[governance] Ex-White House Official Joins Group Fighting "Excessive" Online Privacy Laws

[Milton L Mueller]

> "Coalition for Privacy and Free Trade " is exactly the kind of issue
> based network that are getting formed. (Bertrand, please note.) And we
> know what they are upto. Soon there will be others, that is the trend,
> like perhaps one led by Shell on green economy, and Nike on labour
> friendliness.... No, this is not acceptable, We are better off with
> evolving old fashioned democratic systems from within, with a deepening
> democracy focus.... We have seen movements, especially in Europe, of a
> new kind of democratic politics bypassing the existing political party
> captures - that is where I would put my hopes instead of these dangerous
> neolib trends. I appeal to the civil society to recognise the dangers
> that we are headed towards in all this mushy talk of "equality of all
> stakeholders in decision making" (read, corporate led 'governance'
> systems), and issue based networks as the prime next gen governance
> paradigm... 

Let me see if I understand your point. This issue network is bad and should not be allowed because you don't agree with their policy agenda? In the name of democracy you are saying that private sector actors (or presumably anyone else you don't agree with) should be prevented from organizing transnational issue networks to influence policy, and/or that corporate stakeholders should not be considered equal stakeholders? 

If you're rabidly anti-corporate that all sounds fine and good, I suppose, but if you believe in democracy, free expression and free association it does not sound so good. I would like to know how you can limit one group's political participation without limiting everyone's political participation. Organizations, ranging from labor unions to business corps to public interest organizations that are inevitably incorporated, as well as individuals, are going to lobby and jostle for benefit from the political process - regardless of whether we are talking about the national level or the transnational level. 

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