[governance] Your support for a petition

[parminder]

On Saturday 19 February 2011 08:25 PM, Avri Doria wrote:
> In general I see most countries in their role as handmaidens of business and other powerful elites with a patina of public choice when it is not inconvenient to the elites.

If your problem is that governments are mostly handmaidens of big 
business (and other elite) then the only way out is to keep seeking 
improvements in governments, by trying to make them more and more 
democratic (surely, some government forms are more democratic than 
others) as may be happening in the Arab world at present. Grearter 
involvement of civil society and community based organizations is one of 
the important ways of improving democracy.

In any case, the problem of business/ elite domination can hardly be 
solved by going toward governance forms where big business is even more 
legitimately and formally a part of governance structures. And that is 
what multistakeholderism in IG is largely turning out to be.

>   I see big businesses as conglomerates of people wanting to be rich

No, 'big business' are people already very rich, and having resources 
and means to manipulate everything and everyone for seeking ever greater 
power, unless there is some political check on them. More and more, 'big 
business' is not even people, it is just fast moving blind capital, much 
more so in a network society. There is no way to correct/ improve the 
wrongful acts or inclinations of big business other than through proper 
political checks.

Therefore, the solution to both, the wrong kind of governments and the 
wrong kind of business practices, is more democratic governance, not a 
return to feudal systems where existing power (then of rank, and now of 
money) itself secures seats in the political system.


> and being motivated by profit more than principle, though often they hold a principle (one i do not hold) that increase in profit is an increase in good.  There are exceptions and variations in both generalities, since for the most part generalities are always partially false while being partially true. Yes, I know that is a generality.
>
> In terms of their roles, I see them as equal stakeholders

My problem with multistakeholderism (MSism) begins when it is raised to 
this level. I can never see governments and big business are 'equal 
stakeholder'. That  for me is the death of democracy. i can accept MSism 
as a subservient part of democracy (which is the way the term was always 
used till I heard new formulations in the global IG discourse), but not 
as overriding democracy.

parminder
>   among others each following their perspectives of what it means to achieve the good, even when i think their good is not so good.  I see neither as representing the full will or interests of the people but only as representatives of some part of some people's will or interests at some point in time.
>
> So I  chose neither, but will work with either or both.  And of course I know that it is a political choice.
>
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-- 
PK

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