[governance] The danger of blindly trusting the technocrats

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

Parts of this discussion have me bemused.  For example we have seen many cases where certain members of Civil society are against most things corporate, yet, get the bulk of their funding from corporate funds.  I have no problem with their funding, but I have trouble understanding how they can be against most things corporate at the same time.  The fact that corporate funders continue to fund anti-corporate rhetoric impresses me with the funder's neutrality, but the idea that a group can take with one hand and damn on the other is confusing.

I think we need to recognize that the stakeholder groups, while having specific identities, affinities and perspectives all their own, are interrelated at many level of abstraction.

I believe an NGO can take money from a corporate sponsor without being tainted by that money - i see it done all the time and I have seen lots of corporate sponsors practice a hands-off donation policy.  And I have seen people unjustly tainted by the source of their monies; that seems a bad thing.

I have also seen situations where Civil society actors have close relationships with corporate actors, sometimes even collecting paychecks from those corporate actors.  In some of these cases, I have seen (and had personal experience) of those businesses having a hands-off policy about the things their employees said and did as Civil society actors.  

And true I have seen a few occasions where the funding source of one sort or another motivates a civil society actor a trifle too much.  but much less often than I might have expected.  As far as I can tell most NGOs get some part of their money from corporate sources or activities, except perhaps for the GONGOs, yet they are genuinely Civil Society. 

As for the technical community, I think those of us who consider ourselves hybrid members of both the Technical Community and Civil Society have a duty to be open about our dual affinity.  For example, I freely admit that I will never support a policy unless I think it is technically possible (doesn't need to be probable just barely possible is good enough for me);  for me technology defines what is possible and my understanding of public interest defines the normative bits.  I also think we should be clear about which stakeholder is our prime association.

But when we start judging the intent of people and begin to call various civil society members carriers for dominant groups whether they be corporate or government, we get into a dangerous territory, the kind of territory that can severely damage whatever shreds of relevance the IGC might still have.  It is actually possible for civil society actors to agree with something that the other stakeholders have to say without making them carriers of some awful taint.

I think that as proponents of participatory democracy of all stakeholders and peoples, commonly referred to by the m-word these days, we need to first learn how to be tolerant of our own diversity.   And beleive me I know how hard that can be, my tongue is blistered from the frequency with which I have been biting it lately*. My draft folder is also full of messages written and never sent.

avri

* to bite ones tongue, Fig. to struggle not to say something that you really want to say. http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/bite+tongue


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