[governance] National vs. International was Re: Program for IGC at IGF

[Norbert Bollow]

Avri Doria <avri at psg.com> wrote:
> On 24 okt 2006, at 08.39, Ralf Bendrath wrote:
> > How do we fend off greed, corruption or particularist interests on  
> > the international level?
> 
> I think that transparency goes a long way here.

Strongly agreed.

> In the national setting it is very easy for the government to stifle
> the press and even the net.  On the international stage it is more
> difficult, especially if groups like this keep up the pressure.

My observation here in Central Europe is that the influence of greedy
particularist interests seems to be much stronger for policy decisions
which are coordinated internationally than for those which are only
discussed nationally.

The reason seems to be that at the national level, there are
well-established democratic traditions with free, independent media,
well-defined rules for transparency, checks and balances, and
accountability of governments to national parliaments.

Much of this is not yet so well-developed at the international level,
resulting in an increased success likelihood of the lobbying
efforts of greedy monopolistic companies.

For an ICT-related example in the EU, see
http://NoBananaUnion.com/en/swpat-directive

Here in Switzerland, a very similar process of political-ideological
manipulation is at work related to the current revision process of
the copyright law, where e.g. the attempt is made to manipulate
politicians as well as the general public into thinking that we have
to adopt legal protection for DRM systems because of "international
standards".

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                       http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG        http://SIUG.ch
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