[governance] Third Estate - Fourth Estate - Fifth Estate?

[Jovan Kurbalija]

Dear Wolfgang,

There is an interesting evolution from 

Montesquieu’s trias politica. As usual, he was not as innovative as it has
been attributed. The concept of THREE ESTATES already existed in the Middle
Ages (the Clergy, the Nobility and the Peasantry) in order to control
absolute power (not as absolute as usually perceived).


To

Burke/Hunt “FOURTH ESTATE” (recently revitalized by Archer’s novel)
consisting of the three estates + press
.


To 

The concept of “FIFTH ESTATE” which was recently proposed by Dr. Nayef
Al-Rodham from the Geneva Center of Security Policy. He analyzed policy
aspects of blogs and provided quite convincing arguments that blogs can be
considered the “Fifth Estate”. His book contains an in-depth analysis of the
international policy and security aspects of blog development. I think that
the PDF-version will be available soon (the book is currently accessible at
http//www.gcsp.ch). If you find this concept interesting we can try to
organise a discussion with Dr. Al-Rodham in late May. The book also contains
some reflections about bloggers as a possible policy constituency (link to
other discussion threads on Internet users/community).

In sum, checks and balances must be in-built, but I think that we have to
move beyond the good old “trinity’.


Best, Jovan

 


-----Original Message-----
From: Kleinwächter, Wolfgang
[mailto:wolfgang.kleinwaechter at medienkomm.uni-halle.de] 
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 13:07
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; John Mathiason; governance at lists.cpsr.org;
Milton Mueller
Subject: AW: [governance] Can governmental powers be limited?

Dear list,
 
Another five cents to the stimulating debate:
 
When Montesquieu and others developed the theory of the seperation of power
to counter the absolutist power regime of the monarchies at this time, the
argument was that the decision making power should be distributed to avoid
misuse of absolute power and to have instruments to correct wrong decisions.

 
In the late 1980s, when we changed the German Democratic Republic, there was
a discussion about the "measurement of democracy". One proposed method was
to meter the distance between the main powers: Parliament, Government,
Judiciary and the Press. If you have long distances among the four powers,
you have a high level of democracy. The level of democracy goes down if
distances are narrowed. And if the parliament follows was the government
says and if the courts decide and the press writes what the government wants
- as it was the case in the German Democratic Republic - you have a
dictatorship. 
 
What we can learn from this for Internet Governance? Decentralize power. 
 
What we need is a new Montesquieu for the Internet, a more detailed
seperation of powers. The Multilayer Multiplayer Mechanism (or as Vint has
labeled it the "Grand Collaboration") will work only on such a seperation of
powers. Nobody has a decisions making capacity for the system as a whole,
only for some parts. In some areas governments keep their decision making
power, in other parts non-governmental stakeholders decide on their own
premises. This is a step in the right direction. But it can go much further
down the road. With regard to ICANN, would it make sense to decentralize
further the relevant decision making power? Why not to give decision making
capacity to SOs? Or to ACs? If decisons are made by GNSO and CNSO (and
others, the main challenge for the Board would  be stimulate communication
amonf the differetn decision making bodies and, where needed "to
coordinate".  

Best

Wolfgang

 
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