AW: [governance] Consensus call on IGC statement: please respond YES

[Jeremy Malcolm]

On 29/01/2010, at 6:15 PM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:

> On 29/01/2010, at 6:14 PM, William Drake wrote:
> 
>> Wolfgang is right, it's a process not an institution.

Also, taking off my coordinator hat (and replying in a separate post for that reason), I don't agree.  "Institutions [simply] consist of cognitive, normative and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behaviour" (Scott, W. (1995) Institutions and Organisations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).

I realise that the word itself may connote something different to diplomats than it does in academia, but I would much rather call a spade a spade.  Civil society has already lost ground by accepting "dynamic coalitions" in place of "working groups", a "MAG" instead of a "bureau" and so on.  These aren't simply euphamisms.  They are disempowered shadows of what the IGF really needs.  And the IGF, honestly, needs to be an institution in the fullest sense if it is to be useful in promoting civil society's interests in Internet public policy development.

PS. My personal disagreement with the proposition has nothing to do with my decision not to rescind the consensus call.  We can, by all means, refer to the IGF as a "process" rather than an "institution" in a future statement if there is consensus on that.

PPS. Of course, I'm disappointed that we couldn't satisfy Parminder too.  As I'm sure he well knows, nobody would have been more pleased than I if we had been able to reach consensus on a stronger statement.  But the perfect is the enemy of the good, if you'll excuse the cliche.

-- 
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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