[Mmwg] Re: putting working groups on the radar

[David Allen]

At 11:04 AM +0200 6/11/06, Avri Doria wrote:
>On 10 jun 2006, at 22.47, David Allen wrote:
>
>>Bill has made clear, his conversations have surfaced more than 'objections,' these governments simply don't want to do it.  (In the archive of posts - I'll dig it out if useful.)
>
>Yes, that would be useful.. I just did a quick pass through the thread and while i see fears that they may go for it, i see no evidence that they have been consulted and have decided against.

Really, Bill can speak to this, rather than rely on exegesis ... but there are a couple instances, and of course wanting to see what mine grows from is of the essence (I wanted to check too! And I had to look to find it again ...)

At 5:06 PM +0200 6/8/06, William Drake wrote:
>...
>>>Would it be acceptable to see this workshop as the start of an online working group ...
>...
>
>Well, this is exactly what I proposed and got push back on from relevant governments and international mechanisms, so it's not at all a silly question. At present, the answer is, at best, we'd rather not talk about that.

[Incidentally, other text indicates I was incorrect to say the subject below had come up only in the 'last exchange.'  Bill addressed it early.]

Also, earlier on the governance list, the scene was set with a broader topic, though WG a part of that.

At 12:50 PM +0200 6/1/06, William Drake wrote:
>...
>This all seems pretty clear. The WGIG Report was endorsed by the caucus, and in our reply comments this line of thought was actually amplified further. In parallel, the Tunis Agenda was agreed by all governments.
>
>Nevertheless, once they escaped Tunis, key governments quickly distanced themselves from this agenda. With that trend in mind, I submitted a theme proposal in March on implementation of the WSIS principles---looking horizontally at extant arrangements and the degree to which they are transparent, multistakeholder, etc, and identifying best practices---and suggested an Athens workshop that might lead to creating a working group to carry dialogue and analysis and report to Rio. In response, I have been told by key players that, well, the Tunis Agenda was just a conference declaration, don't take it literally, of course we're not going to do that because it would mean opening up existing arrangements to scrutiny and hence raise turf issues and be sensitive, this is too controversial, please be realistic, etc. And CS hasn't pressed the point in a concerted manner, either.
>
>At present it doesn't appear that there's any momentum toward using the forum to look horizontally at existing arrangements of consequence and suggest possible best practices, much less reforms. In fact, based on the May consultation and what's come out of the mAG so far, it's not obvious to what extent Athens will actually be about Internet *governance* at all. It's entirely possible that it will instead be about the Internet's broad features and design principles, benefits/risks, and a few vertically individuated issues. This might well make for an interesting few days in Athens, but it would fall pretty short of using the IGF to promote understanding and reform of real governance frameworks. So as Ralf suggests, efforts to make a difference and promote public interest objectives will have to concentrate elsewhere. Given the diversity of frameworks this will be labor intensive and fragmentary, with a few processes like ICANN and WIPO getting a lot of attention and others falling off the radar and conducting business as usual, unperturbed by meddlesome public scrutiny.

But again, the point is not exegesis, rather to array the actual facts, to work from that.  All the way below, on that.

First,

>>Force:  Fortunately ... there is other than military force.  In this case, the opposition is between committed cooperation and some sort of leverage to compel engagement.  A 'wedge,' such as some governments who come along when others say no, is an example.  
>>Other sorts of leverage might be felt pressure, because something was started when some parties had made clear their unwillingness.  
>>This is the sort of opposite of cooperative behavior that can forestall serious possibilities for cooperation.
>
>Are you saying that there is only cooperation if there is 100% cooperation?  and that anything anyone does that is not in full cooperation somehow constitutes force?  As I understand the diplomatic activity, there is always game playing despite the incidence of lots of island of cooperation.  perhaps what i call game playing (aka negotiation) you call force.  personally, i prefer reserving such terms for real displays of abusive power.
>
>(for clarity sake, i did not restrict force to the use of military force - note the modifier military.  if force was always military force then this would be a redundant phrase)

Somehow I am failing to say well what, for me anyway, is something straightforward.  Probably me ... though this sort of thing is what makes me conservative about text-only tools.  Conversation, by contrast, can get quickly to these 'knots' in a discussion.

Grows out of perceptions of human psychology.  When the aim is cooperation, that aim can fail if coercive means are part of the attempt to get there - that is the perception about human psychology.  Folks get their back up.  They can't find the cooperative 'bones in their body,' when they feel like they are being shoe-horned into something.  If that 'something' must necessarily be cooperative, the effort fails.  They may respond to subtle or not-so-subtle pressures to do the thing - but they have lost that cooperative feeling (or more to the point never found it in the first place ...)  So, that which must be cooperative, ain't - and effectively fails.

In this case, the shoe-horning could take the form, do it with the G77 so other govs feel like they have to pay attention, when they have said 'no,' to start anyway.  Or the shoe-horning could take the form, CS starts WGs on its own initiative.

As said, such coerciveness _could_ lead to less than desirable tit for tat:  

Governments might feel the best response is a snub, to get the point across.  Then CS is where it started, pre-IGF - on the outside and the only one trying seriously to move ahead with WG's.  Or, more perniciously, folks have also been known to 'join but undermine,' in response to such circumstances.  A recipe for failed WGs.

But Bill points out that such speculation probably isn't going to get us so far.  Seems what we need is the clearest info available to date, on specific governments' sentiments re WGs.

Then we can address his two action points.

>1. To establish the principle and an enabling environment, MMWG expands upon its previous position, develops a short doc on why and how (options) to have WGs or whatever involved and associated;
>
>2. We instanciate the principle and try to create the demand that would justify the supply. When I get back to Geneve I can follow up with the G77, which per previous is interested in some sort of dialogue/collaboration with CS that would help them to think through some issues, particularly with respect to the operational meaning of a development agenda. It's a reasonable bet that if CS and G77 launched some sort of process, other stakeholder groupings might feel compelled to be a part of the discussion, whether they prefer it to be happening or not.

David