[discuss] Multistakeholderism is a principle that can have many istantiations Was: NETmundial documentsonline for comment

[George Sadowsky]

All,

I think what Avri is saying is quite sensible.  Multistakeholderism is as much a principle as it is a model, and for myself, I summarize it by thinking that those who are materially affected by a set of decisions should at least be heard and generally participate in making them.  ICANN displays a specific instantiation of those principles or that model (whichever wording that you prefer).

Avri’s comments lead me to think of the complexity of the Internet ecosystem that currently exists. Laura DeNardis has done us all a favor by pointing out how important and useful it is to disaggregate what is meant by Internet governance, and to note that there were not only many, many actors involved, but that different processes may perform best using forms of governance, or management, or cooperation that are quite specific to those processes. Here is her chart:
 


So while it’s possible to say that overall Internet governance is characterized by a multistakeholder process, the more important observation is that the Internet ecosystem is characterized by many different instantiations of the multistakeholder principle, and it really works quite well.

I’d like to commend Laura for talking the time and the trouble to do work of this type.  I wish that we had more of it, and less discussion of what multistakholderism means.  The latter doesn’t contribute to constructing solutions to the current Internet governance problems that are well identified.

George



On Apr 19, 2014, at 10:53 AM, Alejandro Pisanty <apisanty at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> +1
> 
> Let form follow function.
> 
> Alejandro Pisanty
> 
> 
> On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 6:48 AM, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> > *From:*Ian Peter [mailto:ian.peter at ianpeter.com]
> 
> > I agree with your point Michael. I am travelling now, but I think you
> > should make the point in NetMundial document somehow that extending
> > multistakeholderism to all aspects on governance “on the internet” could
> > be problematic and does not have universal agreement.
> >
> >
> 
> Of course no point of view has universal agreement, no matter how small
> or large the group.
> 
> I beleive that some form of multistakeholderism is appropriate for any
> Internet governance issue.  I argue that a uni-stakeholder system is
> _never_ appropriate for the Internet. Or anywhere else for that matter.
> 
> Though I would agree that extending any one system to the Internet is
> going to be problematic.  What is most problematic is the view that
> multistakeholderism only consists of one model, or that any form of the
> model is the solution to all issues.  Each issue has an appropriate form
> of the multistakeholder model, different sets of actors, roles and
> responsibilities.  The difficulty is coming to consensus on the proper mix.
> 
> Just wanted to make sure we knew that we did not have universal
> agreement on your statement.  I may be alone, but I think that
> multistakeholderism, in its variety of expressions and modalities of
> participatory democracy, is the only way forward possible.  Anything
> else leaves some relevant actors outside the solution and is
> fundamentally anti-democratic.
> 
> avri
> 
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