[governance] Multistakeholderism and Mr. Trump

[Michael Gurstein]

Yes Gene, and we applaud and support those struggles however, as you well know the Internet is a necessary functionality and resource to the entire world and any material change in how it is “governed” will be of direct interest and concern to the entire world.  

 

Mr. Trump’s expressed determination to pursue US interests at the expense of all others raises serious questions I would think, about how multistakeholder institutions fragile as they are, can survive when one (and the major player) appears intent on foregoing collaboration and co-determination in favour of unilateralism.

 

In fact, I believe that one interpretation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma can tell us a great deal about what may occur in the future where the significant likelihood of one player pursuing their own interest and refusing to cooperate with others forces all other players either to cooperate among themselves or to pursue similar autarchic moves.

 

Thus the issue of Mr. Trump and multistakeholderism might be of quite immediate significance to many of the other players in the Internet Governance game as they decide whether to go down the path of Autarchy, align with the alternate polarity that China seems to be pursuing or seek some more widely inclusive form of democratic governance of the Internet.

 

It is of course, a pity that the processes and supporters for multistakeholderism to this point have sought to avoid and downplay issues of democratic governance of the Internet, but perhaps the silver lining/unanticipated consequence of Mr. Trump’s actions is to force this issue to the fore and to precipitate the rethinking and coalition building out of which such a process of democratization might emerge and serve the interests of all users and beneficiaries of the Internet.

 

M

 

From: genekimmelman at gmail.com [mailto:genekimmelman at gmail.com] 
Sent: January 29, 2017 7:24 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [governance] Multistakeholderism and Mr. Trump

 

Many of us in the US are fighting day to day to preserve human rights principles and fundamental constitutional rights in an extremely hostile and dangerous environment. I hope we succeed, and in that context, multistakeholderism may or may not play a role (which doesn't really prove anything!).  But I certainly don't think it's a very important issue to worry about at this point in time when so much more is at stake.....


On Jan 29, 2017, at 9:35 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com> > wrote:

A question, what does Multistakeholderism looking like in the context of Mr. Trump’s America First-ism?

 

Asking for a friend…

 

M

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