[Mmwg] Mechanism proposition

[Milton Mueller]

It is my opinion that Luc Faubert has made a fundamental mistake about methods of participation, and this mistake is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the IG Forum is.  

The Forum is not a negotiating body and therefore Govts have no basis for insisting on the "representative" or "legitimate" nature of participants. The same is true of Civil society or business. No one can bind anyone to anything via the Forum. The Forum cannot, I think, operate on the basis of "consensus" (that is another topic), but its reports or deliberations are  not legislation. Therefore the emphasis on "representation," organizational size and "legitimate parties" is misplaced.

IGF is a deliberative forum. As such, the IGF needs to draw and all and any forms of available expertise and stakeholder interest. Imposing accreditation requirements simply filters out people who may have something to contribute but don't have the time or inclination to surmount artificially high "barriers to enty." Erecting barriers to entry simply undermines the inclusiveness of the forum without creating any compensating benefit. 

I am very familiar with these tradeoffs from the ICANN mechanisms.  We can go into those examples in more detail as appropriate.

It is interesting that currently anyone can participate in and IETF standards development process, which develops highly demanding technical documents that have real impact on the internet. The reason the process is open is that people involved know who they can trust, who knows something and who doesn't, etc. There is no need for artificial, ex ante barriers to entry.

>>> "Luc Faubert" <LFaubert at conceptum.ca> 1/15/2006 1:13 PM >>>
Number of groups
I don't think the idea of merging all parties in one group would be palatable to governments. While the number of governements allowed to participate in the process would be limited to those officially recognized by the UN, the only upper bound on the number of potential parties in the CS group would be that imposed by accreditation (and I think the principles underlying accreditation should be intended to screen out illegitimate parties rather than limiting the absolute number of CS parties). If the 2 groups are not isolated, the importance of governement votes would diminish proportionally with the increase of CS parties. I do not think we will get approval of governments to go this way.

Minimal number of members
The limit of 1000 members could be 100 or 500, or whatever we agree on, but the idea of the limit is twofold: to prevent individuals who speak only for themselves to participate and to ensure a certain "barrier to entry" preventing the spontaneous and artificial creation of parties around one specific forum. If the civil society group is going to have any credibility with governments, it must be formed of legitimate parties. I agree that exactly what defines legitimacy can be the subject of endless discussion, but if civil society is not perceived to be legitimate, its means of action will be limited.

Accreditation
The idea behind the accreditation process was to screen out illegitimate parties. Maybe this is too slippery a path. It could be difficult to define what is a legitimate party in a given forum. However, imagine that Al Quaida wanted to participate in IGF. What should we do? Maybe even the perspective of having Al Quaida officially represented in a forum is worth the simplicity that eliminating the accreditation process alltogether would bring to our mechanism. What do the others think? Eliminating the need for accreditation would also eliminate the need for the boostrap loading mechanism I couldn't come up with (i.e. the issue of accrediting the first parties when none other than governments are yet accreditated).

Consensus
I think consensus imposes too many limits on the ability of a forum to decide. This is of course dependant on the notion that a forum should accomplish more than just discuss. As I mentioned in my notes, I think the need to reach consensus often dilutes final text to flavorless and useless amenities.

Seating
If seating is to be available for all who wish to participate, I fear some plenaries will be impossible to hold. Imagine a forum meeting where 20 parties each come with 500 members wishing to participate. How do you manage this? Our mechanism must ensure "full and equal participation by all stakeholders", thus my proposition that all parties of either group (governement or civil society) be allowed to seat an equal number of delegates, limited only by available seating.

WGIG
I think we need to come up with a better model than WGIG, because its mechanism did not allow for "full and equal participation by all stakeholders". Although the spirit was undeniably cooperative in WGIG, I don't think we can say that associations and governments worked peer-to-peer.


- Luc Faubert
ISOC Québec
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