[governance] stakeholder categories (was Re: NSA sabotage of Internet security standards...)

Wed Sep 18 11:40:53 EDT 2013

Norbert, 

You are either misunderstanding me or twisting my words and the meaning behind them. Perhaps we need to make a phone call to clarify things. I'll send you my number in a private mail. We can then discuss offline and inform the list of the outcome. 

Peter 

On 18.09.2013, at 17:04, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:

Peter H. Hellmonds <peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu> wrote:

> Norbert,
> 
> How would you determine who has "a high degree of independence from
> government and from commercial interests related to the topics on
> which they engage"?

I would propose that people and organizations who purport to participate
as civil society should be asked to publish some statement about what
they do to ensure a high degree of independence.

If such a statement turns out to be significantly deceptive, that should
be punishable as fraud. For example astroturf should be persecuted as a
kind of such fraud.

> Do you think that everyone of those who work for,
> or even speak for, a specific government or business is by virtue of
> that association not independent?

Yes, in regard to topics which concern the policies or actions of that
government, or which are directly related to specific business
interests of that company.

Being in the employment of an organization is the most obvious form of
clearly not being independent from it.

> And what value should lie in that independence?

Making it easier to be not be unduly influenced in one's thinking by
the particular interests of any of those entities which have strong
particular interests related to the topic under discussion. 

> I presume that you
> have lost trust in government agencies who spy on us just as much as
> I do. And that you mistrust companies who have followed legal orders
> or who have willingly cooperated or collaborated with those spy
> agencies. That you have lost trust in the system of checks and
> balances where those checks have clearly failed. I am fully with you
> on that.

I have also to a significant degree lost trust in my own ability to
objectively think about matters of the public interest unless I take
precautionary actions to prevent myself from being unduly influenced 
by phenomena like not risking to lose one's job, hope of winning someone
as a customer, the very human need to be respected and accepted by the
people who are one's peer group, etc.

All the serious literature on this kind of phenomena (as far as I
have read it) leads me to believe that this susceptibility (to forms of
social corruption which are not illegal but nevertheless corrupting) is
not just my personal problem, but in fact part of human nature.

Consequently there is value in maintaining a kind of independence that
is designed to minimize this kind of temptations.

> But throwing all government or business people into the same
> category  of "untrustworthy because not independent" does not do
> justice to the majority of people working in these organizations. 

That is not what I'm saying. I'm proposing a model of stakeholder
categorization in which someone who is a engaging as a representative
of any one of the stakeholder categories “government”, “civil
society”, “private sector” is as a logical consequence of the
definitions not at the same time and for the same issue engaging as a
member of any other of these three stakeholder categories.

A logical consequence of this is the need for a new category
“multi/other”.

I think that the introduction of such a “multi/other” category (which
by definition does not have a specific “respective role” in Internet
governance, but which is needed to ensure that everyone who does not
neatly fit into one of the categories with specific “respective roles”
can still fully participate in the discourse) violates neither the
spirit nor the letter of the Tunis Agenda. Quite on the contrary, I
this a logical consequence of taking the remark seriously about
governments, civil society and private sector having “respective roles”
in Internet governance without at the same time excluding from the
discourse everyone who does not fit into such a “three categories of
roles” model. 

> To answer your question: there is value in individuals, regardless of
> affiliation, to maintain an independence of thought and to work
> together in achieving common public policy goals.

Of course.

The whole point of multistakeholderism is to recognize and value what
people and organizations of the different stakeholder categories can
contribute to the discussions on the basis of their experiences,
knowledge, and ability to take action.

In particular I respect and value what private sector representatives
bring to the table in terms of hand-on experience in creating and
delivering relevant products and services, and in terms of their
resulting ability to be change agents for positive changes.

Conversely, I would like to request that the choice which I and others
have made should also be respected, that we have chosen to engage in a
way that is by design independent of commercial and government
interests in the areas of our engagement.

> Finally, I feel like you are trying to preach from a high tower when
> you claim that "as every honest person will admit", the "trappings of
> political power and of commercial interest" can "easily lead people
> astray in their thinking."
> 
> Do you mean by this that everyone who works in government or business
> is suspicious of leaving his civil conscience, his ethics and morals,
> behind by virtue of drawing a paycheck from a particular organization?
> 
> Maybe you should throw that "holier-than-though" attitude that I
> sense behind that claim

Wanting to assert and preserve the specific particularity of “civil
society” (in the sense in which I understand the term), and thereby
the particular value that civil society can bring to the table in
multistakeholder processes, has nothing to do with "holier-than-though".

Similarly it has nothing to do with "holier-than-though" when private
sector representatives point out that it is the private sector who
creates and delivers relevant products and services.

And it also has nothing to do with "holier-than-though" when people who
register to international conferences as government representatives
have to present proof of being part of the official delegation. For
example just being a government employee is not sufficient.

> and start engaging with those people and see who they really are and
> how they think

I'm doing that.

For example, I'm taking note that right now, a private sector
representative who is not just anyone but a person who has served on
the MAG as a private sector representative, is telling me that I should
maybe “throw” what I see as the very core of my choice to be a civil
society person, and that moreover essentially everyone who can claim
to have “ethics and morals” should be accepted as a civil society
person even if at the same time they're representing government or
private sector interests _in_the_topic_area_under_discussion_.

If that view were to be accepted, in the context which we're discussing
here (namely, multistakeholder processes in a Tunis Agenda context), it
would effectively destroy civil society as a distinct stakeholder
category.

That demand to dilute the notion of “civil society” to the point of
that notion no longer really meaning anything in particular is not just
disrespectful, it is an outright attack on the ability of civil society
(in the sense of what the term meant during the WSIS process, and in
the only slightly evolved sense in which I use the word) to effectively
participate.

After all, if we allow the notion “civil society” to be diluted to a
point where everyone can claim to be “civil society” on every issue,
it is clear that whatever the framers of the Tunis Agenda saw as the
specific “respective role” of civil society will clearly have been lost.
(Here I use the word “whatever” to indicate that this argument is
independent of whether we agree on what the role of civil society is or
what it should be.)

> before making such broad generalizations.

I am not making a broad generalization here.

I have many years of experience of engagement as a civil society
representative, and the vast majority of private sector people with
whom I've interacted have, in all their interactions with me, shown a
high level of professional courtesy and professional integrity. That
of course includes acceptance and respect for who I choose to be.

What is going on here on the IGC mailing list where some people (who
primarily identify as being private sector representatives or as
members of the technical community, but who don't primarily see
themselves as being “civil society”) are trying to tell civil society
people to change their understanding of what is “civil society”, that
is in my experience definitively the exception rather than the norm.

Greetings,
Norbert

-- 
Recommendations for effective and constructive 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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