[governance] ITU Broadband Commission

[John Curran]

On Apr 7, 2012, at 7:10 AM, Riaz K Tayob wrote:

> Thanks for this perspicacity.
> 
> Yes, there is a paradox of participation, i.e. by participating one can legitimise what one intends to oppose. That in of itself is not a reason not to participate. 
> 
> The issue is that one can be so radical as to be irrelevant, and so reformist as to not even be incrementalist. And these all depend on fine judgement of the range of possibility that fora have within them. So there is no formulae for this.

Agreed.  Personally, I find it particularly important to encourage any motion towards
multi-stakeholder approaches in the long-established intergovernmental institutions, 
as their convolutions in the coming years are likely to impact IG whether we like it
or not...

> The key issue for me would be a culture of meaningful respect for diversity in these movements/processes. What we had in the swings of the pendulum on this list tends toward more rich country/market orientation views IMHO without adequate cognition of the need for diversity. This convergence implies a homogenising effect.
> 
> So it is different strokes for different folks, with some engaging and others commenting from afar. All should be tenable, and governance structures should encourage diverging views with an emphasis on fairness. Like it will not do to have bankers in charge of government rules on finance, a similar approach needs to be appreciated in the IG processes. But this rather obvious point is one that Parminder and others even struggle with here. 

The typical answer of governments on this is that the bankers (or industry 
in general) isn't in charge; i.e. government protects the diversity of views by 
providing both industry & civil society seats at the table.  This often often 
overlooks the fact that the table is in Geneva (etc.) and requires some form 
of funding to meaningfully participate, or that the 'civil society' invited at the 
table are leaders of foundations due to their previous stature as leaders of 
industry...

I don't know any way to address these concerns, other than to have 
multiple policy discussions via local/regional forums and inclusive as 
possible, and then to require some form of concurrence among the 
forums before anything can become decisional...  (this is the practice 
in the RIR system, and while imperfect, does mean that global policy 
gets openly debated in multiple local forums with repeated opportunity 
for non-industry views to be raised... :-)

> Diversity on views is important in this context, and should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

Indeed.

/John

Disclaimer:  My views alone.  Concepts contained within the email only have 
                  value in your mind and may not be redeemed for cash at any time.
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