[governance] Going forward - Role of the governance caucus

[Wolfgang Kleinwächter]

Bret: 
One issue to consider is whether civil society potentially dilutes its voice by organizing under a single umbrella organization. For example, at the recent meeting in Geneva, it was refreshing to hear many voices from civil society speak rather than have all of the input channeled into a single intervention.

Wolfgang:
Yes and No. I heard some voices in Geneva arguing that CS undermines its role if it does not speak with one voice (or lets say a limited number of voices). Governments want to have one contact point (or at least a calculable number of partners) to know with whom they have to deal (if they are ready to communicate at all). One natural difficulty is certainly that CS risks to end up like the EU: Hours of multilateral consultations behind closed doors and finaly a statement with ten lines, representing the "consensus" on the lowest level. Such an input would not lead to impact. On the other hand there is a need to act in a way which signals that there is more than diverse individual positions of academics and activists, representing minority of expert groups. 
One way to settle it could be the introduction of two categories of questions:
* Central Policy Questions/CPQ (where a coordinated voice is needed)
* Peripheral Policy Questions/PPQ (where individual voices are invited)
In such a case we would need a procedure to identify CPQs. 
 
 


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