Re: [ALSC-Forum] Self-regulation and ICANN

[Alexander Svensson]

Hello Mikael!

> It sounds like you promote a system where every decision is made by
> mass-direct participation and you wonder why I do not want to use it if it
> is technically possible to develop such a system.
>
> I am not in favour of such a system because it is not a good idea that my
> mother directly decides on the development of new top level domain names.
> She is not interested in the issues at hand and her vote would probably
> just be subject to whatever interest that manage to convince her that very
> minute of voting - if she would even participate.

I think your last qualification ("if she would even
participate") is quite important. There were some very
simplistic arguments in parts of the press that the
At Large elections have failed because there weren't
500 million voters (or any other number thought to be
the number of Internet users). It looks like the people
which took the time to register through the cumbersone
registration mechanism did indeed think that the issues
at hand were so important that they should participate.
(This certainly applies to the people voting for Nii
Quaynor...)

> I find it much better
> that my mother vote for a political party in Sweden every fourth year.

As far as I know, nobody is urging ICANN to make a
worldwide ballot about the TLDs which should be implemented
(or -- favorite techie arguments -- the port numbers).
This is about a /representative/ mechanism for Board
member selection, plus qualitative /participation/ in
the ICANN process.

> This party - if it is strong enough - will (in theory) appoint someone
> clever and suitable to represent my mother when dealing with the
> development of new top level domain names. This model will not only deal
> with my mother and everyone else who is not versed in field of DNS, but
> also with developing countries where access is limited.

So your model is:

    Mother
(not interested, not
sufficient knowlegde)
      ||
     _||_
     \  /
      \/
   Party in
 nation-state
      ||
     _||_
     \  /
      \/
National government
      ||
     _||_
     \  /
      \/
Representative
to IGO (hopefully
clever and suitable)
      ||
     _||_
     \  /
      \/
Assembly of Internet
intergovernmental
  organization

Leaving aside /loads/ of questions such as the
policy package deal involved in voting for a national
political party or the one nation-state one vote
principle, I agree that this chain of legitimation
from the assembly of national representatives to
your mother is fine /in theory/. But there are
many more influences on a typical policy process
of an intergovernmental organization, both on the
national and the international level -- it's hard
to believe that the outcome corresponds to the
input, especially if the voter on the national level
does not even know what is going on and is not
sufficiently interested. And in many cases, there
really /are/ no alternatives to assemblies of
nation-states representatives such as the Security
Council. But we have to check whether this is the
case here, or whether there isn't 'functional
subsidiariy' at work -- if another body can make
decisions in a better, maybe quicker /and/ legitimate
way, it should do so. If ICANN takes user interests
seriously, it may well be better equipped to tackle
the issues than an assembly of national representatives.

> Further, most serious e-democracy researches will agree that the
> one-click-voting idea of e-democracy is flawed and that the scenery of
> e-democracy should be painted with much wider strokes from a palette of
> transparancy and interaction (not meaning actual voting on every issue).

Agreed, absolutely. However, there /is/ an ICANN Board
of Directors, and there are seats which have to be
filled through some mechanism. As I don't think an
intergovernmental organization would be the solution
(not even all governments would agree to that), I have
the choice between saying "user interests are so hard
to organize, so I leave them out" and "user interests
are so important, so I have to find a way to get them
heard also on the top level". I certainly choose option
two, and I appreciate that the ALSC's first discussion
paper looks very positive in this regard.

> I prefer an indirect participation and I want to see it done through the
> usual governmental elections. To make the system more flexible, each
> government could choose to either elect a person within the government or
> make a national vote of who to appoint. Considering the lack of
> participation in the national elections to the European Parliamant, I do
> think that more elections probably isn't going to work in practice, thus
> forcing the governmental appointment solution.

(By the way: I don't think that the participation level in
the EP elections can be attributed to the number of elections
in a country -- e.g. regional elections in the same country
often have a much higher turnout, and national elections have
a higher turnout than regional or EP elections. Voters are
intelligent enough to make importance and efficacy judgements.)

I think there is an important point which your posting
and Esther's article touch upon: The need for aggregation
of diverse interests. I don't think a nation-state approach
to this issue helps us much, but I certainly see the problem.

Best regards,
/// Alexander