[governance] JNC perspective on making Internet governance democratic (was Re: URGENT: Last call...)

[Norbert Bollow]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:10:39 +0800
David Cake <dave at difference.com.au> wrote:

> That position generally goes along with an opposition to all fora in
> which commercial organisations are full participants (a familiar JNC
> refrain)

That is not at all a JNC position, nor has that position (as far as I am
aware) been advanced by any JNC member.

For example my “International Wisdom Task Force” proposal (IWTF, see
http://WisdomtaskForce.org ) invites commercial organizations to be full
participants in the discourse process. (Note for clarity: That is at
the current stage just my proposal, not a JNC proposal. I however
believe the current version to be fully compatible with JNC's
positions.)

We (JNC) however object to ideas which are based on the assumption that
no public policy decision-making is needed, or which propose a process
for such decision-making which has no mechanism which can correct for
the fact that the big corporations do not only have voice but also vast
economic power. It is an age-old problem that some people control vastly
more economic power than almost everyone else, and that the public
policy outcomes are bad when such economic power is allowed to
translate directly into power to influence public policy outcomes, as
opposed to more democratic processes for determining public policy.

In IWTF the proposed corrective mechanisms are first to start on a
clear basis of human rights and “people oriented information society”
values, second that discussion processes are encouraged to design the
public policy recommendations they develop so that national parliaments
are given a choice of different possible ways of balancing the
interests of different stakeholders, and third that if that is felt to
be necessary, the recommendation development process can be forked,
leading to competing recommendations (with the burden of choice between
them then being in the hands of national parliaments.)

Of course I'm not asserting that this is the only possible form which a
democracy-based model can take.

But some kind of mechanism is needed to ensure that Internet governance
qualifies as being democratic.

While I agree that preventing any governance process which is not
multistakeholder is better than putting Internet governance in the
hands of a government agency which is not provided with any source of
the required expertise, the idea “let's prevent any governance process
which is not multistakeholder” does not contain any mechanism to
achieve democratic governance in regard to those points where public
interest oriented governance decisions are needed that go against the
interests of some powerful corporations. For this reason, JNC objects
to the idea of elevating that idea to the level of an ideology, as it
is done in what we're referring to as the “equal-footing
multistakeholder model”, a model that is described for example in the
draft declaration which had been prepared for consideration by the São
Paulo NetMundial meeting. That model is not compatible with the concept
of democracy.

> and I think we can say that is solidly a minority position within CS
> groups that participate in IG processes, and likely to stay that way. 

The position of “opposition to all fora in which commercial
organizations are full participants” is not just a minority position,
it is to my best knowledge a strawman position which no-one has ever
seriously proposed.

By contrast, IMO the view that governance must be democratic, which JNC
emphasizes, cannot possibly remain a minority position for very long
regardless of whether that might currently be the case or not.

I note that when JNC insisted at the São Paulo NetMundial meeting on the
inclusion of that point in the concerned section of the outcome
document, the JNC members who were there and pushed for that succeeded.

I would furthermore point out that to my best knowledge all of JNC's
positions are substantively compatible with a broad range of
viewpoints political perspectives of the democratic political middle
as well as many of those more on the left (like most of the political
perspectives of civil society groups outside of the “Internet
governance” specialization tend to be at least a bit on the left
as far the traditional political spectrum is concerned), while what
we're arguing against is not at all compatible with this broad set of
perspectives. We're also fully capable of writing different texts that
will in terms of choice of language be designed to appeal to different
audiences while presenting the same substantive viewpoint.

On this basis, I'm quite confident that even if you might be right that
for whatever reason the majority among vocal participants on this list
may currently go in the direction of disagreeing with JNC's insistence
on the importance of democracy, that would not imply that things are
likely to stay that way.

JNC certainly has every intention of working hard to convince many of
those who are currently unconvinced of the importance and feasibility
of making Internet governance democratic. 

Greetings,
Norbert
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