[governance] Blogpost: Multistakeholderism vs. Democracy: My Adventures in "Stakeholderland"

[Kettemann, Matthias (matthias.kettemann@uni-graz.at)]

Dear all, 

inspired by Mike's posting I though I'd add my two cents on the relationship between multistakeholderism and legitimacy. I looked into it for a book I wrote on lessons from Internet Governance law for international law more broadly. 

I argued that multistakeholderism as an approach is the best approximation of an ideal discourse we have. And an ideal discourse on norms is what we should strive for, because the norms developed in such a discourse, are legitimate. Thus, multistakeholderism is means to ensure democratic legitimacy in post-national constellations. As we don not yet have global democratic governance structures we have to rely on processes to provide legitimacy, and by and large multistakeholder-based decisions are more legitimate than those made in processes involving only selected stakeholders. That is not to say, though, that those decisions can't also be legitimate; but I would say that decisions on global governance issues (say, on Internet Governance) reached in non-multistakeholder processes have to establish other reasons for gaining legitimacy (rational legitimacy, community acceptance, consonance with foundational values ...).

They don to profit from an ex ante presumption that they are legitimate. 

Multistakeholderism is not to be idealized. Ideally, there would be a global democratic governance of the Internet and of all other issues of common concern. This will take time. 

Crutches are not ideal. But coming from Austria, the country of skiing and thus broken extremeties, I know that crutches can be very useful. 

You can more along these lines on blog at: http://internationallawandtheinternet.blogspot.co.at/2013/03/does-multistakeholderism-make-decisions.html

Kind regards
Matthias 



________________________________________
Von: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] im Auftrag von Suresh Ramasubramanian [suresh at hserus.net]
Gesendet: Freitag, 22. März 2013 07:55
An: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Riaz K Tayob
Cc: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Avri Doria
Betreff: Re: [governance] Blogpost: Multistakeholderism vs. Democracy: My Adventures in "Stakeholderland"

What jurisdictional issues?  In practice - where do you see USG actively interfering in ICANN affairs, except in broad concerns over governance where DOC / NTIA do set direction at times?

And do you see civil society and industry barred from an ICANN meet, ever?

--srs (iPad)

On 22-Mar-2013, at 3:34, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:

> Intergovernmental hegemony. Not quite for me.
>
> Formal equality is one thing, but too equalising given the current jurisdiction issues with ICANN etc.
>
>
> On 2013/03/21 10:54 PM, Avri Doria wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Seems like until it happens we really do't know what it will be.
>>
>> It could turn out to be a island of multistakeholder cooperation in a sea of inter-governmental hegemony.
>>
>> avri


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