[governance] China's next-generation internet is a world-beater - tech - 10 March 2013 - New Scientist

[William Drake]

Hi Parminder

On Mar 13, 2013, at 6:19 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

> It is rather well known that multilateral agreements have a greater chance of being based on higher norms and principles than are bilateral and plurilateral ones, which are more oriented to narrower interests (pl refer to the literature on FTAs).  Also, almost always, bilateral and plurilateral agreements based on 'relative power' results in greater gains for those who are more powerful, something which follows from the preceding statement. 

Among whom is this known, and do they in fact attribute it to narrow interests being less dispositive in multilateral contexts?  I'm not arguing with you, just curious why you say this.  As a political scientist who's reasonably well read in the vast scholarly and policy literatures on international institutions and cooperation, I can't say I've noticed a lot of people taking this stance or offering evidence thereof, so I'm curious.  A few contrary thoughts for your consideration:

To the extent multilateral agreements do  have a greater chance of being based on higher norms and principles, that is often because those higher norms and principles are more squishy and easier to arrive at given more complexly divided interests.  The TA offers a good case in point.  Had that been a plurilateral, we might even know what enhanced cooperation means :-)  More higher norms and principles is not necessarily a good outcome, it depends.

Narrower interests and relative power by no means disappear in large-n collaborations.  Most multilateral deals are in fact clusters of bilateral and plurilateral deals among the most powerful and/or motivated by sharply defined interests.  Outsiders then get pushed to conform with what these inner circle types have worked out.  The problem in trade has been that the identities and mixed interest of the inner circles have diversified, and the outsiders have found fewer reasons to budge.

Small-N collaborations may devote less time to higher norms and principles because they are "nested" agreements.  For example, FTAs at least nominally have to be compatible with the WTO instruments (some disagreement about the consistency of practice) and so the higher norms and principles spelled out in the latter are absent presences in the former.  It's like reading a piece of legislation that modifies another piece of legislation that is not fully incorporated into the text, you have read the docs back and forth to get the full picture.

> 
> Accordingly, while specifics can vary with contexts, global civil society has to make its considered value based choice whether it prefers multilateral agreements or bilateral/ plurilateral ones when the issue is clearly of a global import, like Internet governance is, perhaps like no other issue. In all other areas of global governance, I see a distinct preference in civil society for global agreements in preference to bi/pluri-lateral ones, on issues ranging from trade and IP to climate. 


I know where you're coming from, but I don't think this necessarily follows, or that it's entirely fair to characterize it as a values choice (which I guess would mean those focusing on non-multilateral are making inferior choices, from a values perspective?).  In many case, national and small-n frameworks may have greater on the ground impact on the people and values CS is trying to defend, so as much as I wish they'd engage more in the multilateral stuff (since that's where I live) I'm not prepared to say that they're committing a grievous moral or strategic error. 

Best,

Bill
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