[bestbits] On the legitimacy of civil-society-only meetings, e.g. ISF (was Re: APrIGF Macao...)

[Norbert Bollow]

On Wed, 1 Apr 2015 10:44:56 +0000
"Ang Peng Hwa (Prof)" <TPHANG at ntu.edu.sg> wrote:

> If even the World Economic Forum is recognising the
> importance of a multistakeholder model
> http://www.weforum.org/reports/future-role-civil-society, would not a
> civil-society-only meeting be a step backward?

Actually the World Economic Forum (WEF) has for quite some time now been
a highly influential proponent of multistakeholderism, and if my
current understanding of the history of multistakeholderism and its
currently-dominant ideology is correct, the WEF even deserves to be
credited as being one of the main inventors of that ideology.

I'm going to address the above question slightly outside of its original
context, since it was asked in the context of an IGF workshop proposal,
for which the implied claim of that proposed workshop being a
“civil-society-only” meeting is simply false.

Independently of that context, I think that it is important to address
this questioning of the legitimacy of civil society only meetings. For
example, the Internet Social Forum itself (for which I am among the
proponents) is in fact intended to be a “civil society only” meeting
(specifically in the sense of the World Social Forum participation
criteria).

In my view, questioning the legitimacy of holding civil-society-only
meetings for purposes of discussion and strategizing and seeking to
build momentum within civil society for proposed public interest
oriented agendas is like questioning the legitimacy of the desire of
businesses to be profitable, or questioning the legitimacy of the desire
of governments to fund themselves through taxes.

I find it quite noteworthy that an ideology of multistakeholderism has
brought us to the point where the legitimacy of quite central kinds of
civil society processes are now being called into question.

Greetings,
Norbert

P.S. For the benefit of any newcomers to this debate:
IGF= Internet Governance Forum, http://intgovforum.org
ISF= Internet Social Forum, http://InternetSocialForum.net