[governance] Internet Governance Debate (Silence and Fatigue)

[Dan Krimm]

At 5:20 PM -0700 4/22/07, Karl Auerbach wrote:
>Danny Butt wrote:

>> 1) If we accept that Internet Governance is a policy issue with a
>> complex scope and few urgent levers, there seems to me to be no great
>> pressure to come to the agreement Karl seeks on "What Internet
>> Governance includes or doesn't include."
>
>The reason that I mentioned "doesn't include" is that I look at this
>issue as one of allocation of authority and power.
>
>And I share the fear expressed by writers of the 18th century, many of
>whom were not of North American origin, of excessive concentrations of
>such authority.  I do not think that the 21st century internet is immune
>from such concentrations.
>
>This is not to say that there should be "no governance" - but rather
>that structures of governance should be carefully designed to limit
>their powers and to genetically embed into them systems that constrain
>the growth of powers.  We could all benefit by re-reading many of the
>18th century works on these matters.


One of the most important structural developments since the 18th century
was the rise of massively-concentrated private wealth as corporations
evolved from feudal extensions of monarchies to private engines of
concentrated investment (thanks in much part to the innovation of limited
liability).

It is a fallacy to assume that reducing or removing "public governance"
removes governance per se.  Every power vacuum will attract some form of
governance, and if it is not accountable to the public via some democratic
representative structure, it will be accountable only to more narrow
private powers, either monarchy, authoritarian, or nowadays commercial
megaliths.

There simply *will be* governance of one kind or another in practice, no
matter what we do, because there will always be concentrations of
collective power of one sort or another that emerge in any political
environment.

The task is to increase and broaden accountability as much as we can, if
one believes in a progressive mission of a fair society for all.  This is
generally accomplished with formal structures of representation, separation
and balance of power, transparency and verifiability in the operation of
representative functions, enforcement with enough power to make the trains
run but with enough external/balanced oversight to resist corruption, and
so forth.  Needless to say, we have not perfected this model, maybe we
never will.  But in the best case we can learn from past mistakes and
improve what we have over time, if we indeed have a constituency with some
degree of active participation (democracy is not a spectator sport, but the
tools of participation must be presented in order for a constituency to
engage actively).

In the end, what matters more than whether an institution is "public" or
"private" is precisely these structures of accountability and how
effectively designed and implemented they are in any governance context.

So please note, while I've noted that ICANN is a private corporation and
not a "government", that is not the primary criticism of the institution.
The primary criticism is its lack of formal and effective structures of
broad accountability.  (It may also be the case that such accountability is
rarer in corporate institutions than in public democratic institutions, but
these tendencies are of course not absolute and exceptions exist in all
domains.)

If in fact it were possible to reshape ICANN into an effectively
accountable governance structure, then that would be a plausible path to
consider.  But the structures of governance that ICANN currently has are so
far away from effective accountability that it currently seems unlikely
that it could be "fixed" enough to provide effective accountability for
political domains.

Whatever seems most likely to improve accountability in practice (by
broadening it and making it more effective), that is what I would favor,
myself.

Sometimes accountability can be improved (or at least a door opened for
subsequent potential improvement) by reducing the jurisdiction of an
unaccountable institution.  Sometimes accountability can be improved by
restructuring existing institutions to reflect more of the structural tools
for accountability that we already know can be effective.  Sometimes
accountability can be improved by shifting jurisdiction to institutions
with better structural accountability, or by building new institutions with
good structural accountability.

I would offer that this might be a useful framework for discussions about IG:

 - what is the proper domain of IG overall, and what existing institutions
have what role in it today (and do they currently extend beyond that domain)

 - what is the status of accountability of existing institutions involved

 - what potentials (and precedents) are there for improving accountability
of existing institutions, or shifting jurisdiction out of unaccountable
institutions (and hopefully into more accountable institutions, but perhaps
the former can happen without the latter)

 - what potentials (and precedents) are there for creating new institutions
with better accountability


In the ideal, participants would identify what kinds of institutions best
perform what functions, and seek to design an overall system where each
institution does what it is well-designed to do and has no authority for
functions it is not well-designed to perform.

This seems to be generally where the FC ideas are aiming as far as I can
tell in my short time focusing more on these issues recently, so I look
forward to seeing the paper that John et al. are working on.

Dan
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