[discuss] ICANN policy and "Internet Governance"

[Dr. Ben Fuller]

This is a good point, but here also lies a major oversight of our discussions. Lots of countries pass resolutions accepting international treaties on various issues. (The UN has over 550 in its database!) and then nothing happens on the ground. Despite acceptance of principles a national government makes no changes to laws, budgetary expenditures, etc. There are lots of reasons of course that we do not have to get into now. However, real on the ground change is usually driven by national interests who can lobby and press for effective action by a national government. 

A key part of our Internet Governance discussions needs to include how to develop and foster those nationally based groups.

Ben
 

r 
On Jan 7, 2014, at 1:22 PM, Mawaki Chango <kichango at gmail.com> wrote:

> And there is also international coordination of public policy (not just through treaty negotiation and signing but also bi-/multilateral agreements such as the US trade agreement and other such tools as ITU Recommendations which many countries may translate into national legislation/public policies. I guess the same may apply to World Health Organization particularly when there is an epidemic outbreak or something of that magnitude.)
> 
> Although national authority (government) remains the single most decisive point of control for enacting public policy, the outcome of such international coordination is in most (or at least in a substantial number of) countries the de facto public policy, as enactment or ratification is just a matter of formality.
> 
> 
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
> Mawaki Chango, PhD                  
> Founder and Principal, DIGILEXIS
> http://www.digilexis.com
> m.chango at digilexis.com
> twitter.com/digilexis
> twitter.com/dig_mawaki
> Skype: digilexis
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 7:04 AM, David Cake <dave at difference.com.au> wrote:
> 
> On 4 Jan 2014, at 6:32 am, Milton L Mueller <mueller at SYR.EDU> wrote:
> 
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> >> The part of Brian's paper that I strongly agreed with is that the term for many
> >> appears to be a catch-all for "anything related to the Internet about which I
> >> feel strongly Something Should Be Done".  I understood him to be arguing that
> >> it's not an actionable category, and I agree with him.
> >
> > It's true that "Internet governance" becomes indistinguishable from "Internet policy" for many people, if one is not careful and allows it to happen. For those of us more familiar with policy debates, however, 'public policy' typically means _national_ policy. We also tend to qualify the term "Internet governance" with the modifier "global Internet governance" although admittedly often that is implicit.
> 
>         I don't think that this distinction is quite as Milton describes, because there certainly exist some bodies that would generally be classified as Internet governance, rather than public policy, bodies, that operate only at the national level and are not global - multi-stakeholder ccTLD bodies, for example.
>         But it is true that public policy is normally thought of as a national government led process, and Milton's distinction holds true most of the time.
>         Regards
>                 David
> 
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____________________
Dr. Ben Fuller, Dean
Faculty of Humanities, HIV and AIDS and Sustainable Development
International University of Managment
Windhoek, Namibia
bfuller at ium.edu.na, ben at fuller.na
http://www.ium.edu.na, http://www.fuller.na
skype: drbenfuller