[governance] Interent community, internet users, and the people (was RE: [NA-Discuss] ALAC and NCUC)

Wed Apr 25 01:10:58 EDT 2007

Dear Jeremy and Bertrand,

Thanks for some very insightful and thought provoking comments .... I do
agree with the substance of your arguments. 

The issue of hearing the voices of people, particularly those who tend not
to be heard is a big challenge to governance ... and combinations of
representative and participatory democracies that you suggest do seem to be
steps out of the 'silo' and 'opaque' processes that we have seen sometimes
earlier in this area. 

while all stakeholders do have a right to participate, how can those with
more knowledge/expertise and also those who are more impacted by a
process/decision particpation be accorded more 'weight' (in many cases this
may begin with even providing an enabling environment for these groups to
actually be present!!) is also part of the same challenge.

regards
Guru

On an aside, as Bertrand says ... CS entities cannot be 'representative' of
their constituencies, they can only speak in favor of them. This brings us
to the moot question of who can represent these constituencies, which will
otherwise not be heard... And here, possibly,  the existing 'representative
structures', such as those of Governments become relevant 
. While we do
need to work at improving government structures, make them more accountable
and transparent, we may also need to recognize their importance from this
aspect of 'representation'.... this is one of the reasons why some of us
often emphasize the need to engage with Governments (especially those from
the South) and give 'weightage' to their views in IG processes ... (like the
discussions that some of us from CS had with G77+C for the IGC meeting on a
unified MAG last may).  

While we (CS entities from the South) do battle our own Governments on many
issues, we do think that at global spaces such as IG, they could have a
critical role of ensuring that the voices of the large majorities of people
who have not ever heard the term 'IG', are heard. In this sense, 'less Govt
the better' is not usually an option for us.

_______________________________

From: Bertrand de La Chapelle [mailto:bdelachapelle at gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 5:42 PM
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Jeremy Malcolm
Cc: Guru at ITfC
Subject: Re: [governance] Interent community, internet users, and the people
(was RE: [NA-Discuss] ALAC and NCUC)

Just in addition to Jeremy's comments.

1) the respective roles and weights of stakeholders are likely to vary with
:
- the issues : according to the respective weights of the technical, social,
economic and political dimensions of them
- the venue where they are addressed, at least at first : IG will still use
different legacy structures and some are more governmental, private sector,
technical, CS oriented etc...: clear application with ICANN, ITU, IGF, and
others, even if they are supposed to progressively converge towards some
sort of comparable multi-stakeholder format; 
- and the stage of the discussion : maybe more open in the agenda-setting
and decision-shaping phases than in the decision-taking ones.

2) Separating stakeholders into distinct and fixed constituencies is
bringing back the notion of "estates" in a different way. It has huge
separation and boundary effects. I would argue that it is one of the major
problems ICANN is facing, with what I have often described as the "silo"
effect that prevents all facets of an issue to be examined early on. This
simply prevents the formation of consensus. 

The stakeholder constituencies also remind me of the "families" approach in
the Civil Society during WSIS that was used to create the "CS Bureau". No
doubt the Caucuses worked much better. 

The notion of stakeholdership allows networks of stakeholders to form - even
temporarily - on an issue by issue basis. This is a much more flexible way,
actually probably the only one that is scalable. 

WSIS has not superseded the notion of separate categories of actors with the
common term of stakeholders for us to envisage the future solution to be the
reintroduction of different, separate categories in an infinite regression.
But that does not of course prevent actors to gather by affinities to
prepare their contributions, exchange wiews and plan. 

3) What is said above is mostly applicable to decision-shaping,
consensus-driven policy development processes. The question of the final
decision-taking is a different one.

When consensus is achieved (including rough conssensus), there is no problem
: decision-taking is a mere rubber-stamping. Likewise for proposed standards
: decision-taking is individual and the standard takes off if htere is a
sufficient critical mass of actors endorsing it. 

The delicate situation is when rough consensus is not achieved (ie : some
actors still strongly oppose) and decision still has to be taken because of
external factors. That is the kind of situation where representation may
kick back in. 

But then, this raises the question of how to create multi-stakeholder
decision-making structures that are trusted and diverse enough to make
decisions when they apply in general. This is a problem that will have to be
addressed. But let's keep in mind that the normal procedure is
consensus-building. For that you need facilitators and not boards, issue
networks and not separate constituencies, iterative consultation processes
and not voting. 

