[governance] US House Bill to Affirm the Policy of the United States Regarding Internet Governance

[Norbert Bollow]

Andrea Glorioso <andrea at digitalpolicy.it> wrote:

> How can be governments / public authorities be "one of the
> stakeholders" when enforcing existing laws?

I would suggest to distinguish between:

a) General discourse that is not part of a consensus process or any
other decision-making process. This includes for example any reasonable
process to develop the proposed IGF "outcomes". 

b) Various types of consensus-oriented decision making processes,
such as e.g. the processes of IETF or the typical processes of
negotiating international treaties.

c) Decision-making processes to decide policy matters that can be used
in the absence of consensus, such as e.g. in parliamentary democracies
the decision-making processes of the national parliament.

d) Implementation of laws, other rules, and other policy decisions that
have been made.


The concept of governments participating on an equal footing together
with other stakeholders is in my opinion applicable only to a) and b).

In c) some government office will be in charge of organizing the
process, and they are going to make sure that all other government
offices that are going to be affected by the decision will be able to
communicate their perspective in a prominent manner. Hence it is in my
opinion obvious that the government as a whole is going to be more than
equal to the other stakeholders. I don't see that as being wrong in any
way, provided that the actual decision-making is democratic (i.e. by
means of processes of parliamentary democracy, or by means of a public
referendum, in the context of a democratic society.)

Law enforcement is an aspect of implementation, i.e. part of d). Clearly
in respect to implementation the responsibilities of the different
types of stakeholders are different.

Greetings,
Norbert

**
Glossary:
IGF=Internet Governance Forum, http://intgovforum.org/
IETF=Internet Engineering Task Force, http://ietf.org/

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