[discuss] Governmental participation (Was: Problem definition 1, v5)

[Milton L Mueller]

(new header)

From: Alejandro Pisanty [mailto:apisanty at gmail.com]

>OTOH to your perspective: can we add to the governmental participation
>a bit of Slaughter's intergovernmental network perspective? (p. 187 of A
>New World Order carries the title "Enhancing Cooperation")

Slaughter's concept of transgovernmental networks (TGNs) is indeed relevant here, though not as directly applicable as one might think. Typically TGN research in political science has focused on networks of specialized governmental agencies in the same policy sector, such as, say, telecommunications or environmental regulation. Some of these TGNs (e.g., London Action Plan, which is analyzed in my book and in some more detailed research at Delft) are even multistakeholder in composition.

TGNs are relevant to the conversation we are having here in that they involve transnational cooperation among governments below the level of the single, official national position. They are less relevant to this conversation because they are more about knowledge-sharing and coordination among governments in their traditional policy making role at the national level, and not about governmental participation in a transnational, private sector-based MS policy making regime.

>these are spaces where government officials enjoy a bit more
>latitude and in fact it's very likely that the GAC is much more
>than "a body", it is one more node in such networks.

But I think this line of inquiry makes it clearer why the GAC is such a monstrosity in institutional terms. You have a dysfunctional and incoherent mixture of the multistakeholder model with intergovernmentalism. What we have in GAC is _not_ governmental actors interacting with private sector and civil society actors as peers in the joint formulation of policy. Instead, governments shut themselves up in a room with other governments, all of whom profess to uphold a single official position that purports to be that of a "country." In short, it has all the trappings and procedures of an intergovernmental organization, yet it is embedded within a private corporation that can impose global policies via contract. The governments are not bound by standard legal checks and balances (GAC positions can have the same force of a treaty but are not ratified by legislatures and cannot be challenged in court). In developing its policy positions, the GAC's process is completely independent of, and parallel to, the bottom up policy making process, which inevitably leads to contradictions. This puts GAC in a position to second-guess, circumvent or override the bottom up process by giving "advice" to the board. The bifurcated structure also encourages GAC to see their giving of advice as a power struggle in which the whole point of the game is to see how much they can get the board take their position and not the GNSO's.  Lobbyists routinely exploit this override capability to try to get from the GAC what they failed to get in a bottom up consensus-based process, which undermines the credibility of the GNSO and any commitment actors might make to it.

I do not fear a governmental takeover of the Internet, or an unaccountable private sector-based governance of the Internet, half as much as I fear that we will end up with an incoherent and dysfunctional mixture of the two principles.

--MM
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