In advanced circles discussing future forms of governance and particularly governance structures in areas impinging on or being impinged upon by the Internet, one of the most widely discussed and promoted is that of Multistakeholderism (MSism). This is presented as the successful model on which the Internet has been built and thus the model through which the Internet should continue to be managed, and given its success in this area it is a model which is increasingly seen as being attractive and applicable in wider and wider areas including for example, environmental management, sustainable development, climate change adaptation, privacy regulation and the range of seemingly intractable issues with which the modern polity is confronted.
MSism is based on the overall notion that those most impacted by a change or an issue or a circumstance should be involved in the management and governance and ultimately the resolution of that issue or circumstance Thus for example, in the area of Internet governance the stakeholders identified as being appropriate for inclusion in associated decision making are governments, the private sector, the technical and academic community (T/A) and civil society (CS).
So far, so good, and this seems to have worked reasonably well when the issues were concerned with a start-up Internet and largely narrow technical processes and issues. However, as these things go, and of course, as the Internet has matured technically and increased dramatically in its scope and impact; and as the associated policy issues in such areas as privacy, security, access and others have grown apace in complexity and significance there has been the inevitable trend to extend MSism as a governance model and strategy into these latter additional areas among others.
And this isn’t cream cheese. The USA Ambassador to the recent World Conference on International Communications in Dubai where the Internet world was seemingly edging into some sort of global policy Cold War, in his brief statement to the USA’s concluding press conference mentioned MSism 17 times while mentioning things like freedom of expression, open markets, and so on less than 5 times each. At a recent OECD meeting, in which I had the occasion to participate, the senior US spokesman indicated in his remarks that MSism was a necessary framework for the on-going conduct of the OECD’s business at hand. And as of June 2012 the US “NTIA announces the first privacy multistakeholder meeting pursuant to Obama administration privacy blueprint” and so on.
This is a very important emerging trend and one that is taking on increasing importance as a way of facilitating decision making in complex, rapidly evolving, knowledge and technology intensive processes.
So, given this importance and visibility one might expect that MSism was a clearly defined set of concepts with regularized procedures, structures of accountability, norms for internal governance and decision making, rules for transparency — the regular elements of democratic processes.
Well not so much…
Arguably, among the origins of MSism are in the overall technical management of the Internet and its recent powerful emergence into the overall lexicon of democratic governance is through Internet related matters and specifically as an outcome of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) where the concluding document (The Tunis Agenda for the Information Society) mentioned multistakeholder processes/approaches/frameworks etc. some 18 times in among its 122 clauses.
As well, one of the recommendations of the WSIS Summit was that there be a multistakeholder examination of what was called “Enhanced Cooperation” which in UN-speak is terminology for how governments (and others) could structure themselves to proceed in global Internet and related policy areas. The responsibility for this activity has been assigned within the UN system to the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) and the Chair of this Commission recently invited the WSIS defined “stakeholders”–governments, the private sector, civil society and the technical and academic community to nominate representatives from within their respective stakeholder communities to be selected by the UN to sit on a Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation.
A wee bit of background… For the last several years I’ve become involved with civil society in Internet Governance related areas, mostly articulating a “community informatics” position i.e. the need to extend access and use of the Internet to marginalized populations and communities. However, in this instance and in consultation with various parties I decided that rather than being concerned with what SHOULD take place with respect to bringing the next 4 billion or so of the world’s citizens onto the Internet, I would be concerned with what structures COULD be put in place to most effectively achieve this. (This distinction is important as it is one between an intervention or participation which is “values based” and thus which falls directly into the area of civil society whose primary framework is the promotion of actions and activities on and with the Internet as seen primarily through a Human Rights lens; and an intervention or participation which is knowledge or expertise based such as would be contributed by those participating from within a technical and academic community.) I would look to base my contribution in the latter on my some 20 years professional experience working with marginalized populations around the world and most particularly in consultation with my academic, research and technical community informatics colleagues actively engaged in these activities worldwide on a daily basis.
