[governance] Re: SECOND DRAFT statement on enhanced cooperation

[Avri Doria]

On 6 Nov 2010, at 01:26, parminder wrote:

> 
> 
> On Saturday 06 November 2010 09:34 AM, Avri Doria wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I think this proposal is horribly government centric and hope that it is does not become the consensus of the IGC.
>>   
>> 
> I took a lot of pains to state whom the proposal seeks to serve, and whom does a studied silence on enhanced cooperation issue serves.

I do not accept the premise that there is studied silence on Enhanced Cooperation.  Or a vacuum. 

I contend that we see progress in Enhanced cooperation.  The more I watch the changes in the groups doing Internet Governance, the more I see the participation of governments along side the other stakeholders.  And the more I see the opening for Civil society of all sorts to participate.  Yes, there is a ways to go, there will always be a ways to go.  And we should wok on the means of  furthering the progress we are making.

I look for proposals that serve all of the world's people, the marginalized included.  I do not, however, look for solutions that shift the marginalization from one set of players to another.


>> A civil society caucus should not become a government serving body.  
> Neither should it become a body in service of anarchic global elites, who in and through techno-fascination, seek to subvert our democratic polities, and willy nilly serve the interests of the already dominant (businesses, governments, classes). That is what a 'we dont know, and we dont care' response to the 'enhanced cooperation' consultation in effect means.
>> To voluntarily surrender full control of Internet governance to governments, except for a token 'other' presence strikes me as unthinkable.
>>   
>> 
> I may be wrong, but there seems to be here an underpinning of rejection/hatred of governments - as a social institution,  without any distinction between good ones and bad ones, and about that I will not be able to offer much argumentation here. 

You are wrong.  I see governments as fact of contemporary life and a necessary part of any solution.  

Both the good ones, which I define as those who live up to instruments such as the IBR (UDHR + ICCPR + ICESCR), Geneva conventions, .... and all the other agreements, conventions and treaties that mandate how people should be treated by governments, and the other ones, the ones you call the bad ones.

I contend that people by and large have the government that they can live with and thus, however poorly, it does represent them to some extent.  In some places there are occasional eruptions of revolutionary fervor that overturns a regime either peacefully or less so, but for the most part people seem to accept their government - because the fact of history have shown us that when the mass of the people do not accept their governments, that government is overturned.  So yes, I think the governments I think of as bad stiil, in some sense, do represent their people to some extent on some issues, e.g. the integrity of the geography they occupy and all that this entails.  I might wish for a world with less nationalistic identification, but I know I am in a very small minority that feels that way.  By the way I am avoiding the complexity of the 'right to protect' that many are beginning to argue internationaly vis a vis human rights in this simplistic analysis of people having the government they are willing to accept.

> (BTW, a true practice of this ideology should entail giving up of all government provided benefits and protection, for the purpose of which ,in the present circumstances, maybe taking up residence in Southern Afganistan will be the best exemplar. Such an experience may be quite insightful.)

Not my position, man. e.g.  I want a government led/regulated single payer health system in the US.  

But you do a good job of arguing ad absurdum.  Be careful though.  When one argues the ad absurdum, I have found, there is always someone you can convince with your absurd argument.  Just look at recent US elections, people can be convinced of anything at times.  But that's representational democracy. I digress.

>   
> Any system systematically developing and enforcing public policies is in effect a government. we can have a good - more inclusive, transparent, accountable, progressive etc - government or governance system, or a bad one. 

I disagree that governance is the province of governments. Any governance system can and should go beyond the governments.  First, all governments are just local affairs for some definition of local, with no world government either in existence or in the offing. Further, governments, the best of which have a strong representative democracy - and there are few that meet this criteria, are just touching the tip of what it means to be democratic.  True democracy builds its base on the representative 1 person 1 vote (though some are still just 1 man 1 vote, or just  1 landowner 1 vote ...) model, but goes far beyond that into participatory democracy.  Representative democracy may be the foundation of democracy, but it does not provide a full edifice for full democracy.

