[governance] How to address political economy issues? (was Re: Internet as a commons/public good)

[Norbert Bollow]

Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:

> Second, it is perhaps now established that this group is clearly
> unable to articulate any advocacy view which has political economy 
> implications, or touches positive rights

[..]

> This is very disappointing, and would IMHO compromise the legitimacy
> of IGC as a premier global civil society group.

It seems to be the case that the overall body of people who choose to
engage in Internet governance under a "civil society" banner is very
far from having consensus in this topic area. In this situation, it
would undermine the legitimacy of IGC's claim of being representative
of the broad spectrum of civil society in Internet governance to
articulate a substantive advocacy view that does not actually represent
at least a rough consensus. (It is very good of course that we have
procedural rules that are designed for preventing that from happening.)

> If people have to go elsewhere to talk about and articulate political
> economy issues with respect to the global Internet and its
> governance, it is not a good thing. For one, there seems to be no
> elsewhere to go right now. That is a gap which may need to be filled.

Talking and articulating positions can be done here, even if the
resulting statements do not reach consensus or rough consensus.

If there is a desire for IGC to set up an infrastructure for developing
advocacy statements beyond what IGC is able to agree on by consensus
or rough consensus (I'm thinking of sign-on statements that would
have the support of some subset of the IGC members), I don't see any
reason why that couldn't be done. In fact this might be the best
possible interpretation of what the IGC mission statement says about
providing a forum for advocacy.

Greetings,
Norbert

-- 
Recommendations for effective and contructive 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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