So, rather than applying to be nominated by the CS stakeholder group for the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation I decided to put on my “day job” hat and apply to the “academic” component of the T/A stakeholder group–my thinking being that if, of five T/A representatives, four were concerned with the technical “pipes” (connectivity and protocols), perhaps one should be concerned with who the “pipes” were being laid for and what was being carried along those “pipes”.
In this instance the Chair of the CSTD committee had designated a representative of the Internet Society to be the “focal point”(in fact gatekeeper) for the T/A stakeholder group to gather the nominations and to select five names to forward to the Chair for review and ultimate selection. Asking for, but not receiving the appropriate form and requirements for application I sent along a bio, resume, indication of interest and how I thought I fit into the selection criteria identified–which included things like time availability, experience, how one would represent the T/A community that sort of thing. In addition, I requested “endorsements” from the Community Informatics community and received a very positive and useful cross section of such endorsements including from a range of Less Developed Countries, academic (including technical) disciplines and so on and so on.
However, my application was clearly met with some consternation within the T/A focal group as I received contacts and encouragements from several sources to withdraw my application and re-submit it through Civil Society. I respectfully declined those solicitations citing my extensive and continuing work experience in the area of enabling the extension of Internet access and use and particularly how I would look to act as a channel for making available the knowledge and experience of my professional colleagues in this area.
A first formal response from the T/A focal point then indicated that I didn’t fit within the T/A “criteria” which was identified as “the scientists who developed the Internet and the technical organizations/people who run it, and not to social scientists and the like”. Fair enough, but thinking that this was a rather restrictive (to my mind) definition and moreover one that might usefully be evolving as the Internet has grown and matured I asked to be pointed to the specific document and authoritative reference where this definition was presented (as for example by the UN itself).
I received no reply to this request but after a very lengthy delay I was informed that the “nominations” had gone forward and that mine was not recommended. I then asked for two things–an indication of the procedures that had been followed in adjudicating the applicants and the criteria which had been used in making the overall assessments.
I received back this quite astonishing response to my first question “Consultations were led (presumably “held”) and I have also talked to many individuals from Civil Society and the Business community (including their focal points)”. In other words they, the focal point “chatted with a few of her mates and they decided amongst themselves who they would nominate”. No procedures, no formal assessment, no transparency, no accountability…
And as well I received this intriguing response to the second question concerning definitions “My interpretation of the “technical and academic community” includes the academics who have contributed to building the Internet”.
Since I (and my colleagues) have devoted much of our working careers to “building the Internet” if one understands by building the Internet something beyond simply wires and protocols i.e. integrating users and developing uses, then it seemed that I and my colleagues would easily fit within that criteria.
I then followed up with a subsequent question asking for an indication of the actual formal procedures which went in to applying the criteria and making the assessments. At this point my previous involvements with Civil Society were evoked as determining conditions i.e. since in the past I had represented CS thus it was implied I could not at a subsequent occasion represent my technical/academic colleagues. Also, at this time the defining criteria for the T/A stakeholder groups was further refined as being “individuals who have technically built the Internet“. When further pressed on this matter, in a widely circulated email the following and presumably considered and definitive definition was provided: The T/A stakeholder group consists of “the community of organizations and individuals who are involved in the day-to-day operational management of the Internet and who work within this community“.
Okay, so clearly I am not welcome as a member of the T/A community/stakeholder group and presumably none of my academic or research or technical colleagues who aren’t specifically involved in “the day to day technical management and operations of the Internet” aren’t either. Fair enough, I’ve no interest in going to a party where I’m not invited.
