[governance] Civil Society (was Re: caucus contribution, consultation and MAG meeting)

Sat Feb 16 13:53:56 EST 2013

carry on! slice and dice until you're alone! you'll be at the top of the hill. Much of a top but not much of a hill.

leave any claim to diversity and any chance for tech-knowledge based input by the wayside.

What a waste of Roland's, Suresh's and McTim's good will, honesty and energy expense.

Yours,

Alejandro Pisanty

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________________________________
Desde: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] en nombre de parminder [parminder at itforchange.net]
Enviado el: sábado, 16 de febrero de 2013 02:52
Hasta: governance at lists.igcaucus.org
Asunto: Re: [governance] Civil Society (was Re: caucus contribution, consultation and MAG meeting)

On Thursday 14 February 2013 01:26 PM, Roland Perry wrote:
<snip)
And that sounds like it includes my recent activity, which has been working with interest-based charities, volunteers etc who have a focus on one particular aspect of social justice, human rights and the rule of law: Prevention of violence against women - in particular those who are tracked and harassed via their Internet footprint (commonly on social networking sites).

However, I'm also aware that in order to achieve the goal of protecting women, some people might characterise the techniques involved as forms of selective censorship and attempts to strip away anonymity (in both cases with respect to their attackers).

So not every part of Civil Society necessarily has the same view on core issues such as these.

No, congruity of views in not the test. Working for public interest is. Although there can be different and contested notions of public interest - and that space of contestation, negotiation and possible resolution/ harmonisation is called politics, (No, Suresh, politics is not what you think it is. It is a good word, although it, like almost anything else - markets for instance, can involve bad/ manipulative practises as well as outcomes.)

There is ages old distinction between public interest and private interest, including organised private interests, and this distinction holds now as ever. Any non-governmental body involved in public interest issues/ advocacy is a civil society organisation. In fact I will accept a definition broader than the one used by Council of Europe and quoted by Norbert. I will include organisation that dont believe in the concept of 'social justice', may in fact decry this concept as dangerous to people's liberties, (there are so many of them, esp in the US - BTW, Milton has said on this list that there is no thing like social justice) as long as such organisations truly believe that they are working in the larger public interest, and not narrow private interests of defined parties. (No, working, say, on disability rights cannot be called as working for private interests of defined parties. It is public interest work, and 'disabled people' are here to be considered as a distinct 'public group' and not a private group. Dont have space or time to argue the basis of this distinction any further here.)

These distinctions are hallowed norms of democratic public life for decades now, if not centuries.... The extent of anti-democratic thought that has permeated into many people's conception of what is presented as a new political model of multistakeholderism is the reason that many progressive groups have begun to look at (such conceptions of) multistakeholderism itself with suspicion. It is this kind of normative loose-ness - that works for the interests of the more powerful rather than the less powerful, for whom democracy is supposed to work) - that is multistakeholderism's biggest enemy.

The normative basis and boundaries of and within multistakeholderism, and its relationship with democracy, have to saved, as well as expounded very clearly, for  it to be seriously considered as a form / system of participatory democracy. (If that is what MSism really is in the minds of its proponents.)

In the end, when such discussions as this one takes place, I can hardly ever stop myself from re(quoting) the father of free market thinking, Adam Smith, who said...

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices…. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary. "

"To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

What a profanity it is to utter something like this in any multistakeholder environment... nay, it now seems it may be inadmissible even within a IG related CS group.... Adam Smith I understand may have been unceremoniously evicted from such spaces. Poor guy - and he thought he was trying to make (or mark) market thinking and economic-logic as a/ the premier force in our social systems.

parminder

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