[governance] multistakeholderism

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 19/08/2010, at 2:23 AM, Michael Gurstein wrote:

> As for ways forward, I'm with Parminder in seeing the necessary way forward
> as being the establishment of some frameworks for global governance (perhaps
> in specific identified areas) with clear rules of
> operation/legitimacy/participation and means for enforcement.  Those rules
> may be (perhaps need to be) supranational but it can't I think for reasons
> that should be obvious, be left to decisions by those who (have the means
> and interest) to show up and participate. The problem with with leaving it
> to those who show up (and in the absence of rules) is that those with the
> resources and the specific "stake" i.e. return from the outcome will find
> whatever means necessary to realize their ends and ultimately dominate the
> process.

I haven't been participating in this discussion, because I don't want to stick too much of an oar in while I'm co-coordinator, but I've been avidly reading and there have been many pearls of wisdom exchanged.  I'll just pipe up briefly here to add one short +1 to this, and to make a couple of related remarks.

I agree that civil society must promote the adoption of a framework for further democratising global governance (for which "multistakeholderism" is just a convenient and slightly inaccurate shorthand), beyond the Internet governance regime, in which it is really just a test-bed.

Agreeing with Wolfgang, and disagreeing slightly with Parminder, for me the inclusion of the three stakeholder groups in multi-stakeholder structures has never been about increasing the power of the private sector, but on the contary, balancing it.  The private sector already has the ear of governments, and by promoting multistakeholderism we ask nothing more than for the same privilege.

In Internet governance, we already have a good basic starting point for such a framework in the WSIS process criteria and the IGF's (unfulfilled) mandate to assess the performance of Internet governance institutions against these criteria.  Beyond that, the framework is being taken forward by efforts like the UNECE/CoE/APC Code of Good Practice on information, participation and transparency in Internet governance (already referred to in this thread, http://www.intgovcode.org/).

Other regimes are very far behind.  I have just written a paper in which I argue for the development of global principles for governance of the global regime on intellectual property, in view of the threat of ACTA, whose negotiators not only flout basic principles of democratic global governance, but also feign ignorance that they are doing so.  One of our workshops (Parminder's) will deal with this in detail too.

My fear, though, is that whilst Internet governance is, as I've said, just a test-bed for multistakeholderism, if it doesn't soon prove its value then it will not only have been born there but will die there as well, and end up with no more currency in global governance discourse than communism or anarchism.

In this respect I respectfully can't agree with Ginger (another reason I'm piping up now!) about the need to constrain the IGF from producing "results".  The fears about "the pressure of negotiations or the need for an agreed-upon end 'result'", whilst not unfounded, should be systematically confronted and addressed rather than fatalistically accepted.

It is more important that multi-stakeholderism works (and for us, not just for the incumbent powers) rather than that it doesn't rock the boat.  And by "works", we mean that we need to have an appreciable impact on shaping actual public policy decisions at a global level.  At the moment, we quite simply don't (research presented at last year's workshop on "Identifying the Impact" demonstrated this, and the UNSG's recent remarks also acknowledge it). 

In fact there are many ways in which the power of governments and other powerful actors to screw up the process can be defused.  I've written about these ad nauseum and I don't intend to do so again here, but read again the summary I wrote for the IGP for a refresher if you are interested (http://internetgovernance.org/pdf/MalcolmIGFReview.pdf).

With that out of the way, I'll re-lurk and leave you all to continue these very productive and interesting discussions.

-- 
Jeremy Malcolm
Project Coordinator
Consumers International
Kuala Lumpur Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East
Lot 5-1 Wisma WIM, 7 Jalan Abang Haji Openg, TTDI, 60000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: +60 3 7726 1599

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