[governance] IGF and Enhanced Cooperation

[parminder]

Norbert

A relatively old email that I should have responded to, but was awaiting 
responses to your proposal for "EC Task Force" from others.

My comments are inline.

On Friday 01 June 2012 02:41 PM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> parminder<parminder at itforchange.net>  wrote:
>
>    
>> Both your initial framing of questions and the way to go forward, and
>> the new responses to Marilia's email, are very valid, and thought
>> provoking. Our proposal to look at the institutional mapping and the way
>> forward separately for CIT/ tech standards on one side and
>> social-eco-cultural policy issues on the other (not that the division is
>> absolutely neat) is that there are different actors involved and actors
>> have different roles, on the two sides.
>>      
> Ok, so if this description is accurate, and the way forward is looked
> at separately for the two areas, I would expect that that will lead to
> Enhanced Cooperation going forward separately, or not, in each of the
> two areas.
>    

The reason for such separation is that the needs, context of ecology of 
technical decision making can be very different from that for larger 
political decision-making. 'Technical' refers to areas where  there is 
relatively not much difference and possible conflict of interests, and 
thus the accent is on finding the best 'solution' which more or less 
should be equally good for all. Processes like consensus building, 
letting all participate equally, without going into questions of 
legitimacy and representativity, emphasis on competence, knowledge of 
the subject matter, giving directions without legal/ binding force, and 
so on, work well, and are most appropriate for, technical decision 
making. 'Political' refers to areas where there is a greater occurrence 
of clearly differential interests, contexts and situations ,and so on, 
of the affected parties. While the distinction between technical and 
political cannot be an absolute binary, there is enough meaning and 
substance to these concepts that by and large decision making structures 
in these two realms are mostly structured in different ways. There are 
of course always ways to connect these structures as well (quite in 
keeping with your tripartite framing towards the end of your email).

> My vision for Enhanced Cooperation is to put both areas together,
> jointly, under a single institutional "Enhanced Cooperation Task
> Force" framework, modeled to some extent on the IETF, and a single set
> of process principles

The problem with your 'solution' is that you want to put such processes 
that have worked well for technical decision-making in service of both 
the tech and political realms of IG. I am not sure this will work. For 
me such conflation, in many actors mind, may be 'the original problem'. 
And pursuant to identification of this 'problem' did i suggest looking 
at two different, parallel, but at some point connected, processes to 
look respectively into the technical side and political (or larger 
public issues) side of  enhanced cooperation.

> that are designed to operate as closely as
> possible to what Daniel Kalchev calls "the 'common sense' law that
> every human being on this planet knows unconditionally".

"Common sense" is easier spoken of then being able to arrive at what is 
common sense in any particular case. This is especially so, and this 
goes to my point of separating technical and political sides of the 
problem,  when there are differential and perhaps conflicting interests, 
contexts etc among the involved parties. Common sense is often just 
another name for 'hegemony' in the Gramscian sense.


> The output
> of this "Enhanced Cooperation Task Force" would be Request For Action
> (RFA) documents, which analogously to RFCs would not have direct
> legal force,
This is more or less exactly what was meant by trying to give greater 
output and recommendatory orientation to the multistakeholder IGF, an 
effort that failed because, inter alia, the technical community, did not 
agree with it. Can you tell me how what you are suggesting now is 
different from the proposal to give IGF power or role to give clear 
recs, and these be authoritatively conveyed to different IG bodies, and 
for this purpose also to strengthen the MAG, and make it internally 
differentiated, policy theme wise, into working groups. One of such 
working groups could have been a 'working group on the enhanced 
cooperation issue', and I can see us arrive at almost exactly the same 
arrangement as you suggest. Is it not so? Only difference perhaps is, 
that the IGF proposal is made in general political and participation 
terms that have  been used historically and are understood by 'normal 
people', and even more importantly, that proposal is carefully placed in 
a clear institutional context, which has been carefuly nurtured for the 
purpose, and has the various needed historical and institutional 
continutities. Absent these, a proposal like yours for a 'EC task force' 
based on nothing but evocation of 'common sense' may look very good on 
paper, but  in any attempt to operationalise it may immidiately get 
captured by powerful actors.

Therefore, before one accepts this new proposal, those who so solidly 
stood in the way of giving bigger and better role to the IGF for a 
similar purpose would need to explain themselves. Otherwise, I cant see 
why this new proposal would has a better chance.

> but they'd be informative and persuasive and maybe
> eventually any government that doesn't follow the recommendations of
> the RFAs without giving really good reasons for choosing differently
> will get voted out of office quickly.
>
> So if I agree to a bipartition framing, I fear that I might thereby
> kill my vision, and I don't want to do that.
>    

I do appreciate your commitment, and despite my comments above, would 
want you to carry forward your vision.

parminder
> But I'd agree to a tripartition framing along the lines of
>
> (a) What are the current institutions in the "CIR + tech standards"
>      area, and how might an Enhanced Cooperation process be established
>      that addresses this area specifically?
>
> (b) What are the current institutions in the "social-eco-cultural policy"
>      area, and how might an Enhanced Cooperation process be established
>      that addresses this area specifically?
>
> (c) What are the concerns and challenges which are common to both of
>      these areas, and how might an Enhanced Cooperation process be
>      established that addresses both of these areas jointly?
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>
>    
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