[governance] In Multistakeholderism, those who would be Lobbyists become Legislators, & nobody else has a vote

[parminder]

On Saturday 27 October 2012 06:39 AM, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> So governments are the only legitimate stakeholders in Internet 
> governance?

I always have a problem with considering governments as stakeholders ( 
which kind of proposition is one of the principal democratic defect in 
MS theory). Yes, they are inadequately representative, some more 
inadequately than others, and some hardly representative at all. But 
that is the measure and scale I see governments on, and that is the 
democratic problem to address; how to improve, and if necessary, 
complement their representativity.

On the other hand, if I begin to consider government, say my government, 
as one stakeholder, whereby I as a part of some other group would be 
another stakeholder, I am on a very problematic ground. I have admitted 
that 'my government' (defined as the government of the political entity 
which I can be considered to primarily belong) is, even normatively, 
expected to have 'its own' interests, other that of its constituents 
like me. And that having such 'own interests', whatever it means, is in 
quite fine, theoretically. To that extent I have regressed on, or in 
fact lost, the 'representativity' problematisation stated above.

>  I don't think you can just wave away the practical problems with this 
> - the democratic deficits in all intergovernmental bodies, and the 
> fact that there are transnational (border-crossing) interests that 
> governments have no democratic mandate to take into account - so even 
> in theory, they are not adequate representatives of the public interest.

These are regular and well known problems with democracy, attempted to 
be addressed by deepening democracy. There is a great amount of 
literature and developing sets of practices within the arena of 
democracy in this regard. The solution to these problems was never seen 
to require bringing big business along to become equivalent stakeholders 
as governments and others. This is an illegitimate innovation of MSism 
in IG.

parminder
>
> -- 
>
> *Dr Jeremy Malcolm
> Senior Policy Officer
> Consumers International | the global campaigning voice for consumers*
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