[governance] More (yawn) regulatory swing doors... US FCC...

[Riaz Tayob]

Thanks Norbert.

MS certainly is an innovative approach. However to your categories we must
add the issue of deliberative multistakeholderism... where it is not just
the contest of interests - bargaining - but reasoned argument -
deliberation - so as to harness the diversity of views to maximise success.

That MS does not take this imbalance, formal equality has its limits, as
real is a concern - particularly since BigCorporates organise at this level
as well - it is not a matter of excluding them, but ensuring systems to
ensure that this assymetry of power is dealt with through democratic
countermajortarian principles. But with legitimacy treated lightly, the
prospects of this seem dim.

Then there is the fetish with inclusion. It is not regarded as ambivalent,
but always good. Sometimes in democratic process exclusion may be
preferable, for eg those who refuse to participate (as different from
engaging with) in ICANN.

Just some thoughts...

Riaz


On 14 May 2013 13:55, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

> Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > How does MS take this intimacy into account?
> >
> > Weekend Edition May 10-12, 2013
> > <
> http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/10/another-industry-crony-at-the-fcc/print
> >
>
> Generally speaking, I think much of the support for multistakeholderism
> is not nearly cautious enough about potential problems of this kind,
> and the same can be said about most models of multistakeholder
> governance that are being proposed.
>
> For a more in-depth discussion, we need to distinguish between
> (attempts at) what might be called "representative multistakeholderism"
> (example of which are MAG, ECWG,…) and "open multistakeholderism" (e.g.
> IETF, the RIRs,…).
>
> With "representative multistakeholderism" I mean groups in which a
> limited number of seats are distributed to representatives of
> particular stakeholder categories who are then assumed to bring a
> reasonable approproximation of the totality of perspectives of that
> stakeholder category into the discussion.
>
> With "open multistakeholderism" I mean settings which are open to
> anyone coming in and fully participating. The assumption is that this
> set of self-selected participants will bring reasonable
> approproximation of the totality of perspectives into the discussion.
>
> In representative multistakeholderism, the selection processes are
> obviously critically important. The problem of potentially inappropriate
> "intimacy" now exists not only between government officials and
> lobbyists, but potentially also in regard to the selection processes,
> and in addition all stakeholder group representatives need to train
> themselves to avoid being inappropriately influenced.
>
> In open multistakeholderism, the risk does not occur that viewpoints may
> get excluded because those who have power over the selection processes
> might want to suppress them, or might be unduly influenced e.g. by
> lobbyists to exclude people who happen to represent inconvenient
> viewpoint.
>
> However it is still possible (and it certainly happens) that viewpoints
> may get suppressed in other ways. Mechanisms of such suppression
> include personal attacks, telling people that certain topics (which are
> inconvenient to some group) should not be discussed because they're so
> divisive or whatever, etc. It may be necessary to have posting rules
> and tell people to avoid kinds of postings, such as postings containing
> personal attacks, or postings that effectively say "topic X should not
> be discussed". Such posting rules do not constitute censorship, but
> quite the opposite. Censorship is an attempt to suppress (by means of
> control of communication media) the dissemination of some category of
> factual information and/or to suppress discussion of some category of
> topics. Reasonable posting rules aim to prevent such suppression from
> happening through interpersonal and group dynamic pressure.
>
> Even though IGC is designed to be a civil society entity, the diversity
> of civil society within itself is great enough that the considerations
> of the above paragraph are already fully applicable to this list...
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert
>
> ** Acronyms used:
> MAG=Multistakeholder Advisory Group
> ECWG=Enhanced Cooperation Working Group
> IETF=Internet Engineering Task Force
> RIR=Regional Internet Registry
>
> --
> 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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