[governance] Burr & Cade: proposalforintroducingmulti-lateral oversight of the root

[Milton Mueller]

Parminder:
I am pleasantly surprised by the congruence in our strategic outlooks:
your understanding of the relationship between incremental and
"structural" change, the critique of nation-states and the need for CS
to take a leading role, and the willingness to embrace institutional
innovations along the way.

So you should be able to easily understand why we were forced to set
aside the FC concept. First, meaningful change was avoided via the
creation of the Forum. Second, there was no support for the FC, and some
opposition, from within civil society prior to the Tunis Summit. The
WGIG report didn't even mention the idea. Indeed, civil society,
bedazzled by the WGIG, embraced this act of substituting MS Forum for MS
Reform. Your support for FC was news to me. Third, states didn't support
it either: Brazil did endorse the idea very late in the game, and the EU
seemed to tinker with it in its own distinctively muddled way, but no
one piicked it up and ran with it.

Now if the only outcome of WSIS is 1) a nonbinding discussion Forum and
2) "enhanced cooperation," and the first avoids controversial issues and
does not even make recommendations, and the latter is defined as
invisible by the US and as states-only by the EU, it's clear that there
is not the needed political support for FC negotiations from either the
private sector or govts. So we turned our attention elsewhere.  

Right now the key "structural" issue is the de-nationalization of the
RZF. Which we have aggressively taken up. So we were again somewhat
surprised by the inability of this caucus to take any action during the
NTIA proceeding. Participation and comment was made easy by our
campaign, and many individuals -- including you -- did avail themselves
of that opportunity (thanks!), but so much more could have been done had
people invested the kind of energy they invested in, say, statements for
a WSIS PrepCom or the Forum agenda. 

In general, then I don't quite agree with you that

>global civil society...is much more developed today than a global
>political system) 

I wish. Still, the effects of our modest campaign were quite profound,
generating imitative language in many comments and provoking political
entrepreneurs to float a status-quo-preserving proposal that attempts to
resolve the contradiction within the current system. The isolation of
the Bush admin. position is truly exposed. Amazing what can happen when
you shoot at the right target.

>>> parminder at itforchange.net 7/29/2006 5:50:49 AM >>>
It will be good to hear the group's view on this. 

It is my opinion that IGC should take a two-track approach to IG. One
inside-out and, the other outside-in.


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