[governance] Principles

Ian Peter ian.peter at ianpeter.com
Mon Oct 1 19:57:43 EDT 2012 

Rony, you are probably right as regards our lifetimes.

But a quick look at human history shows us adopting increasingly larger
governance models as technological advances, firstly transport, and then
telecommunications, come in to play to make us more aware of people and
places we would have never conceived having contact with.

So, to start with a town like London, there were firstly separate boroughs,
then a town with a governance structure. It later sat within a nation called
England, which joined other nearby nations to form the United Kingdom. Then,
in turn, the UK became part of the European Union.

United States of America is another example, or Australian Federation. Of
course there are many more in all parts of the world.

Or consider the rise in the last century of geopolitical global alliances of
various sorts. Increasingly, we are looking at larger alliances and
governance structures.

In this context some form of global governance is I think inevitable, and I
believe the Internet will hasten its existence and lessen the resistance to
such concepts.

Maybe that¹s something my grandchildren will see. I hope for their sake it
is, as the current nation state structure is inadequate, almost feudal by
nature, and unhelpful in solving global problems, be they environmental or
internet governance or whatever. We will move on, I would love to live to
see that happen, but I think like you it is probably beyond our lifetimes.

Ian Peter



From: Koven Ronald <kovenronald at aol.com>
Reply-To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, Koven Ronald
<kovenronald at aol.com>
Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 18:10:40 -0400 (EDT)
To: <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>, <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu>
Subject: Re: [governance] Principles

Dear All -- 

This discussion really can't be serious. It opens up an incredible can of
worms and seems to be posited on the notion that the Internet has revoked
the 2,500 previous years of political philosophy and history. The nation
state is going to be with us for the foreseeable future (that is to say, our
lifetimes) as the source and locus of law and power. The Internet has not
put an end to the nation state, much as some people on this list would like
to believe. Try telling a traffic policeman that he can't arrest you because
you're not a citizen but a netizen,  and see where you end up.

Cheers, Rony Koven


-----Original Message-----
From: David Allen <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu>
To: governance <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
Sent: Mon, Oct 1, 2012 11:41 pm
Subject: Re: [governance] Principles

hmmm ...

> We have to think about how in the 'post-democratic' order (in the
> sense of post-nation state-based democracy) order legitimacy can be
> conveyed in the process of producing norms.

and
> ... in post-democratic trans-national constellations ...

So, we _presume_ a post-democratic order - so that we can legitimize
something besides 'democracy'?

I don't think so.  Such logic is circular.

And:

> We need to focus not on democracy as a concept, but legitimacy as a
> goal.


As Norbert has pointed out, the Nazi's were legitimate - to use the
case, which is cited now, all over the web, ad nauseam.  To go beyond
that case, Stalin still has many, many adherents in Russia.  A man who
saw to the slaughter of millions and millions.  I can come up with
some heinous American examples, I am sure, with only a little effort.
How about the Ku Klux Klan, who just for instance ruled the US state
of Indiana (where I am a native) through at least the 1930s?  And of
course saw to lynchings, and all manner of the ugliest and most
despicable acts.  They had legitimacy.

Legitimacy, as the target?  I don't think so.

On the other hand:

> human rights-based, accountable government (and good governance)
> based on real, periodic, secret elections.



> We need to ensure that the rules we aim for are materially
> reflective of the needs of those to whom they are applied.

These could be first elements in a potentially productive discussion,
to address the serious problems of greater scale and so complexity.

_If_ they do not presume answers, but instead are in a spirit of real
investigation.

For instance:

> Just as good democracy does nationally, multistakeholder-baesd
> decision-making have heightened input legitimacy and lead to
> normative outcomes that are materially reflective of the
> individual¹s central needs ...

While counter cases simply abound - and so invalidate the proposition
- at the same time there are successful, working instances which could
be useful in thinking about possibilities, going forward.

Once again, only if in a spirit of investigation, oh so early on in
the process, without presumption of conclusions (which is the bane of
successful intellectual work ... which dooms any such effort before it
is begun).


Certainly though, any useful discussion will begin and end with the
interplay of power relations.  As I memorably heard Kenneth Arrow say,
oh so many years ago, (of course the Kenneth Arrow of last century's
mathematical neoclassical microeconomics, perhaps the first Economics
Nobel, certainly one of the first):  After he had spent an hour
explaining the calculus of perfect competition, he turned and said
(words to the effect):  Or maybe, this result is rendered immaterial
by the ability of two men to overpower one person.

Democracy is about the little person retaining power, even in the face
of power accumulations, be that by economic forces such as corporate
behemoths who disenfranchise the little guy, or by autocrats bent on
taking from their populace for their own benefit.


Notwithstanding, with the greatest respect for a thesis about to be
published.

