoul

[Pranesh Prakash]

michael gurstein [2013-10-08 10:47]:
> Pranesh,
> 
> You are providing a very peculiar list of "developing" countries--"Chile,
> Egypt, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Latvia, Mexico, Poland, Senegal, Turkey".

The IMF lists 156[1] developing countries,[2] and 21 developed
countries, and that's the list I used.  As per the IMF, all 10 of the
above are EMDEs.

On the other hand, the World Bank classification[3] lists 139 as
developing countries, and the above countries break-down as:

Lower-middle-income economies:
Egypt
India
Indonesia
Senegal

Upper-middle-income economies:
Hungary
Mexico
Turkey

High-income economies:
Chile (OECD member)
Latvia
Poland (OECD member)

The World Bank considers all low- and middle-income economies to be
"developing".  So that would cut down the list of 10 countries to 7.

Cheers,
Pranesh

 [1]: These are the 21 countries that are "Advanced Economies" (as
opposed to "Emerging Market and Developing Economies") and are not
considered developing countries by the IMF: Australia, Austria, Belgium,
Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy,
Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
 [2]: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/text.pdf
 [2]:
http://data.worldbank.org/about/country-classifications/country-and-lending-groups

> By my, and I believe most reckonings there are 3 actual DC's in your list
> (from some 130?? or so)--India, Indonesia, and Senegal--hardly a sufficient
> number to be drawing any useful conclusions from.

I'm sorry if it came across that way, but I don't mean to draw crude
'useful conclusions' as to what developing countries want and don't
want.  (I hardly want to draw conclusions, for that matter, useful or
otherwise.)  I'm just wondering aloud what practical differences would
be between the IG policy stances of developing countries and developed
countries.  I'm looking for hypotheses, not conclusions.

Would you hypothesise that developing countries would be more
left-leaning than developed countries, and more prone to state
intervention in lieu of market mechanisms?  And if so, would any of them
do so by actually negating all market-related terminology in the
principles or by using caveats along the lines of "while we would
ideally like to allow markets, in those cases where markets can't or
don't deliver the universal access at the low costs that we desire, we
as states will have to step in".  If it is the latter, I wonder which
developed country would oppose that language, since language similar to
that already exists in the OECD+ Seoul Declaration of 2008.

This is a thought experiment I'd like to garner responses from and
learn.  Because I really don't know much about this, and have done far
less work around these issues than you (Michael), APC, IT for Change,
LIRNEAsia, Consumers International, and so many other groups that work
on these issues.

Cheers,
Pranesh

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Policy Director
Centre for Internet and Society
T: +91 80 40926283 | W: http://cis-india.org
PGP ID: 0x1D5C5F07 | Twitter: @pranesh_prakash
-------------------+
Postgraduate Associate & Access to Knowledge Fellow
Information Society Project, Yale Law School
T: +1 520 314 7147 | W: http://yaleisp.org

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