[discuss] [bestbits] Representative Multistakeholder model validity (was: Re: Selection RE: 1Net, Brazil and other RE: BR meeting site launched)

[David Cake]

On 19 Jan 2014, at 3:58 am, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:

> [cc:s trimmed]
> 
> On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 09:56:31AM -0800, michael gurstein wrote:
>> 
>> prove positives i.e. as for example the “validity” of this or that,
>> but rather by demonstrating the “invalidity” (falsifiability*) of
>> this or that…
> 
> Ah, yes, Karl Popper, the only philosophy of science that anyone can
> understand in under 10 minutes.  The only problem is that the
> falsifiability story falls down whenever one looks at the actual
> historical details of significant cases of scientific progress.  So
> that we don't drag this completely off-topic, I urge people who are
> remotely interested in this to read Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific
> Revolutions_, Feyerabend's _Against Method_, Davidson's "On the Very
> Idea of a Conceptual Scheme", almost anything Ian Hacking wrote after
> (say) 1975, and anything Donna Harraway ever wrote about science.
> Popper's a nice story, but it is rather a long way from the final word
> on this.  So, to drag this back onto the topic at hand,

	Kuhn isn't that well regarded among philosophers of science these days either (his paradigm shift argument doesn't really reflect how science works (after all, physics still teaches Newtons laws, even if relativity and quantum theory change the picture substantially if you are dealing with conditions well outside everyday experience), I would add to your reading list Irmre Lakatos and his concept of a 'research programme'. 
	Or, if one doesn't want to actually become a philosopher of science but simply wants a basic working knowledge of the field, the book 'What is this thing called science', by Alan Chalmers, is an excellent overview of the field, and a new edition came out last year (I have a copy but I haven't read it yet). I recommend it to anyone with an interest in this area, readable, informative, and relatively short. 

>> So in this instance the burden of proof surely falls not on those
>> who are demonstrating that the “multistakeholder model” doesn’t
>> provide an appropriate approach to governance but rather on those
>> who are attempting to assert that it does…
> 
> this is poppycock.  If we're going to invoke philosophy of science,
> then I state my belief that a scientific theory is true only if it
> works.  More importantly for this current discussion, I think a
> political structure is good at least partly to the extent that it
> works.  And despite my very deep reservations about the way
> representation can work in represtentative multistakeholder systems,
> some kind of multistakeholder approach has been working in many
> different forms for the Internet so far.

	Very much my position. There are certainly issues with how representation works in multi-stakeholder systems that are worth considering, and we are not yet at the stage in the use of such systems that there is a clear consensus on some issues. But it appears to be an approach that is working well, and many would say better than alternatives that have been presented. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to try to further improve it. 

> Therefore, I say the burden
> of proof most certainly lies with those who want to replace it in
> favour of something else.  An argument that the current system is not
> perfect is by no means an argument that it must be replaced wholesale,
> any more than troubling inconsistencies at the edges of theory were
> trouble for Newtonian mechanics in the absence of a much better
> alternative.

	And to claim that multi-stakederism has been falsified because this one time a process didn't work the way Michael Gurstein thought it should is a very long bow indeed. Even by MGs own argument the process could have been resolved to his satisfaction fairly simply (by including the group he is a part of, and that selected him, within the selection process), but certainly a version of multi-stakeholderism with clearer criteria for defining stakeholder groups is easy to imagine - whether we could have settled on such criteria in the necessary time to select representatives in time for them to usually participate in planning for the Brazil meeting is another issue, however. Decisions are not made in a vacuum, sometimes there are external constraints that demand some pragmatic response. 

	Regards

		David

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