The multistakeholder model that I support is one way of attempting a modicum of participatory democracy while we figure out how that really can work on both the micro and macro democratic levels.  It may be just a start but indeed it is a start.  This model includes as one of it elements the representationally democratic participants from governments (as well as the governments which are less so), and participants representative all of the groups that either devote themselves to the function under governance or who are affected by the function under governance.  How these groups self organize is up to them, and one would hope that they find methods, as the IGC seems to do, that satisfy (or at least satisfice) the representational urgings of its members.  And in some cases, for example those who are truly marginalized (starving, homeless and without the knowledge that his Internet world of ours even exits) there are those who dedicate themselves to representing their interests before those people reach a state of being to represent themselves fully.  There are all sort of levels to be achieved and accommodated in participatory democracy - a phenomenon we do not yet fully understand and which has not yet been achieved anywhere that I know of - though some places, like Brazil seem to be a few steps ahead of the rest.

Note:  Intergovernmental organizations present a real problem for democracy because they are inherently non democratic with the participants in those being largely selected by the  bureaucrats of various governments.  And even when IGO reps are selected by elected officials, they have very little accountability to any of the voters anywhere.

And yes, I make it a practice to fight for accountability and transparency in any group I am involved in.  Do you?  I think that is as fundamental as representational democracy to full democracy.

> 
> So, can you, Avri, specifically state whether you are against the suggested governance model or against any system of effectively developing global public policies related to the Internet, and enforcing them.

Ouch, a gotcha question.  You are good!

I am against any model of governance that minimizes participation by some groups of people to the advantage of other groups; be they national groups, trans national groups, marginalized groups, the 'techno-fascinated' as you so generously put it, business groups, academic groups, civil society groups ...

I am against any governance system dominated by a single government, multilateral government, intergovernmental organizations, the business sector, the technical community or even by civil society. That is, I am against single stakeholder governance models.

I am against any governance model that enforces centralized governance.

I am against globally active or pro--active governance that tells others what to do from a top down perspective.

I favor governance models that include all of the stakeholders in a decentralized model.

I favor governance models that by and large allow operational groups to do what they do best with exception based multistakeholder oversight that only comes in when there is a problem or an appeal.

Specific enough?


> If not the latter, which I truely hope, then what is your suggested global model for global Internet related public policies - which is the subject matter and the primary concern of the Tunis Agenda, and to which the process of 'enhanced cooperation' relates. And how can your suggested model take care of all the aspects of political governance of the Internet, including what may be called as 'progressive' (i can discuss this term more if you want), beyond just some narrow technical matters, which are expressly excluded from the ambit of the enhanced cooperation as per the Tunis agenda.

While I can support various multistakeholder appointed groups that can review problems in enhanced cooperations and make recommendations, I do not support the GIO/GIC model of centralized active intrusive oversight you are proposing. Did not support it when I was on WGIG, and do not support it now.  I do support appeals teams and arbitration, sometimes binding sometimes not binding, at times.

When it comes to advisory bodies who watch and comment and have a bully pulpit and a connector function, I look for formulas that give all stakeholders equal participation.  I can think of various way of doing it.  Those participants appointed by governments should include a range of participations from their governments, their private sectors and their civil society.  The technical community, private sector and civil society ... participants should be geographically diverse with different skill sets and knowledge bases.  The fact that most people wear several hats and have a various stakeholder associations should be recognized and there should be a smattering of people who span several of the communities.  People should only serve on these for a few years and there should be very few Pooh-bahs who sit on every committee of every group - i.e there should be lots of turn over with very few professional committee members, but lots of diversity from many different stakeholder groups and geographies and ...

So to the question do we need a new global IG process, I would answer no.

Do we need more maturing and participation by all stakeholders in global IG processes we have? Yes.

Do we need some sort of soft governance to aid in furthering enhanced cooperation?  Yes, though I do think that the IGF, if it is allowed to continue and allowed to grow along its current trajectory, goes a long way in this regard.  Remember that cooperation is mutual and includes willingness - we are _not_ talking about Enforced Cooperation, but Enhanced Cooperation.  At least I hope we aren't.

And finally do we need some sort of appeals/arbitration mechanisms for when cooperation breaks down?  To this I would also answer yes.

a.

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