[governance] IGF's forgotten mandate

[William Drake]

Hi George,

A couple of comments on your reply to Mawaki.  New subject line as it's not
about ICANN and 'taxes.'


On 2/5/07 5:59 AM, "George Sadowsky" <george.sadowsky at attglobal.net> wrote:

> First, I should have noted that it is only my impression that both
> Nitin and Markus have stressed the discussion role of the IGF and not
> any decision making role.  I should leave it to them to say directly
> what the role of the IGF is, since they have the ultimate
> responsibility and I am only a special adviser.  So I would not
> assume that they are trying to replace one set of guidelines with
> another.  Of course, they report to the UN Secretary-General, and we
> do not know the content of their conversations with his office.  I do
> not think that there is any conspiracy here.

I didn't see that anyone was suggesting a conspiracy.  Framing expressions
of discontent with IGF's forgotten mandate in this manner may be seem an
easy way to dismiss them, but it doesn't lend itself to real dialogue.  At
the same time, I also don't think that the issue here revolves around the
secretariat's preferences.  After all, Markus and Nitin were directly
involved in developing the WGIG Report's suggestions on the mandate, which
the Tunis Agenda simply adapted and extended a little.  If there was a real
consensus among all stakeholders for the IGF to actually do what the TA
said, I assume they'd happily roll with it.  The problem is that there never
was such a consensus; there are influential players that the IGF needs on
board financially and politically that didn't want it to play the roles
listed.  They opted not to publicly object to the wording in Tunis, which I
suppose helped facilitate the closure of the prepcom which anyway ran into
the 12th hour, but negating things off line post hoc meant that other
parties had no opportunity to weigh in on the discussion.  That to me is the
issue.  

One could argue that the mandate as written was poorly conceived and
unworkable; McTim and I had a wee debate here on this point a few months
ago, and while I don't agree, it's at least a fair argument, one I'd be
happy to see debated.  But it's an argument that wasn't seriously posed
either in WGIG or in the prepcom or vetted publicly thereafter.  To have an
agreed mandate set aside in a sotto voce back channel manner just isn't a
good practice, especially for something that's marketed as embodying open
and participatory multistakeholder consensus.  And people ought to be able
to raise questions about this without being labeled disruptive, conspiracy
theorists, etc.

> However, having said this, I think that Athens worked precisely
> because there was no need to focus on producing decisions, or a
> report of the meeting, or any document that tried to reach consensus
> on any of the issues.  There is a long term process of convergence
> going on here, and I think that it is best served by informal
> discussion as well as by various meetings where people can get to
> know each other and trade opinions off the record.  If there are
> clear directions identified that would be beneficial for users of the
> Internet, I think that they will emerge as well from such an
> environment as from an environment that is more formal and more
> oriented toward forcing consensus statements.

As with "everything's fine" vs. "conspiracy theories," this is a false
binary. Why are you sure before the fact that it's a zero sum choice between
open dialogue and incremental convergence on the one hand and having the
whole thing be about big heavy formal negotiations on the other?  Maybe it'd
be possible to have different streams of activity.  Those who want to have a
more focused discussion of some issue could do so, and in the event they
arrive at some rough consensus, there could be some mechanism to bring that
to plenary for consideration.  Same with possible outputs of dynamic
coalitions.  Again, this doesn't mean starting from "let's adopt
recommendations" and then organizing the whole thing like a WSIS prepcom.
Maybe in the end it couldn't work, but it'd be useful to have an open
discussion to think it through before rejecting it as unworkable.  I don't
know whether the mAG went through that exercise or not, but there's been
nothing visible from the peanut gallery.
 
> i have trouble with the idea of policy making in the absence of
> binding decisions.  Surely one thing that the IGF can do is to bring
> to light information and education that will inform the policy making
> process, and I am all for that.  However, consider that the IGF
> meetings can be attended by anyone and that neither the IGF nor the
> fora are legal entities.  I think the IGF in a good position to
> provide evidence and opinion, but I cannot see how you get any kind
> of policy closure out of it.  How, for example, would IGF decisions
> --  assuming that one could even set up a decision making mechanism
> within a forum  --  be enforced, and at what level?  Governments?
> Industries?  I just don't see it.  It's the wrong instrument for
> decision making.

Non-binding recommendations are used all the time in other international
institutional environments, sometimes effectively.  For example, the process
of developing them can promote convergence of positions that then feeds back
into national policies etc,; they can feed into and catalyze other forums
where actual decisions are made; they can provide a baseline for normative
pressuring of recalcitrant types to get on board;  and they can serve as a
framework for follow up programmatic work.  It'd be harder to devise any in
an annual multistakeholder meeting addressing divisive issues than it is in
ongoing intergovernmental or industry processes, but I don't think we can
know ex ante that it's impossible.
 
> The next IGF is likely to be equally interesting, and perhaps some of
> the coalitions that formed in and after Athens will have some
> interesting things to report.  We'll see.

One hopes.

Cheers, 

Bill


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