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

Mon Apr 23 11:49:46 EDT 2007

Jovan,

1) *On the three estates*  Just one note : after the french revolution,
fortunately, the three estates disappeared to be replaced by one single
community : the citizens. This was actually the major transformation.

I would say that in a certain way, the three separate constituencies at the
beggining of WSIS have been granted a common unifying label of
"stakeholders" in the multi-stakeholder approach pioeered by the IGF : no
more privileges or separate categories for the open dialogue forum. This is
why there is an equal footing in IGF.

This is not contradictory with "different roles and responsibilities". And
here is why. As we are delving into french political history, you may recall
that the "French Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen" starts
with the important following first article : "Men are born and remain free
and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common
utility."

This could be kept in mind when we deal with the "respective rights and
responsibilities of the different categories of stakeholders" in the WSIS
documents. Because nothing prevents an Internet Governance structure (the
IGF for instance) to be based on an "equal right of all stakeholders to
participate in the governance processe dealing with the issues they are
concerned with or impacted by"; and at the same time, establish that
"different rights and responsibilities can be established only to serve the
global public interest".

Therefore, nothing prevents in the future the Internet Governance Framework
we will collectively design from establishing different roles and
responsibilities, if they are beneficial for the global public interest. But
as Steve Crocker said in the ICANN meeting in Lisbon, everything in here is
100% man-made and under human decision : the resources, the rules, the
principles, and the structures.

2) *On the Fourth estate*  Interestingly, in France, the press is qualified
as "le quatrième pouvoir", as related to the three branches of
representative democracy (legislative, executive and judiciary) rather than
as a "fouth estate" in relation with the three estates of the nobility, the
clergy and the commons, which are not valid any more. The
english<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate>and french
<http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatri%25C3%25A8me_pouvoir>articles in
Wikipedia are interesting to compare in that respect.

3) *On the blogosphere as fifth estate*  The blogosphere is, of course, a
sort of fifth estate, or rather, as I said above, a fifth "pouvoir", in
addition to the four previous ones. But more than anything, the development
of blogs, community sites and social networking tools has created a global
Internet Community of more than a billion people with very dense
interlinking.

This is the embryo of a global polity rather than a separate constituency
and influential power. The Internet has evolved into a complete social,
economic and political space. All it lacks is the governance framework to
organize this international community as a Polity.

That is, among other things, what Internet Governance is all about. Not only
the governance "of" the Internet (the infrastructure and the domain names)
or the governance "on" the Internet (the various uses and misuses) but also
a governance made possible by the Internet and the communication tools it
provides; in other words a governance for the Internet Age and a Global
Community.

Best

Bertrand

On 4/23/07, Jovan Kurbalija <jovank at diplomacy.edu> wrote:
>
> 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
>
>
> ____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle

Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint
Exupéry
("there is no better mission for humans than uniting humans")
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