But …What this means I think is that the prevailing and self determined definition of the T/A stakeholder group includes probably no more than 3-400 people in the entire world, all of whom have some professional association with the technical management of the Internet (the alphabet soup of technical Internet governance organizations–ICANN, the Internet Registries and a few others in standards organizations), perhaps at least 80% of whom are from developed countries and at least 80% of those being US based, at least 80% being male (it is probably much higher given the absence of women in these kinds of technical roles) and from sad experience having essentially no knowledge or interest in matters that stretch beyond their narrow highly technical realm.
It further means that the group representing the T/A stakeholder “community” is able to design its own “restrictive covenant” (define who is a member and who is not), exclude whomever it wishes on whatever basis suits it and moreover is not accountable or required to have any degree of transparency in its internal operations, decision making procedures, internal governance structures and so on. Notably, this group functions in an area of considerable and increasing public responsibility and as peers with an equivalent group representing all of the governments of the world, a second group (CS) representing all of the citizens of the world and a third group representing all of the businesses of the world..
Thus MSism in this instance is meant to be a substitute for/replacement of more formal processes of democracy which presumably are seen as being inadequate to deal with these 21st century issues and challenges. It is well to remember, that what is under discussion here would appear to include fundamental elements in Internet and Information Society governance structures which ultimately will impact and direct the development of the Internet and through this (and likely other ways) impact on the future of us all. To say that the manner of operation of the T/A stakeholder group is an abrogation of fundamental principles of responsible, transparent and accountable democracy; and that it is astonishing and deeply disturbing is hardly sufficient. Moreover, if we recognize that at least two of the other “stakeholder groups” involved in this process are by all accounts equally flawed as is the T/A one then what we are talking about is a fundamental challenge to what we understand as democratic governance and governing processes.
I have no idea of the degree of development of the governance structures of other multistakeholder processes and how closely they match the deeply flawed operations I have described above. However, based on my above noted experience; that fact that the multistakeholder experience in Internet Governance is widely quoted as a model to be emulated; and the fact that in the course of the rather extensive online discussion concerning the above within the Internet Governance Caucus itself no theoretical or practical response or alternative experience was usefully provided; I can only conclude that the multistakeholder model and MSism itself may be equally deeply flawed and in no sense is ready or able to take on the massive governance responsibilities in numerous public policy areas which its proponents are attempting to enact.
Certainly there are problems and even major problems with democratic governance in the modern era and these are perhaps being made more and more acute because of the success of the Internet. And certainly the development and operations of the Internet attests to a successful set of inter-organizational, inter-individual processes which are perhaps exemplary in their management and coordination of a highly complex, global system with multiple organizational and institutional involvements and “stakeholders”. Whether or how such a model could be transferred beyond this relatively contained domain is I think something to be discussed, researched, even piloted — certainly it would need to be adapted and re-created to fit specific circumstances — whether that model could become a basic governance framework for the modern world with applications in multiple domains and as a substitute for representative democracy is I think something that should be considered extremely carefully and some specific lessons should be learned from the extremely flawed implementation in what should have been its most directly applicable sphere.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
kelly272012 Calvin Gotlieb FACM FCIPS FBCS
March 20, 2013
I found this article interesting, and rather disturbing.
I would think that any group focused on internet governance would welcome Michael
as a member, no matter what credentials were necessary for membership, or he chose to offer. I would gladly offer my name as support to any effort seeking change.
Michael Gurstein
March 20, 2013
Thanks Kelly, you being one of Canada’s senior members of the Technical and Academic Community that means a lot… We have I think, the same situation in Canada (and in many other places) where the Technical Community (via CIRA for example) has the same influential role but is equally closed to “non-techies” as per the definitions I was quoting. Something worth pursuing perhaps.
Garth Graham
March 20, 2013
Since you evoked “environmental management” as one area where experience with the multistakeholder model occurs. Here’s one way of interpreting what happened with that in Canada. This is from:
• Garth Graham and Nagy Hanna. Toward a community-based e-development in Canada. In: Nagy K. Hanna and Peter T. Knight (Editors). Seeking Transformation Through Information Technology: Strategies for Brazil, China, Canada and Sri Lanka. New York, Springer, 2011.
