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

[Norbert Bollow]

JFC Morfin <jefsey at jefsey.com> wrote:

At 10:26 06/05/2014, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> >  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, 

Yup, you're right, your statement is more accurate.

> >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.

I think we're not disagreeing substantively on this point, rather I'm
just using the term “multistakeholderism” in a broader sense than you
are using it; in fact I'm stretching this term so broadly and widely
that it also encompasses possibilities of using multistakeholder
processes in ways that are in fact part of a democratic framework. The
country where I live, Switzerland, has a long tradition in this regard
which in fact  by a long time predates “multistakeholder” becoming a
buzzword.

I mean processes like the following: When “net neutrality” became a
topic in parliament, the first thing that the Swiss government did was
set up a “working group” with a reasonably well balanced composition
(someone from the Swiss government is chairing the group, and there is
someone representing the Swiss chapter of ISOC, and some industry
representatives, and some representatives of civil society groups that
have been significantly active on Internet topics). This “working
group” is tasked with discussing the issue and trying to agree on a
report, which will thereafter be used by the government to provide
input to the parliament based legislative process in the context of an
upcoming revision of telecommunications law. I don't see anything
contrary to democracy in this process. That “working group” is not
officially called a “multistakeholder” group, but the composition of
the group looks pretty reasonably multistakeholder to me.

I certainly see nothing objectionable in asking industry representatives
to provide input on potential regulation that would affect them,
provided that the process is reasonably transparent and that the
government does a good job in inviting the various civil society groups
which reasonably should be there, and also a good balance between the
various different industry interests.

Hence I think that the type of process that I described above is one of
“democratic multistakeholderism”.

Now I personally strongly prefer open-participation processes such as
those used in IETF. Furthermore, at the international level I don't
see any reasonable alternative to using open-participation processes,
since at the international level I see no trustworthy equivalent to the
Swiss government with its tradition of selecting and conducting “working
groups” in a usually reasonably balanced and fair manner. (Certainly I
wasn't very impressed by the committee and co-chair selection processes
for NetMundial.) I believe that even for inherently global issues the
actual decision-making in regard to choosing between policy options can
be done by national parliaments, but working out a reasonable set of
policy options to choose from should absolutely be coordinated in an
international multistakeholder process or set of such processes. This
kind of model that I'm proposing (again, details are at
http://wisdontaskforce.org/ ) is also something that I would suggest
falls into the category of “democratic multistakeholderism”.

Greetings,
Norbert

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