[governance] Re: Four legs good, two legs bad

[Patrick Vande Walle]

Veni Markovski wrote, On 09/12/2006 13:54:

> since you talk about models, and governments being
> good, why not give us an example of governments that have solved the
> problems with the IG? But solved with full participation of all multi
> stakeholders, through bottom-up processes, in the interest of all
> society, and with keeping privacy protected.

Veni, I will take a different view here. The best bottom-up process I
know is called elections. In democracies, this is how you agree or
disagree with your government's policies. Democratic governments have
processes in place to consult with their stakeholders. This is at the
national level.

Once you go to the international level, it has been widely accepted for
several centuries that the interests of the citizens are represented by
their government (even the non-democratic ones). This is called
diplomacy. International trade agreements and international laws are
negotiated between governments. I still fail to understand the rationale
on why the Internet should be treated any different way than, say,
bananas, meat or steel exports. AFAIK, the steel industry does not set
the its own international rules. The Internet industry does.

Let's take the WTO as an example of international negotiations. There
are industry or civil society lobbyists informing the governments'
representatives. This is fair and can actually contribute to take into
account the side effects of envisioned agreements. At the end of the
day, though, it will be the governments that will decide, not the
industry or civil society.

IG does not get a lot of attention from governments because it is a
detail in the world economy. How many heads of states or ministers were
at the IGF ? Just compare this with the number of heads of state
attending WTO negotiation rounds.

IG being a detail for govs, they may indeed wish to delegate the
management of the Internet to private sector led organizations, because
they have no time to delve into the details themselves. However, they
need to trust these orgs. This includes mechanisms for fair and equal
representation of all stakeholders, regardless of their business
interest in the process. We are not there yet.

Patrick
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