CS consensual statement on MSism WAS Re: [governance] Vint Verf tells us the conclusion of the complex IANA transition process

[Norbert Bollow]

On Thu, 31 Jul 2014 23:48:39 +0000
Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, the fact is that the world is not full of "thinkers" and policy
> analysts.

Yes, absolutely - and that is in fact a major part of the point which I
have been trying to make. My category 'a' of “thinkers”, in which
category I would include not only you and me and all the other active
participants on this list, but pretty much all of the influential
participants of today's various Internet governance fora (regardless of
“government”, “civil society”, “private sector” hats), are not in any
way representative of the overall population, or of their views, needs
and concerns. We should not presume to assume that we understand the
views, needs and concerns of the world population well enough even in
the absence of any serious efforts to listen to them.

My other main point is that we also should not presume to think that we
“thinkers” would even in the absence of an effective democratic
accountability somehow collectively make decisions that appropriately
take into consideration the needs and concerns of “those who are not
participating directly” even to the (currently probably extremely
limited) extent that we understand their needs and concerns. 

> And there might even be a whole lot of people in between
> your 'a' and 'b'.

Let's get rid of that problem by defining the category 'b' of
“grass-roots perspectives” as consisting of everyone who is not in
category 'a'.

> Oh, wait... I shouldn't have previously said a
> scaling problem arises _within_ that perspective but rather (and this
> is what I meant) that perspective faces a scaling challenge when
> comes the need to take into account a greater and greater number of
> people, not all of whom are "thinkers" or policy analysts while they
> may even still be able to speak for themselves. (However I don't
> think this clarification changes anything to your response here which
> has started in and is consistent with your earlier response to my
> message prior.)

Yes and of course I don't deny that scaling issues exist in the sense
that coordination costs (of all kinds) increase when the number of
participants increases. I also don't deny that of course there are
people who are not “thinkers” but who want to still speak just for
themselves and who have no interest in becoming part of an advocacy
organization. My point is that so far the overall the participation of
those who are not “thinkers” is so low that we don't have a problem of
dealing with large numbers of them, we have the problem of bringing
their participation up from “totally insignificant” to a better level.

> > As case in point, consider how it has come
> > about that the increase of the number of participants has not
> > caused the IETF to stop functioning.
> 
> I realize your "a/b" seem to be a sort of partitioning of the types of
> audience/participants there are in MSism?

It's certainly like it in that all categorizations are problematic. :-)

> And the IETF type where
> individuals speak for themselves, in your view, is completely
> separate from the other where the main/only challenge would be to
> make sure there are enough variety of inputs to cover all concerns on
> the ground.

Yes, although that is not an essential feature of the view that I'm
trying to present: While I currently can't imagine any way of organizing
a solution to the problems that I've been pointing out which does not
involve such a separation, that may well be a result of lack of better
imagination / better creativity on my part. :-)

> The only problem I have with that is that it looks like
> you were not responding to me (contrary to what your quoting me in
> that email suggests) as much as you were offering a different take
> (your own) about multistakeholder participation. For my part, I was
> responding to McTim who appears to consider the IETF type (he didn't
> explicitly label it IETF though in that particular message of his)
> where individuals would speak for themselves and their ideas be
> evaluated on merits as the model for MSism, any MSism (which would
> mean that the same assumptions that make that breed of MSism work
> should be carried over to any other instance of MSism.) To that I was
> simply responding that that breed of MSism may be good for epistemic
> communities of practice (or communities of your "thinkers" and
> analysts) but it and its assumptions are not scalable to addressing
> global policy issues with adequate inclusiveness. It looks like what
> you did is to put 'a' and 'b' into silos and then claim there's no
> scaling problem since by making them into silos you have removed the
> possibility for a need to scale from a-type to b-type.

Because from the perspective of the meaning that the word “scaling” has
for me, extending “from a-type to [in addition also consider] b-type
[viewpoints]” is not a matter of scaling, it is a different type of
problem. 

I wonder if it might be possible to reconcile your view “it is a
challenge of scaling up” and my view “the problem which exists here is
not a problem of scalability” by recognizing that we have been using
different notions/concepts of “scalability”, with my understanding
of the term being narrower than yours. So that when you wrote about the
“challenge of scaling up”, I might have understood those words quite
differently from how you would have meant them, and I now think that
this might be what caused me to disagree so vehemently.

Of course, in regard to the assertion that I was speaking from my
perspective and in the process putting into words “a different take (my
own) about multistakeholder participation”, I must admit that indeed I
am “guilty as charged.” :-)

> Anyway, I think there are global public policy issues which the 'a'
> crowd and the 'b' crowd will need to come together and address (at
> least for which they and everybody in between will be legitimate
> stakeholders.) I think whenever that happens, again at global level,
> there is one way or the other a scaling challenge --although I'm not
> saying this cannot be resolved. Even if it's about making sure all
> meaningful issues are covered, it's not the same to make sure they
> are for 20 million people as for 1 billion people, overlaps
> notwithstanding (eg, multiple languages and cultural differences
> remain, to name but a couple of factors.)

Is there really a fundamental difference in how parliamentary democracy
works in India which has well over a billion people, in comparison to
how it works in smaller countries?

> You may also note that even
> democratic representation (representative democracy) is also a
> response to a scaling problem (and as you rightly point out, it's
> already complicated enough at national level...). If you still don't
> see it that way, we may agree to disagree on this bit.

I see representative democracy as a formalized and indeed “scaled up”
version --with (in the ideal case at least) well-instituted
accountability-- of a form of specialization which exists already at
the smallest level of a family or a small firm or other small
organization, where also governance issues exist and not all members of
the group deal with them equally. For example, in very many families,
it's the mother who combines the roles of the “thinkers”, and the
“parliament”, and the “government” all in one person, in regard to the
family's internal matters of governance.

Nota bene this form of specialization can also be “scaled up” in
different ways, resulting in non-democratic forms of government: It is
a political choice to insist that the governance of countries must be
democratic. Likewise it is also a political choice which I am making
when I insist that the governance of information society issues must
also be democratic. 

Greetings,
Norbert

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