David

On Oct 1, 2012, at 4:48 PM, Kettemann, Matthias
(matthias.kettemann at uni-graz.at
) wrote:

> Dear all
>
> though I enjoy this discussion I think there are two underlying
> problems. 1) Most notions of democracy used in this (and a lot of
> other) debate(s) are state-centred. They are no longer tenable as a
> legitimating basis for the production of rules in transnational
> constellations. To ensure that they are legitimate, we need a new
> concept of democrac. 2)  Discussants often mix  up two different
> notions of democracy: the formal and the material one. Formally,
> democracy demands that each vote be counted. But that's not enough.
> Over the years there has been developed an international cumstomary
> law basis of what democracy materially truly means - human rights-
> based, accountable government (and good governance) based on real,
> periodic, secret elections.
>
> What does this mean for our debate? We need to focus not on
> democracy as a concept, but legitimacy as a goal.
>
> How does this work? First of all, we need to look at the material,
> not the formal, notion of democracy. We need to ensure that the
> rules we aim for are materially reflective of the needs of those to
> whom they are applied.
>
> Second, 'one (wo)man, one vote' is a nice slogan, but it's just no
> enough in our post-national constellation. We have to think about
> how in the 'post-democratic' order (in the sense of post-nation
> state-based democracy) order legitimacy can be conveyed in the
> process of producing norms.
>
> Now, what does this mean for the Internet Governance debate? We need
> to identify the best process of how to convey legitimacy. This
> process, as has been pointed out, is multistakeholderism. But
> multistakeholderism is not a form of participatory democracy; it is
> a new form of conveying legitimacy in post-democratic trans-national
> constellations.
>
> Just as good democracy does nationally, multistakeholder-baesd
> decision-making have heightened input legitimacy and lead to
> normative outcomes that are materially reflective of the
> individual¹s central needs (and thus have high output legitimacy).
>
> This is one of the points I'm making in the published version of my
> PhD which Eleven International will publish in autumn.
>
> So less talk about democracy, and more talk about legitimacy.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Matthias
>
> --
> Dr. Matthias C. Kettemann, LL.M. (Harvard)
> Institute of International Law and International Relations
> University of Graz
> E | matthias.kettemann at uni-graz.at
> Blog | internationallawandtheinternet.blogspot.com
> ________________________________________
> Von: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org

