[governance] multistakeholderism

[Avri Doria]

On 16 Aug 2010, at 01:49, parminder wrote:
> 
> I think this is an important discussion, and thanks for engaging in it.

Anytime.  I think of the multistakeholder model and the task of preserving and strengthening it, as well as CS's capability to participate fully in it,  as one of the most fundamental issues we have before us.  I understand that this is my particular view and may not be shared by many.

> 
> "I begin to despair (at least a little) as I see more and more leaders in Civil society join some of the governments in the condemnation of the multistakeholder model "
> 
> My despair with so many leaders in civil society undermining and bypassing institutional (and not anarchist) democratic forms, especially in the IG space is perhaps prior, as often articulated in this list.

I do not understand this sentence.

What democratic form is bypassed in civil society or in Global Policy making.  We do not have any sort of constitutional structure whereby a democratic format other than the Multistakeholder modality exist.  At least I haven't seen one.  Sure, some of us live in countries that have some sort of democratic voting, but unless we are going to leave everything in the hands of the nations states, there is no other democratic form that i see - nor do i see one on the any horizon.  So please explain the democratic form we are bypassing.

I do see the multistakeholder model as good for actually making IG policy, not just for talking about it. 

So in this I disagree with Wolfgang:

> The key issue of MS is "dialogue" among various groups on a more equal footing. MS is NOT a political decision making process. 

I agree if isn't yet, but I believe it can, and I believe it should, be.

I just believe neither the model nor the participants have matured sufficiently yet to be able to do that. Just like I believe CS has not yet gotten to the point of maturity were we can democratically, in a bottom up manner, choose representatives in the various multistakeholder process - though we may be getting there slowly - experiment by experiment.

As for your 'and not anarchist' phrase, I do not know what you mean.  My view is that bottom-up structures, the absence of top down hierarchy is the democratic form of anarchism (sometimes also called anarcha-feminism or manifests in various forms of social anarchism like the anarcho-queer or the green anarchism movement ...).  In my world view anarchism does not mean chaos or violence, but means bottom-up organization.  But I know the word is highly overloaded with meaning and prejudice, and I do not know what you mean by it and whether you use it as dirty word (so many people do) or not.

> 
> Yes, any democracy has to have a consitutional framework, and though 1 person 1 vote is basic and the most sacrosanct principle, it is only the start and any real democracy consists of numerous institutional supra-structures built over this basic norm. 

Actually I tend to think that the most sacrosanct principle is the protection of people's rights with the corollary that the majority may not abuse or restrict any of the rights of minorities.  I think any democracy that does not place that at the forefront of its principles is just another form of tyranny and one that does not deserve support.  So for me, while important, 1 person 1 vote is secondary to the protection of rights and is not absolute.

> 
> We all agree that an elected government, even democratically elected one, cannot claim complete right and legitimacy over what is public interest. I proposed, as many others do, that we use the concept of 'deepening democracy' the subject of UNDP's 2002 Human Development Report 'Deepening democracy in a fragmented world'. I argued how this concept seeks to include as many voices as possible with the aim to make democracy a way of life, but is quite mindful of relative power between different actors that 'participate' in its processes. This later issue is what principally distinguishes practises of 'deepening democracy (which are very well established) from those of multistakeholderism.

The point in the multistakeholder model is to equalize the power among the participants.  This is a process that takes time and is to my mind a critical component of  democracy.  A fundamental concept is the equality of the participants in all of their stakeholder memberships, and I see no other system that gives us a path to that other than the multistakeholder model. 

> 
> So, my direct question to you is ' what is your problem with preaching and practising 'deepening democracy' rather than multistakeholderism.

Because deepening democracy, as I understand your explanation of it, does not include the notion of equality among all participants.    And because from a pragmatic point of view, we have a certain amount of commitment from all sides, including those who hold power, toward a multistakeholder model.

> 
> You say that without an 'informed polity' democracy is dead. Very certainly so. And I dont believe multistakeholderism is what is needed for an 'informed polity'.

Here again, we disagree.  I think the fact that outreach and capacity building are integral to the multistakehoder model makes it very much the right solution for today.  It should evolve in its complexity and maturity and it will eventually morph into the next step on the road to a social just bottom-up democracy with equal access for all in all of their apsects.

