AW: AW: [governance] .xxx. igc and igf

[Dan Krimm]

At 3:59 PM +0200 4/16/07, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:

>... In the new gTLD cases we are learning that we will have cases where we
>are at the crossroads between political and technical questions and
>neither ICANN nor the GAC will take the full responsibility for both and
>there is no procedure in place for a division of labour among the existing
>decision taking institutions. Here I see the need to "invent" something.
>But such an invention would be neither a new "world government of the
>Internet" nor another big organisation. It would like an ad hoc committee
>with a clear defined (narrow) mandate for decision making in a limited
>number of very specified cases.
>


Why "ad hoc"?  What would be the criteria for membership on this committee
and how are those criteria applied in practice?  Would there be a balancing
authority to appeal to for redress if this committee makes a decision by
fiat that is not entirely defensible?  How exactly would real
accountability be built into the system?

When setting up governance structures such as this, *process* becomes very
important, not merely scope and function.  And process is often shaped by
structure of authority -- i.e., jurisdiction and enforceability by
separate, balancing bodies of power.  This is the sort of thing that
produces structural accountability, not merely "elections" etc.

You can't avoid the reality that substantial power is involved in any such
institution, and such power needs to be channeled and balanced very
carefully when there are global ramifications.

And why should ICANN do the "inventing" here?  Should ICANN even be
involved in the political aspects?  Why exactly does something *need* to be
"invented" here in the first place, and is the time really ripe for it now?
Another option is for ICANN to simply recuse itself from political
functions, then there is no need to create anything, ad hoc or otherwise.

Not all "gaps" in governance necessarily need to be immediately filled in a
pre-determined top-down manner (ad hoc or otherwise).  Sometimes chaos is
the best present option, given available alternatives.  At the very least,
that would put pressure on genuinely political institutions to address
political matters on their own turf(s).

Should ICANN be "at the crossroads between political and technical
questions" at all, or should it more properly confine itself to the
technical questions and let legitimate political institutions deal with the
politics?  Is this "crossroads" really there in the first place?  Perhaps
politics and technology domains are actually still distinct, and need not
be conflated into a unified process of governance in the first place.
Perhaps there is some potential for IGF to serve a productive role as a
venue to explore the options more thoroughly.

Dan

PS -- There is a common phenomenon in the policy world known as "venue
shopping" -- if you can't get a policy result that you want in one
governance venue, try another one (for example, do telcos in the U.S. try
to get their way in federal legislature, federal regulatory agencies, state
legislature or agencies or popular referenda, local government, the
judicial system, private enterprise or industry collectives, etc.).  The
political dynamics at ICANN strike me as an extreme form of political venue
shopping: creating a *brand new venue* (or expanding the jurisdiction of an
existing venue in brand new ways) while simultaneously attempting to co-opt
the new venue, when existing venues in a particular policy space are
generally frustrating the attempt to increase elite control over certain
policy domains by special interests.

I return to the point that ICANN was not originally created as a political
body, and its institutional structure was not originally designed to be
tasked to resolve political issues.  I still have much to learn about the
(apparently arcane) history of how the advisory penumbra surrounding ICANN
came into being, but my a priori guess would be that that process was
somewhat "ad hoc" itself.  Not exactly the result of a coherent
constitutional convention, or anything -- not even an "informal"
deliberative forum systematically tasked to explore the possibilities such
as IGF.

And to assume (implicitly or otherwise) at the outset that all relevant
political issues are subject to timely "resolution" in the first place is
rather presumptuous, given the mind-boggling complexity of existing global
political dynamics.  You can't just throw out that complexity and replace
it with a "clean" system -- those complex political crosscurrents will
continue to exist because they originate not in the structure of global
institutions of governance but rather in the complex distribution of
intrinsic political interests across the globe itself.  The relevant
structures of governance must adapt themselves to that inherent complexity,
because the complexity is not going to adapt itself to the governance
structure.  Global governance institutions are complex *because* global
politics are inherently complex.  ICANN is not about to change that any
time soon, certainly not unilaterally.  The attempt by ICANN to address
political issues seems to me like someone taking a bite *much* bigger than
they can chew.  Exponentially bigger.

Kind of like Pop Rocks candy, except of the magnitude of expansion of the
instant pudding in the movie "Sleeper" by Woody Allen.  ;-)
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