[governance] RE: who does "public policy" then?

[Dan Krimm]

At 8:09 PM +0530 5/15/07, Parminder wrote:
>> Vittorio Bertola <vb at bertola.eu> wrote:
>>
>> > Trying to build a "new beast" like ICANN is, in my opinion, the only
>> > possible forward-looking solution that should be tried.
>>
>> I strongly agree.
>>
>> Greetings,
>> Norbert.
>
>I have no doubt ICANN will have an important role in any future IG
>dispensation. However, it is important to develop appropriate public policy
>principles and processes to interface with ICANN so that it can deal with
>its technical-public policy dilemma better, and in a more legitimate manner.


Yes, this is the point.  If one were to set up some form of "new beast"
that is to act on a global scale to coordinate the interests of a
world-wide range of stakeholders in an accountable democratic process, it
would not look like the current ICANN organizational structure.

ICANN is a corporation, not a government.  There is no elective process by
citizens to determine representation ("constituencies" are not the same
thing as genuine accountable representation).  There is no rule-of-law
judicial process by which to decide disputes, or to which individual
citizens can appeal for redress.  There are a lot of advisory groups, but
their makeup is set from the top down, with a small amount of bottom-up
discretion within the bounds of an org structure set by authoritarian fiat
(most corporations have a "democratic" setup only in terms of shareholders
-- the management setup is distinctly military-authoritarian, regardless of
how "flat" some forward-looking corporate org structures are becoming).
Whatever process there is of judging disputes is not governed by genuine
rule-of-law procedures -- it's basically a Star Chamber.

If you want to set a up a governance process to handle this stuff properly,
then by all means do it, but do it according to democratic principles of
accountability and representation and balance of power with structural
checks and balances.  That would be called "world government".  It's not an
easy thing to just hack together in a few weeks for the beta version.  Real
political power must be taken into account.

The idea that anyone can somehow do an "end-around" on the hard work of
political processes seems unrealistic to me, at best.  Politics cannot be
avoided, and processes to balance political powers cannot be avoided if we
want to have a result that is broadly fair.

Some political problems have no perfect solution available in the short
term, and a realistic approach to politics must acknowledge that a quick
fix is not at hand.

So, to answer McTim:  I don't know exactly how "it" will work.  How does it
work today?  If China wants to deny a TLD from visibility inside its
national networks, does it not have a way to do that?

And if there is no easy solution to the problem today, why should anyone
think that ICANN can by itself hack together something that has all the
checks and balances of democratic national constitutions, etc.?

I mean, sure, an easy way to solve the problem would be to set up a world
monarchy with complete authority to decide all political issues from the
top down.  That would certainly set consistent standards and "get the
trains running on time".  But does anyone here truly think that comes
without a cost?

It would be bad public policy to set up ICANN as a global monarchy with
feudal relationships governing its constituencies.  But as far as I can
see, this is essentially what ICANN is, at the moment, in terms of
structure, within the domain of Internet Assigned Names and Numbers.
Perhaps an extreme description, but it seems closer to the authoritarian
model than the democratic model, to me.  Remember that authoritarian
governments can include many of the "trappings" of democratic governments,
such as "elections" and so forth.  But if such trappings are constrained in
ways that make "choice" an illusion, then that is no more than a big
finesse to hoodwink the public so that the power players can run things
without interference from mere citizens.

Given that is the status quo, we must of course work within that system for
now.  And perhaps there is still enough play in the system that we can push
back against egregious wrongdoing from within.  But right now the best way
to do that seems to be to appeal to the libertarian approach of
"constrained governance" at ICANN.  If we want "strong governance" over
political issues that have to do with the Internet, then we have to
consider the full range of structural governance issues that come along
with that political domain, and ICANN is just not very plausible from that
point of view, today.

First, do no harm.

Dan
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