=====
For both Canada and United States, the roots of efforts to fix problems perceived in regulatory design by governments go back to Osborne and Gaebler’s “Reinventing Government.” (1). Paul Martin, during the later years of Chretien’s governments when he was Minister of Finance and in his own short minority government, paid significant attention to the concept of “smart regulation” (2). emerging out of the environmental movement. In particular, he was influenced directly by the work of Davis Boyd, (3). environmental activist and lawyer, who accepted an appointment as a policy analyst in the Privy Council Office.
In working with government, the “what’s in it for us?” for environmental activists was the opportunity to change perspectives in public policy debates towards “whole system” views. But, in a climate of fiscal restraint and of outsourcing the role of government, it is unlikely that politicians overlooked the opportunities that smart regulation presented for diminishing the “burden” of government on business. Smart regulation reinforced the Government of Canada’s increased preference for working to regulate through hands-off approaches:
“In particular, the public can potentially play a large role in controlling the actions of self-regulating bodies. The public can act as consumers, either through directly consuming (or not consuming) the service provided by the industry (such as in the case of Green Consumerism) or through punishing those who use low quality services (such as in the case of investors not investing in companies using low quality auditors). The public, if harmed by the decisions of the self-regulating body, may be able to use the courts to either alter decisions or obtain damages for harm. Finally, the public can participate in the decision-making process of the self-regulating industry – providing the industry with information about issues or monitoring the exercise of self-regulatory powers.” (4).
The environmentalists helped the government to see that behavior change could best be influenced through pricing goods and services correctly – transferring responsibility for environmental impacts from government to consumers, and thus privatizing the policy dialogue and further reducing the need for government intervention.
“… regulatory reform must take place in an environment of shrinking regulatory resources, making it necessary in some contexts to design strategies capable of achieving results even in the absence of a credible enforcement regime (as when dealing with small and medium-sized enterprises), and in almost all circumstances to extract the “biggest bang” from a much diminished “regulatory buck” … This will involve the design of a “second phase” of regulation: one that still involves government intervention, but selectively and in combination with a range of market and non-market solutions, and of public and private regulatory orderings. … In essence, achieving efficient and effective regulation and encouraging innovation is a far more complex activity than mainstream neo-classical economists believe(d) it to be, requiring a much broader range of strategies, tailored to a much broader range of motivations and harnessing a much wider range of social actors.” (5).
In practice, in the follow-up to de-regulation, there was rarely any significant capacity for administration and oversight. The reduction in the scale of regulation was usually accompanied by a reduction in the volume of the regulators. So, as the markets failed to deliver on the underlying commitment to resolve issues of the public interest over all, governments have failed to step back in and honor the part of their role that remained as a consequence of the bargains they made with businesses.
1. Osborne and Gaebler. Reinventing Government
2. Smart regulation, see:
– Priest. The Privatization of Regulation: Five Models of Self-Regulation.
– Gunningham and Grabosky. Smart regulation.
3.Boyd.
– Unnatural law: rethinking Canadian environmental law and policy.
– Sustainability within a generation: a new vision for Canada.
4. Green and Hrab. Self-regulation and the protection of the public interest.
5. Gunningham. Reconfiguring Environmental Regulation.
6. Webster and Cathro. Hands off: is smart regulation dumb for Canada’s wilderness areas? “The Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) … stands as a shining example of smart regulation principles built on promises of strict enforcement. But [Margo] Priest says CEPA has been weakly enforced, and she should know: as the chief review officer hearing appeals of Environmental Protection Compliance Orders issues under CEPA, she laments ‘I do nothing’.”
Michael Gurstein
March 20, 2013
Thanks Garth, yes, if your point is the need for nuanced and context specific regulation/governance… Which I think links well into my point that simply transferring responsibility to unaccountable industry groups is a serious threat to democratic governance.
