[governance] Stakeholder Participation in the Enhanced Cooperation Meeting in Geneva

[Paul Lehto]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 11:10 AM, michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>wrote:

> It seems to me that the basic issues of Enhanced Cooperation from a CS
> perspective are twofold:
>        1. what is the normative framework within which EC should take
> place--my strong suggestion would be that it is that of transparency,
> accountability, democracy and inclusiveness (and of course there is the
> WSIS declaration etc. to support this).  And that this should be presented
> as a declaration and within a framing document.
>        2. that having agreed on such a normative framework the question is
> what is the most appropriate institutional arrangement for achieving these
> within the context of Internet governance.
>

I believe that once democracy is adopted as a normative framework (it can
hardly be denied, so it can only be ignored at worst), then it follows that
all the "stakeholder" stuff can at most only be seen as an intermediate and
transition-state to real democracy.

The existence of "stakeholders" along with their necessarily limited
numbers creates the existence of non-stakeholders, who have neither a vote
nor a voice.  In the event any civil society group purports to informally
"represent" the public, and assuming they somehow succeed in that, the
public in a stakeholder situation then only has one vote, and is drowned
out by all of the other private special interests represented at the
"stakeholder" table.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)
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