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

[parminder]

Indeed the term 'equal footing' merits some attention and analysis, as 
the NetMundial outcome document exhorts us to do.

The problem of course is not with the term 'equal footing' itself, but 
we need to look closely at 'equal footing for whom' - something which 
this email will try to do

Democracy's basic idea is of equality of all people, or, in other 
worlds, all people on equal footing. There is simply no democracy 
without that.

Are we calling for equal footing for all people here? Or, since people 
live and see themselves socially as belonging in various social groups, 
an equal footing of social groups of people? ( geographic groups like 
neighbourhoods, villages, towns and nations, or identity based ones - 
which may or may not overlap with geo-based - like gender, ethnicity, 
class, etc).

No, MS-ism does not call for equal footing for people or for social 
groups of people? It calls for equal footing for stakeholders?

There would be no problem if stakeholders were just like natural social 
groups of natural people. But that is not the fact. And to the extent 
that stakeholders, as seen by MSism we find in practice, are *not* just 
natural groups of natural people, the equal footing of stakeholders 
rather than being equal footing of people and their natural groups, 
militates against it. It is in this way that equal-footing MSism 
subverts democracy, that ideology and practice of equal footing of all 
people...

Where does the term stakeholder deviate from people or their natural 
groups? It is easy to see - when the (big) capital owner and the 
(privileged) expert is brought it as special political invitees, or in 
fact political overlords. Both the epithets, 'big' and 'privileged', 
fully apply and are basic to this analysis.

Mark it, the (big) capital owner - hereon, simply business, ,  and the 
(privileged) expert - hereon, simply the tech community - come in a 
second role, for a second political dip, apart from in any case being 
people (the few that they are) in normal people's political 
configurations, either as civil society or as represented by democratic 
governments. In this second role, they claim special characteristics 
whereby they should be given extra political power - respectively, 
owning productive resources, and possessing special knowledge (another 
productive resource in fact). In various MS meetings, these two groups 
openly quote these special characteristics for claiming extra, second 
dip, political power, through an extra seat at the policy table.

Now not only is the 'big business' and 'the special expert' coming in 
for the second time to partake political power whereby some people will 
have twice the political role and power as others, it is much much more 
pernicious. The extremely few - in fact minuscule - number of big 
business and special expert claim the same amount of political space in 
MSism as the whole of civil society and the whole of (however imperfect) 
government-as-people's-representative group. The proportion on two sides 
reminds one of the 1 percent and 99 percent equation of the occupy 
movement. Well, MSism is your reverse occupy movement, where the big 
business is trying to occupy the democracy space, but lets not digress....

One cannot separate nice theoretical sentences about MSism from its 
actual practice - which, as we have seen till now, is strictly based on 
four way equal division of political space among very unequal actors - 
business, tech community, gov and civil society.

It is evident that in the name of equal footing of stakeholders, what is 
being done is that the equal footing among people, and their natural 
groups, is being completely upstaged. That is how and where MSism 
upstages democracy, and all real conceptions of equality....

You want equality of 'real stakeholders', call the next NetMundial and 
the next IGF MAG with say, and I am trying to be very conservative here, 
10 stakeholder groups, *on an equal footing*. Give one place each to 
global reps of women's groups, ethnic minorities, disabled community, 
trade unions, slum residents associations, farmers groups ..... we can 
make 8 stakeholder categories like this. We will then leave one for 
business associations - to be filled in equally by big business reps and 
reps of small businesses. We can have, if you will,  another single 
category of experts with half of them technical experts and half 
relevant social experts.

This will be much closer to equal footing of stakeholders as promoting 
rather than upstaging the democratic ideal of equal footing of all 
people and their natural groups. Any takes for this model of MSism..


parminder



On Sunday 27 July 2014 06:02 PM, Avri Doria wrote:
>
> On 27-Jul-14 11:41, Fouad Bajwa wrote:
>> somehow remain very uncomfortable with the term equal footing. EF will
>> never give balance in MSism and decision making situations. Anyways, so
>> much has been said on this but it still remains politically incorrect.
>
> I tend to disagree.  For me it is  a critical phrase in the definition
> for the very reason that I beleive it has been misappropriated by a few
> governments and misunderstood by many.  It is such a simple term, with a
> simple metaphoric meaning, that I do intend to keep on using it.  And I
> think that many different groups can be on an equal footing with each
> other at the same time.  For example, we could have a global
> multistakeholder event like the NETmundial were everyone is on equal
> footing.  Yet, when the governments went off amongst themselves to
> discuss things, they were also on an equal footing, as were the CS folk
> when they went off to talk among themselves.  To my mind there is no
> dialogue without equal footing, it becomes more command/supplicant
> exchange without equal footing.
>
> I personally think that the more decisions that are actually made on an
> equal footing the better.  But the realist in me realizes that we aren't
> there yet, just like we probably won't reach global direct democracy in
> my lifetime.  That is why I indicate that in those cases, where the
> final decision making is not done on a equal footing, it "may be
> assigned to a single stakeholder group" and that "these decision makers
> are always accountable to all of the stakeholders for their decisions
> and the implementations."  Implementation is rarely multistakeholder.
>
> The assigned decision makers for some things may be governments, we
> obviously have different viewpoints on the utility of governments in
> various situations, but I think the definition should be neutral as to
> particular cases   The decsions maker may also be the IESG, when talking
> about an IP protocol, the ICANN Board when talking about a gTLD policy
> or the coder when talking about a new bit of system architecture design
> in a multistakeholder committee, etc. Or WIPO on property, or the ITU on
> telephone numbers.  The point is that as much as possible the discussion
> leading up to the actual decisions, including the recommendation of
> solutions, it should be multistakeholder.  And in as many cases as
> possible we should aim for equal footing even at the decision level.
>
> As I said I tried to make the definition I use to explain it to people
> neutral in that respect.  I find it works well for me both in explaining
> things, in studying things and in modeling various real life scenarios
> and in tactical thinking for advocacy.
>
> Your mileage may vary.
>
> avri
>


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