[governance] Conflicts in Internet Governance

[Andrea Glorioso]

Dear Avri, dear all,

some observations below, in-line.

On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 7:10 AM, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> - Community boards are used in all sorts of circumstances to enforce local
> ordinance and policy.  It is true that one of the roles of the government
> to run the policing function.  and in the best cases, the policing function
> is under constant review/oversight by citizen review boards.  I never
> claimed they had not function.  But I do claim that function can and must
> be equivalent to the other functions.  Governments are not our masters,
> they are of, by and for the people. We are their masters, and at the very
> least their equals in the multistakeholder process.
>

[AG] It seems to me (possibly because I misunderstand what you wrote) that
you are mixing an assessment of the relative importance of enforcement v
other functions in the overall "policy chains" (e.g. ex ante assessment,
design, discussion, approval, enforcement, monitoring, ex post evaluation,
etc) with the importance that "governments" should have in a specific
function, i.e. enforcement of existing laws.

[AG] Furthermore, the fact that the review of enforcement functions luckily
exists (which is sometimes performed by "community boards", sometimes by
other types of public authorities, quite often by the judiciary branch)
does not say much about who is entitled to perform the enforcement function
itself.

[AG] Last, not least, the fact that democratic governments are "of the
people, by the people, for the people" does not per se mean that certain
functions should not be delegated to governments (or branches thereof -
unfortunately there is always a possible misunderstanding when using the
term "government", which in political science and law is often used to
refer to one specific branch of State / public authority). Therefore I find
your last sentence a logical "non sequitur".


> - Actually private corporations are accountable to the stockholders and
> their customers.    All people who have chosen freely to interact with them
> at various levels of contractual and consumer relationship with them. I may
> not be the greatest fan of the accountability feedback loop in most
> business but there is one (except maybe banks and other money for money's
> sake types of businesses).  And some businesses are committing themselves
> to structures such as GNI that add extra public accountability mechanisms.
>  This is a good thing that will make them more accountable.
>

[AG] As a person who worked on Corporate Social Responsibility projects
within the EU, including the development of sector-specific guidance to
implement the Ruggie Framework in the ICT / Internet sector (see
http://www.ihrb.org/project/eu-sector-guidance/index.html) I do agree that
private businesses can, and in some cases do, work to strenghten their
accountability mechanisms. Nonetheless, I think this is a complement, not a
substitute for public accountability frameworks.

(Ironically enough, the European Commission is actually a strong support of
co- and self-regulatory mechanisms in many policy areas, including the
Internet / ICT sector; and we do believe that private organisations,
including businesses, should have a supporting role in enforcing the law.
We get no small amounts of flak because of this. :)


> - in non commercial organization there is always a board, and advisory
> committees of some sort and various forms of oversight.  In the Internet
> context that is the multistakeholder governance processes.
>

The problem is that I'm not convinced people share a common understanding
of what "multi-stakeholder governance processes" actually means.

Ciao,

--
I speak only for myself. Sometimes I do not even agree with myself. Keep it
in mind.
Twitter: @andreaglorioso
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.glorioso
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=1749288&trk=tab_pro
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