[WSIS CS-Plenary] recommendations for WGIG

[Vittorio Bertola]

Il gio, 2004-10-07 alle 16:44, Milton Mueller ha scritto:
> As long as CS "doesn't do elections" its results will have 
> legitimacy problems, and as long as that is true it will
> have trouble fully participating in international governance
> decisions. You cannot ask for governmental forms of power
> without accepting similar forms of procedural formality and
> accountability.

I tend to agree. But are governmental forms of power what we are looking
for, or is it something different?

This is not a rhetorical question. I have been thinking at this for
years and still I don't have a full answer. But possibly this is the
moment in history where we could try to provide one.

> The IGC's method of selecting candidates was not a thing
> of beauty. Let's face the facts about that. It was rushed,
> disorganized, improvised, not transparent and in the end 
> based far too much on personal connections and reflective 
> of personal agendas. 

I might agree on (a part of) this too, except that I didn't see any
other civil society selection process performing much better, because,
as you say:

> Given our institutional limitations it could not have 
> been done much better.

(I'd add timing, too)

So we have to discuss which values are more important to us. Are they
openness and flexibility, or effectiveness and predictability?

> The NCUC for example is a CS coalition with a charter and 
> elected officers; its process for selecting nominees was far
> smoother, more transparent, and ultimately fairer,
> although it did not have to incorporate such a large
> and heterogeneous group into its deliberations.

It is easy to be fair and transparent, when you only have a handful of
active persons to accommodate. It is much more difficult when you have a
complex network of bottom-up groups with people who don't know (don't
trust) each other and don't share similar organizational cultures.

But in the end we share the bottom line: we need to discuss the problem
of civil society structures, and design a solution that might include or
not include caucuses, mailing lists, elections, coordinators,
facilitators, bylaws... 

Perhaps we should try to make this one of the important themes at the
Berlin UN ICT TF meeting.
-- 
.oOo.oOo.oOo.oOo vb.
Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu.org
(((f1tt3r h4pp1er))) @ http://bertola.eu.org/