AW: [governance] stakeholders vs. natural individuals

[Mawaki Chango]

All this is a little bit too romantic, and away of the notion of
"stakeholder" I've seen used in the IG debates. Though it
conceptually makes sense to call individual organizations
stakeholders (because they have a stake) in this context, people
seem to refer to this label to categorize sets of actors in the
internet (and global) governance; in other words they are types
of actors (typology), not coherent or homogenous single
organizations. CS as "stakeholder" is a collection of
organizations and _individuals_ (we had this debate before, I
beleive) who clearly don't all agree of all relevant issues at
any time. Neither do the Governments as "stakeholders" etc.

Besides, it is not because ICANN has stopped the so-called
"democatic" election of board members that individuals' views
are totally ignored in its processes, or that anyone that
advocates "multistakeholderism" advocates the exclusion of
individuals. Far from that. And democracy itself has evolved big
time since the city-state of Athens where "demos" was not
necessary a collection of all "natural" individuals, but a
social construct that was... well, a staekeholder of "free
citizens", which left out many: slaves, captured, immigrants,
etc. who also where subjects to the athenian rules.

mawaki


--- Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:

> Lee McKnight wrote:
> 
> > Multi-stakeholder processes can be imperfect and can be
> captured, but
> > I didn;t see the alternative you were preferring...
> 
> As for the alternative that I am suggesting:  Ultimately it
> comes down 
> to natural, living, breathing people.
> 
> The "stakeholder" approach (which as you mention bears a
> rather strong 
> semblance to the "corporatist" approach) measures power and
> authority in 
> questions of governance on the basis of some arbitrary and
> highly 
> subjective metric, usually the financial interest, of some
> aggregate body.
> 
> Virtually all of these bodies suffer from monomania - they
> focus upon 
> and optimize one thing (usually their financial well being) to
> the 
> exclusion of all other things.
> 
> Governance that admits such players, particularly to the
> exclusion of 
> real people, tends to result in systems of governance that
> ultimately 
> become nothing more than mutual trade protection pacts between
> the 
> chosen players.
> 
> Now, all of those aggregate bodies are owned by natural
> people.  People 
> are non (usually) monomaniacs.  Instead people make their own
> choices, 
> balancing among all of their interests, many of which are
> non-economic 
> in nature.
> 
> So I am suggesting that we return to the principles of
> governance that 
> came about in the latter 1700's and that today form the basis
> of 
> democratic (whether direct or representative) modern liberal, 
> constitutional national governments.
> 
> By focusing on systems that make individual people the unit of
> authority 
> we obtain a system of governance that is not only more stable
> but also 
> more able to accommodate non-economic values.
> 
> Now I am not proposing a direct democracy for the internet. 
> And I 
> recognize that people will aggregate.  I don't mind
> representative 
> systems, or even recognizing that people often aggregate part
> of their 
> interests for purposes of economic advantage into for-profit
> corporations.
> 
> What I am proposing is that when we discuss internet
> governance we 
> carefully avoid presupposing what groups have what interests
> and, 
> instead, recognize that the opinions and value of individual
> men and 
> women will vary and that they will coalesce in different ways
> on 
> different issues and that we should look to those individual
> men and 
> women for the expression of opinion rather than presupposing
> that some 
> aggregate entity speaks authoritatively and permanently on
> their behalf 
> on all issues.
> 
> Thus, rather than recognizing, for example, a trademark body
> as a 
> "stakeholder" that we construct systems of governance that
> look past the 
> trademark body and measure the consensus or weight of opinion
> of the 
> natural humans who stand behind that body - it may well be,
> for example, 
> that when they come to weigh, for example, the privacy
> concerns of 
> "whois" that some might value the safety of their children
> against 
> predators above the protection of their trade and service
> marks.
> 
> If we look at ICANN we see the kind of disaster that has
> occurred, and 
> continues to occur, because in its initial creation certain
> industrial 
> segments were arbitrarily given preferred status as
> "stakeholders' and 
> other segments, as well as the public at large, were left with
> a 
> disadvantaged, indeed excluded, status.
> 
> 		--karl--
> 
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