> The concept of 'public sphere' as basic to democracy is well known, well theorised as well as practised. That is what is needed for an 'informed polity'. (And there is a lot of literature on how the Internet may be having both a positive and a negative impact on the democratic public sphere.)
> 
> Again, the question is, what is so new and unique now that we should supplant the known and practised ideas of 'deepening democracy' and 'public sphere' for this new thing, multistakeholderism (MSism), when, as I showed with examples in an earlier email, in practice Msism has mostly only succeeded in giving political space and respectability to mega-corporates.

I do not think you have shown this.  You have argued it from our perspective, but I do not agree that you have shown it in any sot of QED manner. 

I find that you have a fear and resultant  desire to exclude the commercial participants whereas I believe we can't do it without them.  I believe their power can be fought in many ways, but keeping them away from the table is not one of them.  These days, I find that people's identities and participation are as invested in the companies they work for or believe in (how many people identify themselves by the products they buy - Apple people anyone?) as they are in the governments they are ruled by and the civil society groups that represent their interests or the teams they cheer for and he veer they drink.  The various stakeholder groups (and I do not hold to there only being 3) are the manifestations of the many forms of participation that humans engage in.  When we bring together a truly multistakeholder group we allow for people to participate fully, being represented, in some sense to some degree, in several of the stakeholder groups.

> 
> Discussing about what may be really new today, I thing the most important new factor is that the economy is globalised and polity still national, which means that global megacorporates are largely unregulated and will keep increasing their power at the expense of public interest.

And I give every support to notions of multistakeholder regulation of these multinational entities.  I think it is the only way.  But this means that the multistakeholder model needs to mature to the point where this can be done in a reliable open, transparent, and enforceable manner.

I also do not agree that the polity is fully national.  I think many of us are trying to move away from that national mode and some have done so to some extent.  I think governments are holding us in these cages, but that too will probably change in time.  I think a growing number people all the time are thinking globally, well except for when it comes to futbol teams and the local farmer's market.

> This is what is new, which gives us even more reason to look at existing democratic practises like the above mentioned ones, rather than try out new 'suspect' ones which in fact helps spread the malaise of unbridled corporate power even more. 

I find the old democratic forms to be suspect and inappropriate as they are all controlled at the national level.  Some may be fine for determining the various governments' perspective on the issues, but do nothing for the other sides of the question.  So these older democratic forms only represent one side of the multistakeholder equation.

> 
> As for your concerns about governments forcing the uniquely global Internet into national borders, I am very concerned about it. But I am as concerned about Internet being forced by mega digital corporates (see net neutrality debate) into new borders of class. I cherished the possibility of an undivided global world through the Internet, but 'my uptopianism' even more saw a hope and vision of a class-less world through the Internet.

I too support that.  And see the multistakeholder model and the regulation by multistakeholder bodies as the only viable solution to the problem.

> 
> Why some kind of borders bother us more than other kinds? 
> 
> Depending on which kind of borders bother us more, the principal adversary of our advocacy efforts would change.

_All_ borders bother me. 

> 
> You said,
> 
> "..... people undercutting the very modality that gives them a seat at the international, regional and nation tables where policy is discuss and made is unfathomable to me. "
> 
> The political economy question is, which 'people' who are 'them' or rather 'we'. If we think through political economy lenses these things may not be as unfanthomable.


That is the point of continual outreach and capacity building in the multistakeholder model. 

Why is it these discussions remind me so much of the bitter fights in the US radical scene in the 80's?Where the Marxists said they had the way to understand the world while the Feminists said they did and then finally some really clever theoreticians figured out that combing the methods was most useful (of course while we argued among ourselves the free-market boys had eaten our lunch and captured the global mindshare).  In today's world we have hopefully even moved beyond the recognition that have those are the two variables in the discussion and have hopefully moved in a multi-theoretical framework.  

Like the Marxism of the 80's, political economy only focuses on one aspect through one lens, so while useful and critical, it is limited;  I believe one needs to take a multi-theoretical approach to both understanding the problems and finding the solutions - which leads me to conclude that a multistakeholder approach is currently the only viable option.

a.


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