Garth Graham
March 20, 2013
I think my point is that the outcome of advancing or perfecting multistakeholderism in the context of Internet Governance will be the same as it has been in the environmental movement – an intensification of imbalance in regulatory systems rather than a reduction of them. Governments will continue to reduce the “burden” of government by outsourcing and/or off-loading delivery of government services to the private sector and civil society.
geneloeb2013
March 20, 2013
It seems very complicated and convoluted to avoid the simple truth. I will contnue looking for truth and spreading it.
David Allen
March 20, 2013
Quoting:
“… the T/A stakeholder group includes probably no more than 3-400 people in the entire world … and from sad experience [with] essentially no knowledge … in matters that stretch beyond their narrow highly technical realm.
“… this group functions … as peers with a … group representing all of the governments of the world, a second group (CS) representing all of the citizens of the world, and a third group representing all of the businesses of the world …”
Stunning.
Thanks, David Allen
Michael Gurstein
March 20, 2013
Interesting points Garth but again the subject of another blogpost…
Fred Goldstein
March 20, 2013
For a UN body to embrace “multistakeholderism” is almost an oxymoron.
One should not expect such things to come to a good end.
Multistakeholderism works in the Internet context because of the very
specific nature of an internet. It doesn’t necessarily apply to other
discourses, just as TCP/IP isn’t the answer to all communications problems
and the Internet doesn’t really “change everything”.
Management fads come and go. They stick around where they work, cause harm
elsewhere and with luck are abandoned in those latter cases.
What makes it work for an internet like The Internet is that an internet is
*by definition* a voluntary agreement among multiple separate parties, each
with its own interests and property in its own network.
Thus each network is, or represents, a stakeholder. One can argue over
whether customers, potential future customers, taxing authorities, and other
peripheral players are stakeholders, but the various network owners and
their suppliers are its principal stakeholders. Thus they will make the
decisions that are in their own best interest. How else could it operate in
practice? (That’s meant to be rhetorical.)
So-called Internet governance bodies are thus merely advisory. My company
works for ICANN and ISOC, so we’re right in the middle of things, but in so
doing we know that their “authority” is merely user acceptance of their
choices. If everyone wanted to switch their DNS from an ICANN-blessed root
to a separate Gurstein-blessed root, for instance, we couldn’t do anything
about it. Even IP address assignments are just consultative, a suggestion
to router operators as to which blocks are “valid” where and thus which BGP
adverts they might wish to ignore. If they so chose. It is not like the
PSTN where there is a government-owned number space and licensed carriers
with “must deliver to” status.
In such an arrangement, MS is merely a convenient handle for the kind of
consensus that naturally develops in order to keep it afloat. ITU-type
diktats just don’t fit the model.
But trying to apply MS to other things, like climate change or privacy, is
just as foolish as trying to regulate the Internet like the PSTN.
Michael Gurstein
March 20, 2013
Thanks Fred, I think that your comments very nicely compliment coming from the tech side, what I was trying side from the non-tech other side! MSism certainly has its place, as the effective functioning of the Internet(s) demonstrates, but things get messy as you say when there is an attempt to import it into other unrelated domains.
Aldo de Moor
March 21, 2013
I think your story is a great example of why technologists have such a bad reputation among the general public. In the olden days, the Internet was a technical universe, ruled by its own laws, Tech by techies, for techies. Nowadays, the Internet has huge impact on everything and everybody in society, up to the point of it being called a human right (or an ideal tool for human rights abuses, think of Internet surveillance in police states, or increasingly in western democracies, for that matter…) This infrastructure is not an atomistic universe anymore, but an enabling and constraining societal infrastructure. Add or take away pieces from this infrastructure, and society is deeply affected. Therefore, societal stakeholders have to have a substantial say about which technical pieces are being added or removed.
Michael Gurstein
March 21, 2013
I couldn’t agree more Aldo, tks.
