[bestbits] [governance] Re: NMI and the Brazilian CGI.br

[Milton L Mueller]

From: Hindenburgo Pires [mailto:hindenburgo at gmail.com]
In international diplomacy the term multilateral means much more than "one country one vote", the term multilateral means “several or many sides involved”.
MM: No, it doesn’t. “sides” is just a literal translation of the Latin “lateral” but in international relations “multilateral” means “several or many governments involved.” At best this means negotiated consensus agreements among states, and at worst one-country, one vote arrangements, but it ALWAYS means that only states are represented.
Multilateral is not the same as undemocratic, undemocratic is the UNILATERALISM and the loss of diplomacy as a primacy of policy.
MM: is your thinking about this problem so crabbed that you can only recognize the distinction between multilateral (multiple states) and unilateral (one state)? Have you ever heard of people, organizations, businesses, voluntary associations?
The ideology of the unilateralism has worked against the multilateralism, as condition of legitimate social representation, and has destroyed the diplomatic representation of the nation-states.
MM: That’s good to know. But if you think I am promoting unilateralism you are ignorant of what I am saying, and if you think multistakeholderism (MS) has anything to do with unilateralism you are wrong about that, too.
Although I do not have the desire to make any clarification or etymological essentialist about the origin of the terms stakeholder (see the stakeholder theory in Edward Freeman) and multi-stakeholder, these terms do not mean a representation of plural civil society and more votes, but a representation of interested parties (corporations, businesses, military sectors).
MM: I disagree. Pluralism is precisely what MS is about. Indeed, pluralist direct representation would be a much better word for what many of the MS governance institutions stand for than the ugly term MS.
Therefore, from a methodological point of view and operational multistakeholdism is not diversity representative, it is the field of inertia representative of hegemonic unilateralism, articulated with the private sectors and military that perpetuate the status quo. Multistakeholdism is a disguised form of corporate unilateralism, the primacy of the discourse of a single State (or an empire) on the other nation-states.
MM: What a mouthful. Yes, Mr. Gramsci, I understand where you’re coming from. And I think it is full of beans. You have an idealized notion of the state which sees it as completely free of private sector and military influence and always a legitimate representative of “the people.” Oh, but there’s one big exception: it is the American government (perhaps also the British one) that is somehow corrupt and overbearing; all developing world governments are noble upholders of freedom. Do I have it right? And so the pursuit of justice and freedom in international relations becomes very simple: whatever counters Anglo-American power is good – even if it the countervailing forces are a bunch of one-party states, local kleptocracies, populist mobocracies and post-Leninist “socialist market economy” states. Let us overlook the fact that all states put national security as their top priority and have their own favored business interests and thus are “articulated with the private sectors and military.” As long as it’s not THAT state we’ll be fine.
The organizers of the event NetMundial translated erroneously the word of English "multi-stakeholder" as multisectoral. Perhaps by an ideological and non-linguistic issue because the translation of the word for the Portuguese language should be "multiple Interested parties", that does not imply sectors of society, but only corporate interests.
MM: So to be interested, one has to be a commercial corporation? No, I think the Netmundial organizers got it right: multi-sectoral is a very good translation, albeit with somewhat corporatist overtones. One can be “interested” in free expression rights, privacy rights, freedom of association, dozens of other things. Open, MS institutions mean multiple interested parties, yes.
Here in Brazil, the word "multisectoral" was originally introduced in the early 1990s, and means plurality of sectors engaged in defending the cause environmentalist and was also used in reference to the different currents of environmentalism at the conference Eco-92. Therefore, this concept does not apply to this new context in which there are no sectors dialoguing and deciding on proposals.
MM: So what’s wrong with a plurality of sectors engaged in defending the cause of Internet freedom? Many others have developed parallels between the environmental movement and digital rights movement.
In NetMundial, representatives of countries, such as Cuba and Russia, who managed to submit their proposals, were only ears, since there was no vote in the plenary session and the final document, according to allegations, was already prepared before the meeting here in Brazil, sponsored by ICANN.
The final document was very much a product of the meeting, not prepared in advance. Of course there was a draft, derived from the comments submitted, with which the meeting started, but it went through a lot of change.
The questions that we should ask are:
When "networks" supersede the nation-states, in a Post-Westphalian neo-liberal conception?
MM: That doesn’t quite make sense as a question. Try re-phrasing it.
When the warfare state will no longer recognize the cyberspace as the fifth area of control and power?
MM: Wait. I thought you were the one who insisted that only nation-states should be represented in these forums. Once you tie your fate to nation-states, then you have committed yourself inexorably to the militarization of cyberspace, because security calculations are what states are all about. All states. And all states engage in mass surveillance, insofar as they have the means to do so. That is why many of us favor the non-state actor approach to Internet governance.
The mass surveillance and the installation of state of exception are ideological strategics to the permanence of current unilateralism.
MM: Could be. What does that have to do with Netmundial and the MS governance of the Internet?
If we look at how this ideology is forming his followers in all countries, offering top-down, courses, scholarships and funding for people who advocate this ideas, it is clear that are not sectors of civil society who are advocates the “multistakeholdism”.

So…we are not civil society, then. What are we?

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