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

[JFC Morfin]

At 10:26 06/05/2014, Norbert Bollow wrote:
>Freedom of communication (which I understand as including press freedom)

You raise key issues I would like to see addressed in an coherent 
manner. This calls for two remarks:

1. YES, this includes press freedom. Telepresse.com is a 16 years old 
Libre press inititative working on an MS process (on-line newspaper 
room) basis which has so far only suffered one problem: with /1NET. I 
analyze the reason why as being a lack of acceptance of a non-centric 
MS process. This lack of acceptance is interesting to try to 
understand what are each of the various motivations.

>  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.

2. I would phrase this slightly differently: "which will be adversely 
not directly but more durably affected" since one of the primary 
public policy responsibility is to protect the freedom of the press, 
what the ICANN /1NET process was unable to insure.

>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".

3. You will excuse me, but "democratic multistakeholderism" is an 
antilogy for me. Multistakeholderism is a governance proposition to 
replace democracy when it cannot apply due to the lack of the 
necessary common government, i.e. the lack of the form of governance 
democracy is about.

This is why the MSism process is to be qualified by the "on an equal 
footing basis" as this is not mandatory. This is why the issue is not 
a MultiStakeholderism everyone agrees (worded "concertation" in 
French and in EU English), it is the "equal footing". This is because 
"equal footing" may be considered from two main points of view:

- the process includes everyone considered as equal.
- the porcess is to be executed between peers.

Centuries of considerations of this problem has led to the emergence 
of the subsidiarity/substitution solution through capabality 
considerations: an equal footing is on the lowest/nearest capable 
basis between potentia and potestas (fr.: puissance et pouvoir) two 
words that are unfortunately translated by the same English term: "power".

The potentia-puissance power comes from the multitude, the 
potestats-pouvoir power comes from the people. The difference between 
multitude and people is that  the people is a crowd tied by a social 
contract while the multitude is a boundless crowd. Democracy is a way 
to execute a social contract (others are monocracy [monarchy, 
tyrany], diktyocracy [oligarchy]) so it is reserved to common 
accepted destiny communities.

There are two ways to deal with multitudes:

(1) to try to break it down into communities through a common 
interest in something being used to replace the missing social 
contract. This is the RFC 6852 concept of "global communities" which 
determine technology. The Android, Windows, Apple, Firefox apps users 
and ICANN global communities. Google is fighting for the rights of 
the Google's consumers, etc. All of them compete to enlarge their 
global communities. And to oppose new commers to forge new 
communities such as the IUsers.

(2) to adopt a polycratic (what ever it may mean at this stage) 
governance to be the way to govern a multitude without social 
contract, in order to obtain for each involved person a democratic 
equivalent feeling.

I am a seaman. There is a strict social hierarchical contract on a 
ship, but there is none within shipping and none with time while 
ships sail 24/366. This is equivalent in planes and cars (except that 
they run for shorter periods of time which may not require a 
driver/pilot switch). What do we observe at sea?

- on board, people are not considered as persons, but as abilities 
(cf. "able seaman" initial level) at a given time and context 
(stations). Everyone knows which are the stakeholders in each MS 
process and how many of them are concerned depending on 
circonstances, but not necessarily who mann them.

- there are three ways for ships to behave:
-- in fleet under the monocratic decision of an Admiral.
-- in convoy where the comodore democratically consults the 
commanding officers on the route to follow.
-- in freedom of manoeuvre, everyone polycratically chose her own 
route and adapt to avoid collisions (whatever the size of the other 
ship) or benefit from the weather

Whatever the way they are steered, the result is a multitude of ships 
with inter- and intra- or no- group governance (what amounts to no 
common contract and governance). Yet there are laws of the sea: saes 
are a governed area.

My conclusion is that an MS process, that would work in a multitude, 
should be on an *equal equivalent entity* basis based on the general 
common potentia/potestas - puissance/pouvoir (power/power) balance. 
Potestas/Pouvoir/powers (institutional, commercial or inlfuencial) 
domination being balanced by the counter-power of the potentia, 
puissance, power of response of the multitude's nastyness (wars, 
revolutions, strikes, riots, oppositions, hacks, DoS, trolls, 
misunderstandings [genuine or not], etc.). The risk is that both 
"sides" sharpen their solutions. Also on the multitude's cooperation 
(FLOSS, monthly charges, e-commerce purchases, etc.).

My suggestion is therefore to work out a stakeholder responsibility 
oriented "multiquette" for MS process based governance systems using 
the needs and experience of the IGF. I am initiating a project study 
within my VGN experimentation framework, toward a local/relational 
polycratic system (in French: everyone welcome to participate, let me know).

jfc





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