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

[parminder]

On Wednesday 03 April 2013 10:02 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>> "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.

Milton, your understanding of my point on 'issue based networks', or at 
any rate your statement of it, has a fundamental flaw, which I discuss 
below.

>   This issue network is bad and should not be allowed because you don't agree with their policy agenda?

I would say that this is a bit rhetorical, but in any case, here you are 
positioning 'issue networks' as basically advocacy networks, right. No, 
advocacy oriented issue networks are not the real problem - they are 
indeed the network age form of policy advocacy. (Although the nature of 
relationship of civil society actors with corporate and state actors 
will need to continually be critically scrutinised and analysed even in 
the network age).

Let me bring you back to what kind of 'issue networks'  we have been 
discussing here, and I quote Bertrand's last email; "The only viable 
approach is rather to build on the concept of distributed governance 
frameworks, and build issue-based governance networks, associating in a 
transparent and accountable manner the "relevant stakeholders".

To which you responded " Yes, networks focused on specific issues" (Milton)

The above makes it amply clear that we have *not* been discussing 
advocacy network but discussing 'issue networks /*as*/ governance 
mechanisms'. Importantly Bertrand made these comments in relation to the 
Tunis Agenda imperative for global governance related institutional 
developments, and indeed closed his email by speaking  of 'enhancec 
cooperations' in plural. Obviously his 'issue networks' idea has  aclose 
connection with this term of of 'enhanced cooperations'.

My critique of 'issue networks' is in terms of their employment as new 
forms of governance systems in a manner that tends to supplant the more 
institutional democratic governance systems. You may or may not agree 
with such a critique, but I cant see why you have to divert the debate 
by accusing me of being against advocacy networks per se, and freedom of 
political expression....

> 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,

They (businesses) shouldnt/ cannot be prevented as such, but civil 
society will take an independent view of how trans national capital 
shapes and distorts the global polity, and include that particular issue 
in its struggles. Most trans-national civil society has routinely taken 
such a stance, but if some IG kinds want to stand completely apart from 
this general trend, that is entirely their choice.

>   and/or that corporate stakeholders should not be considered equal stakeholders?

I dont consider private sector 'equal to' public interest actors in the 
polity, but they indeed have a right to lobby, make political demands 
etc. Do you think that they are 'equal stakeholder' as governments and 
civil society, and if so, what does such equality mean. Should they vote 
at times of substantial policy making, and do you advocate similar 
stances within the US national polity?

>
> If you're rabidly anti-corporate that all sounds fine and good, I suppose,

Again, a needless and diversionary accusation.... Corporates are a prime 
and indispensible form for organising our productive efforts today. 
Being against inappropriate policy influence of corporates is not being 
against corporates. All political systems, including the US, include 
measures for insulating governance from such inappropriate corporate 
influences.

parminder

> 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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