> ] im Auftrag von Norbert Bollow [nb at bollow.ch]
> Gesendet: Montag, 01. Oktober 2012 22:23
> An: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> Betreff: Re: [governance] Principles
>
> Dear all
>
> I'm rather alarmed by Wolfgang's assertion that "Multistakeholderism
> *IS* the highest form of participatory democracy".
>
> I would suggest that the main point of democracy is to safeguard the
> public interest against being overpowered by powerful particular
> interests.
>
> By contrast, multistakeholderism allows all stakeholders to
> participate
> without restriction. This implies that it cannot contain adequate
> processes for making decisions on those questions which, due to
> significant conflicts between different legitimate interest, cannot be
> resolved by rough consensus.
>
> It is true that democratic governance systems tend to have
> imperfections, and I'm all in favor of working on fixing any and all
> bugs that can be clearly identified and for which a known solution
> strategy exists. One of these bugs is the current tendency of
> governments (including in particular the judicial branch) to make
> Internet related decisions without understanding what they're doing.
> As you know I'm proposing to address this bug by means of a
> multistakeholder process to create informative recommendation
> documents to inform them better.
> ( http://enhanced-cooperation.org/RFA/1 )
>
> But please let's avoid talking about multistakeholderism as if it in
> itself somehow were an improved form of democracy. It isn't.
>
> Further, I agree with the points made by Michael Gurstein and David
> Allen.
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>
>
> David Allen <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>> How many times has this list been around this track ...?
>>
>> Norbert Klein rightly brings to attention the difficulties to which
>> democracy can be prey.
>>
>> And Winston Churchill helped us understand - in that very sober
>> light
>> - where we stand today:  "... democracy is the worst form of
>> government except all the others that have been tried."
>>
>> By no stretch of the imagination does so-called multi-stakeholderism
>> hold out prospect to be a replacement.
>>
>> That does not of course remove the terrible blemishes democracy may
>> create.  In fact, another Churchill quote holds that:  "The best
>> argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the
>> average voter."
>>
>> What is clear is that we just might benefit from some quality
>> thinking and some hard, collaborative work, to try to understand how
>> representativeness may be instantiated, in a much-more-connected
>> world, and especially in a world that now truly becomes global.
>> Where agreement among very many, and many very different, actors is
>> now often urgent.  But more and more difficult to cobble together,
>> because of the scale and attendant complexity.  Yet, ultimate power
>> in individual citizen hands is therefore all the more paramount, as
>> the starting point.
>>
>> Rather than shibboleths, as seemingly easy - but really just facile
>> - answers, we might apply ourselves to the serious work at hand.
>>
>> As Michael Gurstein has encouraged.
>>
>> David
>>
>> On Oct 1, 2012, at 10:36 AM, michael gurstein wrote:
>>
>>> Very good question Norbert and I well accept your cases and I
>>> don't have any easy answers (but nor I think, does anyone elseŠ
>>>
>>> Two things though, I know for sure that governance by self-
>>> appointed, essentially unaccountable "stakeholders" is not
>>> "democracy" at least by any definition I understand, and also that
>>> we probably need to have some sort of collective rethinking/
>>> redefinition of what we do mean by democracy in an age of
>>> instantaneous and essentially free and massified communication and
>>> information, the capacity for borderless (and defenseless) action
>>> at a distance, mass literacy, and other manifestations of the
>>> technologically transformed world that has emerged and would be
>>> completely unrecognizable to the conceptualizers of representative
>>> democracy in the 18th and 19th century.
>>>
>>> Issues of scale and unit (macro and micro the neighborhood, the
>>> tribe, the province, the nation, the world);  issues of
>>> accountability and transparency (increased opportunity for and
>>> increased means to avoid), issues of efficacy (personal,
>>> collective, associative) and a wide range of others need to be
>>> accounted for and I think "we" as a species have only just started
>>> that rethinking processŠ
>>>
>>> In the meantime abandoning something that we do know and
>>> understand and have some experience with for leaps in the dark
>>> seems to me to be a not very useful place to begin.
>>>
>>> M
>>>
>>> From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
>>> [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
<mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org?>  ] On Behalf Of
>>> Norbert Klein Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 10:08 AM
>>> To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
>>> Subject: Re: [governance] Principles
>>>
>>> Interesting and important.
>>> My question relates to this part: ³the degree to which such
>>> processes could at all be called ``democratic`` at least within
>>> any definition of the term that I (or I would expect most of us)
>>> would understand.²
>>> There is an assumption what ³most of us² would expect ­ but it is
>>> not defined.
>>> So I assume ­ maybe wrongly? - it is a kind of ³one man (or woman)
>>> one vote²? If not ­ so what? Please elaborate.
>>> This surely was a good principle ­ it was used a lot arguing, for
>>> example, against the South African Apartheid regime which rejected
>>> it. Was it a triumph of democracy when the National Socialists
>>> (the ³Nationalsozialisten² = Nazi²), with the help of the German
>>> National People's Party, were victorious in elections in March 1933
>>> ­ starting a dark age of German history, tremendous damage on many
>>> others too.
>>> ³Demo-cracy² hints at a concept that the will of the people
>>> governs. But how?
>>> The Cambodian People's Party has gained more and more seats in the
>>> National Assembly through every vote since 1993 ­ but the UN
>>> Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Cambodia has
>>> raised serious concerns because the electoral system ­ especially
>>> the National Election Committee ­ is controlled by government
>>> appointees, NOT representing the plurality of parties in the
>>> National Assembly. And thousands and thousands of people
>>> forcefully evicted from their traditional areas of residency have
>>> not only lost their homes, but they are no longer on residency
>>> related voter lists. Is the one-country-one-vote - on the UN level
>>> ­ more democratic, where 14 million Cambodia have the same
>>> vote-weight as 235+ million of Indonesia?
>>> The question is not only: What is democratic? ­ In the actual
>>> situations where we live it means also: How do we move towards the
>>> good goal that ³the people's² benefits (not the majority of the
>>> people who voted in the Nazis in Germany, I add, without offering
>>> at the same time a rationale for my personal opinion here) are
>>> central? It is on this background that I well understand the short
>>> statement (which is open to misunderstandings) about Internet
>>> Governance: ³Multistakeholderism *IS* the highest form of
>>> participatory democracy² If it is not ­ so what else, and how?
>>>
>>> Norbert Klein
>>> Phnom Penh/Cambodia
>>>
>>> =
>>>
>>> On 10/1/2012 7:59 PM, michael gurstein wrote:
>>> Wolfgang and all,
>>>
>>> I`ve just had an opportunity to observe at somewhat close hand a
>>> series of
>>> multi-stakeholder processes at work (in Agriculture planning) in
>>> several
>>> African countries... I was quite impressed for a number of reasons
>>> which I
>>> won`t go into here (I`m currently working on the report...
>>>
>>> However, one conclusion that I would draw is that while
>>> `multi-stakeholderism` is in at least some instances very
>>> effective as an
>>> inclusive, let`s say `participative` management tool it is very
>>> far from
>>> what I, or I think almost anyone would call ``democratic``
>>> (unless, as in
>>> some I think, quite perverse instances, one chooses to conflate
>>> the notions
>>> of management with democracy).
>>>
>>> The problem is that while multi-stakeholderism is inclusive of
>>> interests it
>>> is not necessarily accountable or representative of or for those
>>> interests.
>>> So for example, while a national or reagional farmers` union might
>>> be a very
>>> effective stakeholder representative of the interests of small
>>> holder farmers the precise process of accountability and
>>> representivity is in many
>>> instances a very open question subject to for example, the
>>> personailities of
>>> individuals, literacy, access to media and information, political
>>> interference etc. etc. The latter caveats do not preclude the former
>>> affirmations but they do strongly bracket the degree to which such
>>> processes
>>> could at all be called ``democratic`` at least within any
>>> definition of the
>>> term that I (or I would expect most of us) would understand.
>>>
>>> I think your broad objective of pursuing a framework for multi-
>>> stakeholder
>>> governance of the Internet is a worthwhile one and one I hope to
>>> contribute
>>> to in Baku, however, I think a useful outcome of that initiative
>>> would still
>>> leave open the question of overall democractic governance and
>>> accountability
>>> of the Internet.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Mike
>
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