[governance] "democratic multistakeholderism" (was Re: Roles and Responsibilities...)

[Norbert Bollow]

(-Cc BestBits list, since IMO there is no need to burden lots of people
with two copies of this discussion) 

Young-eum Lee <yesunny at knou.ac.kr> wrote:

> There are varying degrees of how "authoritarian" a country can be.
> And there are countries that are categorized as having "noticeable
> problems" in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index (by Reporters without
> Borders) that do pay attention to global standards.
[..]
> There are many 'swing' states that would definitely be influenced by
> a global definition of internet governance, and many of those would
> use the argument for placing more weight on the 'role of governments'
> to the detriment of democracy. In this regard, I support using the
> term "democratic multistakeholderism" and if we are going to include
> 'respective roles,' we should qualify it by stating that different
> stakeholders have 'different but equally important roles.' This would
> acknowledge the policy making roles of governments, but would make it
> clear that other stakeholders have equally important roles.

Freedom of communication (which I understand as including press
freedom) is a human right that is endangered when the executive branch
of government is overly powerful, but which will not be adversely
affected when the ability of the state to make effective public policy
decisions is weakened.

An analysis which is based primarily or only on this aspect is
therefore not going to tell us what the point is where the ability of
democratic state-based processes to make public policy decisions would
be weakened too much.

Hence we should not look through this lense only when trying to figure
out how much and what power and influence on Internet related public
policy decisions is appropriate to entrust to purely state based
processes as opposed to entrusting it to multistakeholder processes.

I would propose that the term "democratic multistakeholderism" should
not be used as simply a buzzword, but rather we need to think carefully
and precisely about what it takes for governance processes to merit the
attribute "democratic".

Greetings,
Norbert

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