[governance] Oversight: Are we forgetting principles? ... Common But Differentiated Responsibilities

[Jovan Kurbalija]

Let me add a few reflections on Milton's important message on principles... 


The principle of common but differentiated (or specific) responsibilites
could broaden "zone of possible agreement". This princple which is used in
the article 49 of the WSIS Declaration is gaining importance in
international negotiations (especially in fields far from "sovereignty
nexus").  Recently, it has been used largely in environmental and
commodities treaties/regimes (e.g. under the Timber Convention, Brazilian
and other timber exporters have more weighted votes than other signatory
parties). 

Ue of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities is
probably the way out of "zero-sum" thinking on IG. Such decision-making
architecture should be asymmetric and diversified (already introduced in
various CS inputs and the WGIG Report; Wolfgang - meachnisms of mechanisms,
etc.). The main criterioon for assigning issue to each stakeholder would be
stakeholder's interest and capacity to deal with particular IG issue. The
"grey zone" issues could be handled through a carefully designed system of
checks-and-balances. 

Please let me know if you think that this principle should be elaborated
more and included in some of CS proposals.


JK

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Message: 1
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2005 10:47:53 -0400
From: "Milton Mueller" <Mueller at syr.edu>
Subject: [governance] Oversight: Are we forgetting principles?
To: <governance at lists.cpsr.org>
Cc: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Message-ID: <s339237a.081 at gwia201.syr.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Let me begin by thanking those in Geneva for their incredibly hard and often
quite talented work. I understand the need to improvise out there and to
seize opportunities to influence the governmental negotiators. 

I do however feel concerned about the degree to which we are "flying blind"
on the key issue of political oversight of ICANN. As Bill Drake pointed out
a few days ago, Civil Society (and governments, too) really didn't do their
homework on this issue. Although we agreed that unilateral US control was
not desirable or viable, IGC never had a full-fledged discussion of the
risks and benefits of altering current oversight arrangements. The WGIG
report did not provide us with a well thought-out set of alternatives,
instead producing sketchy "models" that raised more questions than they
answered.

Now we are in a situation of thrashing about superifical ideas on the fly,
which to an external observer kinda looks like a medical operating room with
the surgeon saying, "let's move the heart over here and put the liver over
there," and his assistant saying, "no, let's sew it onto the lungs over
here," and the janitor walking by and saying, "seems to me you could yank
that whole mess out and he'd be better off," etc., etc. 

When we are reduced to that level of improvisation, isn't it clear that we
should back off and recognize that the issue isn't ripe yet, and seek
continued negotiations among governments, inclusive of civil society and
private sector? Doesn't the idea of a lightweight framework convention seem
like a better way to proceed?

Our interventions on the Multistakeholder Forum have been much better, but
here again we seem to have forgotten the issue of accountability, democracy
and legitimacy - how do people get onto this forum, how do we prevent it
from being captured by a small group that can never be dislodged, etc. I
would hope it is not too late for CS to articulate certain governance
principles, such as rotating officers, some kind of democratic procedure for
selecting people, etc. 




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