[governance] Re: Nomcom and conflict of interest

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> .  It is more accurate to say that whilst MAG members are not  
> appointed to appoint their institutions, they are appointed to  
> represent (in a broad sense) their stakeholder groups.  Were 
> this not  
> the case, there would be no point in ensuring balance between  
> stakeholders at all.  The MAG would be a simple meritocracy in which  
> the best qualified candidates were appointed, regardless of  
> stakeholder balance.  But in fact the distinct values and 
> interests of  
> the governmental, private sector and civil society 
> representatives are  
> central to the very legitimacy of the MAG (and the broader IGF too).

Thanks to Jeremy for saving me the trouble of a long reply. I did not
want to directly disagree with George, because he is right about the
formal statement in the MAG charter. But in reality, what Jeremy says
nails the truth; it simply cannot be refuted. Indeed, we have just gone
through an insistence that Govertnments qua governments will get half
the MAG. What can explain this if not the attribution of some kind of
categorical representational quality to the government members of the
MAG, and the use of that representation to make a statement about which
sector has more power and clout in the UN? 

The difficult and troublesome fact is that multistakeholderism is messy
in this regard. It establishes sectoral categories and seems to call for
balanced representation of those categories, but since there is no
institutional process for representing those categories it offers the
pretence that the people we select are just "individuals acting on their
own behalf." 

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