[governance] IGF Book

[Dan Krimm]

At 9:38 AM +0100 12/7/07, Kleinwächter, Wolfgang wrote:
>Our IGF Book is now online.
>
>here is the URL
>
>http://medienservice.land-der-ideen.de/MEDIA/65534,0.pdf


Thanks for this, I'm enjoying reading a few bits already.

I think Bill Drake's chapter addresses a framework for action on some of
the issues we've been hitting our heads against recently.  Nevertheless, I
have a question for Bill.

-----

Bill, given the codification in your conclusion:

"Transparency, inclusive participation, and coordination, to the
extent practicable, ought to be regarded as comparatively anodyne
principles on which the international community can readily
agree. In fact, it already has. All that is needed now is to put
in place a process to assess and promote their implementation."

Are you sure that the apparent agreement here was not based implicitly upon
an assumption by some that implementation might well be illusory?  That is,
some folks might be perfectly happy to give lip service to high-flying
moral principles as long as they don't have to actually do anything about
it on the ground when they get home.

We are quite familiar with that dynamic in politics in the US by now (it is
common for legislation with high ideals to contain many compromises with
regard to implementation and budget appropriation that were necessary to
get political agreement, with the understanding that such provisions would
systematically hamper the stated goals of the legislation -- it is well
understood in political circles that implementation is "where the rubber
hits the road" in public policy, and that there are opportunities to "have
your cake (rhetorically) and eat it too (tangibly)").  I expect maybe
elsewhere this dynamic has also been seen from time to time.  If so, the
rhetorical agreement may not be as tangibly broad-ranging as you assume,
even in principle (which can itself diverge from politically acceptable
[i.e., vague] rhetoric).

As I was not part of either WSIS or WGIG (and not really IGF either, other
than seeing recent IGC discussions here and helping out with the IGC NomCom
for Rio), I can't really attest firsthand to whether this agreement was
more than rhetorical, and actually a substantive, principled aspect of the
(political) values of the participants.

There may even be people who *believe* that they hold these principles, but
when push comes to shove they have very narrow ideas about who has standing
to be included.  This is the trickiest area to navigate, because it
involves people who think they are being inclusive when in fact they are
being systematically restrictive.  I do think that getting specific about
the definitions of these terms will help us define exactly what we are
talking about (i.e., it will illuminate more of the underlying political
values and conceptual frameworks of those participating), which is
prerequisite to doing anything tangible about it, but in the process we
might discover that there is somewhat less agreement than originally
imagined.

I would love to believe that your axiom here is true, but it is easy to
have doubts.  If it is true, then of course it'd be fabulous for IGF to
take it up systematically moving forward.  In fact, even if it is not true,
IGF should still try, because in the process of addressing the details of
"transparency, inclusive participation, and coordination" (you've certainly
got *my* vote for that, and in the *broadest* way possible) any rhetorical
posers will be exposed and publicly shamed.

Dan

PS -- I also must voice my explicit concurrence with Milton's chapter.  Alx
likes to say that policy should be developed narrowly by focused
institutions addressing "specific problem domains" and it seems to me that
Milton is in conceptual agreement here by suggesting that we actually name
those problems accurately and precisely in political terms, to the extent
that these problems extend beyond purely technical considerations to
matters of general political import.

I went back and read Avri's chapter in the WGIG book recently, which was
helpful to me in understanding the culture clash here, and it seems clear
that the techie/politico terms of discourse are still "in flux" in terms of
understanding one another.  By way of personal disclosure, while I've been
involved with "online services" from an end-user application and content
production standpoint since 1981, I'm really (and unapologetically) coming
to the realm of IG primarily from a public policy/political stance.  And of
course, I am also (and equally unapologetically) an *advocate* in a
political sense (as, underneath it all, I believe we all are).
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