A fundamental principle of deliberative or participative democracy (whatever
that is) coould be "one person, one voice" rather than "one person, one
vote" as in representatibve democracy. 

(Side note : we have here the inverse problem between english and french as
we encounter in the free software issue. In french, "one persone, one vote"
is translated as "une personne, une voix", which happens to be the same as
"one person, one voice". Whereas with free software, we can say "gratuit"
(as in free beer) or libre (as in free speech). Interesting multi-lingual
issues; like the remark on the difference between fourth estate and fourth
branch for the press. 

Best

Bertrand

On 4/24/07, Jeremy Malcolm <Jeremy at malcolm.id.au> wrote: 

	Guru at ITfC wrote:
	> In this sense it is difficult to not think of the people of the
world as the
	> constitutency for IG. All are equally stakeholders to the
possibilities of 
	> the information society that we "are building". The current
'users' who are
	> still in a minority (microscopic minority in many countries)
represent the
	> most previleged section of humanity on many considerations and can
at best 
	> be 'trustees' for the rest and cannot abrogate any special
previleges to
	> themselves. I would interpret "However in many, perhaps most issue
areas,
	> existing Internet users will be the most directly affected and
thus have the 
	> strongest claim to be heard" in this light.

	I don't dissent from the thrust of what you and Parminder have said
in
	your responses.  All I am saying, and I apologise if I didn't say it
	clearly, is that in the discussion of any IG issue, all impacted 
	stakeholders should be empowered to collaborate in policy
development,
	but that exactly *which* stakeholders are so impacted will vary from
one
	issue to another, and therefore the weight that should legitimately
be 
	accorded to their input will vary accordingly.

	The question of what weight should be accorded to those potentially
	affected *in the future* is not an uncommon one.  In environmental
law,
	in particular, consideration is given to the interests of future 
	generations.  This is closely analogous to the approach to be taken
in
	IG in respect of non-users.  However, should non-users be consulted
on
	all IG issues, including those that are never likely to affect them
and 
	about which they and those who speak for them have no knowledge or
	experience?

	Whilst Parminder may have taken issue with my example of
participation
	in the IETF, standards development is just as much a part of IG as 
	technical coordination and public policy development.  I agree that
	standards development is a sphere of governance that concerns him,
and
	his constituents, and probably us all, less than other spheres that
more 
	often and directly engage public policy issues.  But this does mean
that
	*in general*, the IETF can legitimately give less weight to the
input of
	non-users, by failing to specifically provide for the solicitation
of 
	their views in its processes (with some exceptions, eg.
multilingualism).

	Which leads on the two basic approaches that an IG organisation can
take
	in dealing with the fact that some people are more directly and more

	often engaged by the issues within its remit than others.  The first
	approach is to make a rough guess as to who is and is not engaged by
the
	issues that you are discussing, divide them into stakeholder groups,
and 
	institutionalise their representation within the organisation in the
way
	that ICANN has (or by holding meetings in locations, or using
	technologies, that exclude stakeholders with no legitimate
interest).
	The problems with this approach are: 

	(a) You might be wrong; how do you know who will be impacted by the
	    issues you are considering?  And Karl's concern: how can you
	    legitimately box people into stakeholder groups?

	(b) The process by which the decision is made may not be open, 
	    transparent, or subject to input by all those potentially
affected.
	    (Hello, ICANN!)

	(c) It is inflexible, in that novel issues may arise that impact
upon
	    new stakeholders, and the organisation has no way in which their

	    input may be formally received without restructuring itself.

	The second way of dealing with the fact that some people have more
at
	stake than others in particular IG issue areas is by making the
	organisation completely open to all stakeholders who wish to 
	participate, but by determining the weight that their contributions
are
	to be accorded by subjecting their views to a process of reasoned
public
	deliberation.  This is my (forlorn) vision for the IGF.

	Since writing the above I've just read Bertrand's latest post, and
it 
	would be superfluous for me to cover the same ground here, but I
think
	the above analysis adds to it slightly by illustrating the
distinction
	between *representative* democracy (the first case given above) and
	*deliberative* democracy (the second case, about which I write a lot
	more in my thesis).

	--
	Jeremy Malcolm LLB (Hons) B Com
	Internet and Open Source lawyer, IT consultant, actor
	host -t NAPTR 1.0.8.0.3.1.2.9.8.1.6.e164.org|awk -F! '{print $3}'
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-- 
____________________
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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