[governance] talking vs acting (was Re: The Internet as we know it is dead)

[Norbert Bollow]

JFC Morfin <jefsey at jefsey.com> wrote:

> At 18:44 30/08/2013, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> >Yes, certainly there are. The whole idea of MuSH involves elevating 
> >non-state actors to the same or comparable status of state actors in 
> >the formulation of policy.
> 
> Milton,
> I fear this is the problem. "Politics is the art of commanding free 
> people" (Aristotle). The internet governance is about concerting 
> among free people and organizations. In doing this there are only two 
> tools: talks and acts. Civil society has reduced itself to talks. The 
> other categories have retained and are developing their acting
> capacity.

Figuring out which governance actions are in the public interest (in
the sense of some reasonable interpretation of what is the public
interest) requires a significant amount of talking.

I think the key questions are:

1) Are the interests and concerns of all relevant and interested
stakeholders represented in the talking process?

2) Is the talking which is being done directed at the objective of
figuring out which governance actions are in the public interest (in
the sense of some reasonable interpretation of what is the public
interest)?
(Nota bene it is possible for talking which pretends to have this
objective to be in reality in pursuit of other goals, such as advancing
personal careerist goals, or putting up smoke screens behind which
human rights violating governments and other powerful actors whose
particular interests conflict with the public interest can hide how
unacceptable their actions truly are!)

3) Does the talking lead to clear output documents that can inform
actions?

4) Are the documents which have resulted from the public interest
oriented discourse used in determining the actions that are taken?

I think that currently the answers to these questions are “yes” only for
some relatively narrow highly technical topic areas, the policy
development processes of the RIRs being one of the best examples.

There are important other topic areas where a small number of powerful
stakeholders so far have held the power to decide either alone or in
consultation with each other what the online world is to be like. They
have not had any need to go through the steps '1' to '4', and they're
typically reacting with smoke screen type responses to demands for any
kind of public interest oriented policy development that might possibly
contradict their particular interests.

Greetings,
Norbert

-- 
Recommendations for effective and constructive participation in IGC:
1. Respond to the content of assertions and arguments, not to the person
2. Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept


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