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

[Norbert Bollow]

Milton Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
>> I don't think that it's proper to redicule any kind of
>> decision-making
>> process before a better alternative has been demonstrated (i.e. an
> 
> Norbert:
> Many better alternatives have been proposed for new TLD addition
> processes over the past 5 years.

Making a proposal for an alternative decision-making system, for which
(from the authors' perspective at least) it appears _plausible_ that
it will be better isn't very hard.  (I've done that too, and didn't
find that exercise to be particularly difficult.  I don't like your
proposal of TLD auctions, and I don't know whether you like my
proposal or not, but that's besides the point.)

The hard part is to _demontrate_ that the proposed system is workable
(which includes willingness of government actors to go along with it)
and that it results in decisions which are better or at least as good
(for some precise and reasonable and yet broadly accepted definition
of what is to be considered "good decisions") as those which are
achieved by the current system.

> Further, I think one can say, a priori, that a proposal that says, "a
> committee of 100 governments, not guided by any treaty or law, can
> object to an application on any grounds they like," is by definition not
> a good process.

So what?

It is easy to point a finger at just about any currently-existing
real-world governance process, point out one of its more unpleasant
features, and state "any process with that property is by definition
not a good process".

The only way to give substance to this kind of criticism is to define
an important set of minimal requirements that all "grood processes"
will certainly satisfy (e.g. transparency and multistakeholder
accountability) and then demonstrate the feasibility of satisfying
this set of requirements by establishing an internet governance
organization (to govern something for which no internet governance
orgnization exists yet, for example website accessibility
certification) and when that has been successfully achieved, it
becomes reasonable to demand that existing internet governance
instituions be reformed to make them also fulfil this set of
requirements.

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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