[governance] Call for Participation: Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, 2015

[Barry Shein]

You can't have an operational definition of "multistakeholderism"
without some process to define it such as enfranchisement in a
governance body.

One could argue that ICANN has done that via its by-laws. The board of
directors recognizes certain groups as groups of enfranchised
stakeholders for each group's stated purpose: Address Supporting
Organization (ASO), Country-Code Names Supporting Organization
(CCNSO), Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), Advisory
Committees (AC, such as GAC, SSAC, RSSAC, ALAC), and then other,
board, and temporary committees.

They're narrowly focused (other than perhaps the GAC) on ICANN's core
mission: Names, numbers, and the stability and operations thereof.

Nonetheless the process is led by a board of directors chosen by a
nominating committee consisting primarily of members of those
organizations, or external organizations given a seat by that board
(with their own processes for choosing directors), who can approve
enfranchised stakeholder groups.

Within each of those groups there are other stakeholder groups
approved by those groups' leadership and noted in the by-laws who are
enfranchised to participate in the groups' decision-making.

For exmaple within GNSO there are the Registries and Regstrars
stakeholder groups (SGs), Business Constituency SG, Intellectual
Property SG, Internet Service Providers SG, Non-Commercial Users
Constituency. And so forth.

It's all in the by-laws and apologies in advance if I made any small
errors but I think that's the gist of it.

One could argue it's rather top-down in that substantive top-level
changes must get through approval by the board of directors. There's
no process that I know of, for example, to over-ride the board's
decisions on such structures though there is a fair amount of latitude
within each group pertaining to their own leadership, agenda, process
structures, etc.

But, for example, I believe the board could in theory dissolve an
entire Supporting Organization and by implication any enfranchisement
of their stakeholder groups via a board vote with no formal challenge
process (no involuntary override) possible.

One can submit a "reconsideration request" and/or ask for an
Independent Review Process Panel (IRP) but it's all gated by board
members (via the Board Governance Committee) or the board acting as a
whole -- approving such panels and their membership, taking action on
their recommendations or not, etc.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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