[governance] RE: From Confusion to Clarification

[Milton L Mueller]

Wolfgang:
This is a charmingly Kleinwachterian approach to things, but forgive me if I dissent. 

I think each of the different viewpoints of civil society can be, and already are, represented by CS organizations' own publications. The idea that "Each of the six groups under the CSCG (IGC, BB, JNC, NCSG, Diplo, APC) could nominate four authors" to represent all of the spectrum of civil society just doesn't work. IGC is a mailing list containing a vast diversity of ideologies, who the heck would they nominate? At the other end of the spectrum, JNC is a single-ideology group, and to a lesser extent so is our IGP (Internet Governance Project). APC is already part of NCSG, BB, and IGC, do they get triple representation? Furthermore, as Andrea Glorioso correctly stated, the plethora of written materials churning out of this environment is already overwhelming, the last thing we need is more. 

If you want to do this right, then have an ideologically broad and diverse group select some of the best _existing_ publications, or excerpts from publications, that can summarize and explain the spectrum of viewpoints in civil society on IG issues. The selection of issues would also be important: some of us concentrate on very direct and more focused aspects of IG (e.g., names and numbers, routing, interconnection, standards) while others focus on much broader issues that go beyond IG alone (e.g., freedom of expression, access, economic policy) The point here would be to reveal and document the full ideological or policy diversity among us. 

However, even if you adopt that more reasonable approach, the danger of representing some views as hegemonic or accepted by all when they are not remains. We all get a bit irritated I think when Parminder tells us that our views are not really civil society views, and I can easily see this project leading to those kinds of debates. And I am not sure I see the point of clamoring to get represented in such a publication when we could be pushing our views directly into ongoing policy debates that actually matter. 

--MM

> -----Original Message-----
> I propose that we start to work on what I call a "Civil Society Internet
> Governance Handbook".  This handbook would allow all CS groups within the
> CSCG to present their own individual points of views so that everybody
> knows what the positions are. The book could be structured into four main
> chapters:
> 
> 1.	Human Rights (Access, Freedom of Expression, Privacy etc.)
> 2.	Security (Cyberwar, Cyberterrorism, Cybercrime etc.)
> 3.	Economic Development (Market domination, competition,
> infrastructure development etc.)
> 4.	Technical Coordination (Names, Numbers, Protocols etc.)
> 	
> Each of the six groups under the CSCG (IGC, BB, JNC, NCSG, Diplo, APC) could
> nominate four authors (one for each chapter). Each author would be free to
> argue for her/his position (five to maximum teen pages). There is no need
> for consensus. Every author would be free to present her/his radical,
> moderate, liberal and whatsoever position on one of the four main issues.
> 
> Such a compendium would help to bring more transparency into the process
> and would enable a more fact based discussion in the IG events ahead of us.
> 
> We could deliver this as an e-book (probably with an Annex with main official
> texts as Tunis Agenda, Sao Paulo Principles, UN Resolutions etc.) until the
> May 2015 Sessions in Geneva. In total this book would be around 250 pages.
> If we find a sponsor we could publish this for the New York event in
> December 2015. Such a book would seen by the rest of the IG Community as
> a helpful contribution, it would strengthen the role of CS in the emerging IG
> multistakeholder mechanisms and would be also an input into the WSIS 10+
> process.
> 
> The chair of the CSCG (together with the co-chairs from the six groups) would
> be the editor.
> 
> Any comment?
> 
> Wolfgang
> 


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