Will Tibben
March 21, 2013
I have been part of similar conversations elsewhere about the technical – civil society divide where there was a similar level of tension. From the perspective of technologists, they see the underlying technical infrastructure as something that should be technically independent of any particular stakeholder group or interest. To some extent I would agree – for example, if you were to promote a human rights agenda on the Internet would you start with the DNS? On the other hand, the technologists seem to be unaware that they represent a particular interest group themselves and their status as interdependent arbiters about technical matters is not universally accepted.
Michael Gurstein
March 21, 2013
Yes, you have summarized this situation very accurately. And I’m not sure how to respond or to bridge because the tech folks have a strong (and to some degree) justifiable proprietary sense about the infrastructure and the last thing they want is non-techies having any impact on that. On the other hand they don’t recognize what they don’t know and nor do they see the limits of what are purely technical matters and those that are purely “social” or policy matters; and most important they don’t seem to have an interest in or the skills required to recognize and negotiate where there is overlap or where the boundaries are fuzzy, as they increasingly are with the Internet achieving some degree of maturity and with the open issues often having to do with applications or implementations.
Pamela_McLean (@Pamela_McLean)
April 1, 2013
Ref “On the other hand they don’t recognize what they don’t know … they don’t seem to have an interest in or the skills required to recognize and negotiate where there is overlap or where the boundaries are fuzzy….. and with the open issues often having to do with applications or implementations.”
To me this is the key. The tech folk develop wondrous stuff and they may well do it with the best possible intentions – but if it is not the right stuff then it is irrelevant how wondrous it is. Just like a well-meaning, but completely out of touch, rich uncle buying a Christmas gift for a child, it really would be best to make some enquiries first about what would actually be suitable and appreciated. In this case for example the tech folk including Mike in their discussions.
Regarding the application of the ignorant uncle analogy. Before anyone howls in protest at the idea of stakeholders compared to little children let me say that I don’t see us that way. However what I do often see is people and organisations showing a patronising “We know what is best” attitude toward stakeholders and “beneficiaries”. We need a lot more “equal respect” collaborations between the tech people and those the tech is supposed to serve.
Please keep speaking up Mike and maybe sometime these tech folk will show that they have the wisdom to listen .
Michael Gurstein
April 1, 2013
Tks Pam and we need a lot more citizen activists like you as well 🙂
nicholaspopov
April 4, 2013
The development of civilization makes democracy and the humanization of mankind inevitable. The best minds tirelessly look for a new and effective form of state government that would adequately represent today’s changing society. The solution is near and the necessary resources to establish a new form of government are already available in society.
A multipolar democratic governance that uses revolutionary decision making system and comprising several independent parties with a movable centre of joint decisions, would put an end to discord and would bring society together. It would also open a new, evolutionary way of development without social turmoil and without social and economic cataclysms. A working multi-party system within the government guarantees multiculturalism, tolerance and social stability within community.
The new democratic governance system can minimize eternal problems of the power such as corruption, infringement of rights and freedom under the imperfect legislation, etc. They are solved by cross check of several competing parties within the multi-polar democratic government: any blunders of the contender raises the rest participants’ chances for survival in the power. Therewith the mutual competition of several competitors is more objective and constantly active motivation for fight against corruption etc. than the whim of any one ‘National Leader’. Thus the health-enhancing competition of political movements can benefit to the whole society.
A new political system as a real Democratic Revolution.
http://www.modelgovernment.org/
David Allen
April 4, 2013
These are bold assertions. And such outcomes could conceivably be welcome.
But. Assertions require evidence and logic to be believable – certainly to form the basis for any concrete steps.
As Churchill noted [doubtless paraphrased here], “Democracy is a terrible form of government. Just better than any of the others.”
Churchillian pragmatism is of the essence when we are choosing how we be governed. All the more so, for any new proposals, such as this. Again, logic and evidence are the gold standard.
David Allen