[governance] Muti-stakeholder Group structure (some ideas)

[wcurrie at apc.org]

I wonder in reading the discussion how the notion of 'hegemony' might come into play here. The response to the counter-hegemonic thrust of civil society activism in WGIG, in the WSIS was to win a position that no single government should have pre-eminence in IG. This conclusion was accompanied by four oversight models that gave no role to the ITU in the management of critical internet resources. So far so good. A key recommendation of the Tunis Agenda was to establish an IGF in response to a WGIG proposal for a space for policy dialogue on IG. Functions are attached to the IGF in TA paragraph 72 that go beyond simple dialogue. 

Bearing in mind the abrasive debates in WSIS on oversight and the 'perfidy' of the EU in proposing a different model of oversight to the hegemonic model of the US, the private sector and the internet technical community which led to the watered down inclusion of 'enhanced cooperation' in the TA, the hegemonic bloc had a bit of a shock and acted to neutralise the MAG and by extension the IGF by getting  powerful US, private sector and internet community representatives selected to the MAG. Civil society did not put up a sufficiently diversified and experienced group of nominees and lost out in the cut. This led to the first IGF meeting in Athens being conducted solely as a policy dialogue without reference to the specific provisions of paragraph 72. So IGF Athens was given a free pass and that was a good thing in terms of establishing the IGF on a stable footing. But come IGF 2 in Rio, developing country governments bring the issue of critical internet resources back with a vengeance. The IGC, hot from its fierce reaction to ICANN's .xxx decision also proposes internet critical resources as a theme for debate. This all collides at the IGF open consultations in Geneva. It appears that critical internet resources will be accepted as a theme for discussion in Rio. A veiled threat of the withdrawl of funding for the IGF is made from the ranks of the hegemonic bloc. (I should point out that I am using the notion of hegemonic bloc as a descriptive term to indicate where power lies in the arena of internet governance and not in any pejorative way - as a simple statement of fact, if you will)    

A number of questions arise from this scenario:

1. why don't the developing countries arguing for critical internet resources put their money where there mouth is and put some real financial resources into the IGF secretariat so it can get the job done properly and see off the threat of withdrawal of funds from the hegemonic bloc.

2. Why do the developing countries taking up the issue of critical internet resources have such a poor sense of strategy that their interventions simply amount to waving a red flag at a bull. They don't spell out what particular aspect of critical internet resources they wish to address and there are quite a few to choose from such as the whois debate. As a result the hegemonic bloc correctly reads their proposal as yet another attempt to get control of ICANN and acts accordingly to neutralise it. Subtlety and strategy are completely missing here and the proxy war with the US continues, a pointless waste of time compared to what could be focused on if developing countries took a more strategic approach to paragraph 72 and picked up other provisions that go beyond policy dialogue to action for example 72e on access where a balance between market and non-market approaches to access could be created in dialogue.  So we watch Brazil and Russia make an argumnt for outcomes or a declaration, China make a demand for a framework to emerge from IGF Rio at the second day of what were supposed to be a closed MAG consultation, were it not for the inexplicable failure by the UN SG to reappoint the MAG. The obvious rejoinder is just how can the IGF produce outcomes .of any sort other than debate. Brazil has no answer to this.

What is to be done about this state of affairs? The IGC is distracted with the debate about a bureau when it should more properly be discussing the programme: if critical internet resources are to be discussed, what exactly should be discussed and how? If there is a desire for some sort of outcome, what is really feasible? Are Wolfgang's  'messages from the IGF' the way to go? If so how would that work in practice. What other issues are there which could be matched with specific provisions of paragraph 72 that could lead to some sort of outcome that could be contained in a 'message'? 

I propose we adopt Bertrand's proposal and write a letter to the UN SG outlining it cc to the IGF secretariat. Then we should  move on to consider the substantive issues and how we might engage with Brazil (and probably South Africa and India) about the shortcomings of their strategy and the need to distance IGF Rio from Iran's proxy war with the US, with  Canada and perhaps other OECD countries as potential allies and with the IGF secretariat about issues of substance. We could write formal letters to the governments we think we should engage. We could propose that Brazil appoint a civil society liasion for the Rio iGF  asap. And we should communicate formally with BASIS on these issues includng Bertrand's proposal.. A communication with ICANN may also be worthwhile on the issue of how to address the critical internet resource issue in a reasonable manner.

There is only a month to get this together and given how long the IGC takes to get consensus, there is no time to waste.

Willie

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile  

-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2007 14:15:22 
To:governance at lists.cpsr.org
Cc:Bertrand de La Chapelle <bdelachapelle at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [governance] Muti-stakeholder Group structure (some ideas)

I feel that I need to follow up to my own posting my mentioning certain 
things:

   - Individual people tend to be more effective if they create or join 
an aggregate.  I know that I have reduced the strength of my own voice 
by trying to remain an independent actor in these matters.  And I 
believe such aggregates, such as those under the "civil society" 
umbrella do a very fine job articulating and advocating the interests of 
many, perhaps most, users of the net.  And sometimes governments or 
their agencies also reasonably represent their citizens (but more than 
often governments are instead articulating, often repeating, commercial 
concerns.)

   - I don't deprecate commercial concerns, indeed my own personal 
wealth, such as it is, is based largely on commercial things and 
intellectual property.  But those are really just repackaging of the 
personal interests of those natural people who run (and sometimes own) 
those commercial enterprises.

   - My advocacy of "the individual" is to permit an "escape valve" so 
that there is a means, perhaps only a thin one, to counter what I fear 
will be excessive concentrations of virtually plenary authority, such as 
ICANN has become, in bodies of internet governance.

   - Milton and others are right in saying that we can not solve all the 
problems at once, nor can we be all inclusive at once.  Milton didn't 
say it in so may words, but he is expressing the wisdom that "the 
perfect is the enemy of the good".

   - And finally, I know, perhaps better than most, how expensive it is 
to act as a lone individual in these matters.  I really doubt that more 
than a few of us will ever be out there to the degree that we have.  But 
just as a hurricane is formed by the coalescing of water vapor around 
tiny, individual grains of dust or sea salt, it strikes me as 
exceedingly important to never lose sight of the fact that at the bottom 
of everything are real people living real lives.  (Wow, I hope that that 
badly mixed metaphor didn't run off of a cliff.)

		--karl--
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