[governance] NTIA announcement on JPA

[Milton L Mueller]

Bill: you're right, the word "lazy" was just wrong. But we appear to
agree that the words "prone to inertia in the absence of strong
leadership from their political superiors" was correct. 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Drake [mailto:william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch]
> Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 2:02 AM
> To: Milton L Mueller; Governance
> Subject: Re: [governance] NTIA announcement on JPA
> 
> Hi Milton,
> 
> Agree with most of your post, but one comment.
> 
> On 4/3/08 5:25 AM, "Milton L Mueller" <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:
> 
> > The answer should be obvious: NTIA is not looking for information
about
> what
> > needs to be done, but seeking confirmation of its prior tendency to
do
> > nothing. Government agencies, in the absence of strong leadership
from
> their
> > political superiors, are lazy and prone to inertia. NTIA is not
going to
> take
> > any initiatives on its own and clearly the lame-duck Bush Presidency
has
> no
> > vision or plan in this area. The US is reasonably comfortable with
the
> status
> > quo and won't move until someone makes them very uncomfortable.
> 
> Saying the problem is laziness is equivalent to the standard practice
of
> attributing failed international negotiations to a lack of "political
> will."
> There are of course structural forces at work that constrain the space
for
> movement.  The US has a strong society and an institutionally weak
state
> (save in the military sphere).  NTIA's Office of International Affairs
is
> just nine mostly mid-level people (all of them women, coincidentally),
3
> of
> whom have any involvement in ICANN matters.  They work for a Commerce
Sec.
> and administration committed to the Alfred E. Neuman school of
economic
> policymaking, and are down the street from a multiplicity of massive
> companies, industry associations and government agencies, plus think
tanks
> and CSOs, all of whom oppose sharing sovereignty.  You know all this,
so
> why
> dump on "lazy bureaucrats"?  You can't really believe that if NTIA
> staffers
> just pulled up their socks and sat up straighter they could tell all
the
> assembled forces for the status quo, sorry, suck it up, ICANN goes
free
> into
> the wild because we think it's a good idea that might make IGP and
some
> non-voters in distant lands happy?
> 
> > community and even ICANN itself is clearly unhappy with its role,
and
> anyone
> > with half a brain knows that it is not a austainable position in the
> long
> > term.
> 
> In the long run we're all dead, so that's not much comfort.  Prior to
> that,
> I've got fifty bucks that says the next administration won't change
> anything, at least not in its first term.  Who'd want to throw read
meat
> to
> right wing blogosphere etc before the 2012 election?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bill
> 

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