[governance] Re: [bestbits] RSVP - discussion of governance mechanisms (was Re: substantive proposals for Brazil summit - IG)

[Avri Doria]

(giving up on the idea of not cc'ing)

On 09-Feb-14 04:20, Ian Peter wrote:
> both are susceptible to this problem and unable to deal with it.


It is the 'unable to deal with it that I' reject.

I think that within our countries for everything that has to do with 
human rights, we need to be in a constant struggle to improve our 
representative democracies. As, for example, I believe those of us in 
the US have a pervasive monitoring disaster we need to fix.

I also believe that within the governance of the Internet, and other 
essentially international phenomena, we need to be constantly improving 
and furthering the practice of multistakeholder governance.  And it is 
improvable, it just takes good will and the ability to work together to 
overcome our essential differences and improve our processes.

I see the multistakeholder models as the next steps in democracy - from 
representative democracy to a participatory democracy that includes 
representative democracies but adds to them.  It is still very new and 
improvable/destructible model.  That is one of the things we should be 
focused on, improving and protecting the model - from those who would 
corrupt it or/and destroy it. The model still breaks down on many 
occasions, and constantly needs work to maintain and improve.

Just as representative democracy itself still needs improvement in those 
countries where it exists, many countries still have a long way to go 
before representative democracy is even a consideration. Only a very few 
nations are already working on participatory democracy. Most forms of 
democracy everywhere are at best poor reflections of what they could be.

But instead of focusing on the work of improving multistakeholder 
governance, we are constantly having to defend it from being killed by 
its enemies from all sides.  If efforts to build genuinely 
multistakeholder governance of the Internet fail, we would be left with 
nothing but unfettered national control in some spots and unfettered 
corporate control in other spots, with a lots of revolving door money 
and power exchanges between the two.  I would see this as a tragedy, 
which we have to be in a constant struggle to avoid.

I think any work we do as a group should with the end in mind of 
improving the multistakeholder models, not destroying them.

avri