Written Feedback On Draft NCSG Charter (v4.0)

[Milton L Mueller]

Robert, Denise and Ken
Thanks a lot for your valuable feedback on our draft Charter (v4.0). It is clear that we are making progress, although there is a long way to go.

In respect to some of your questions or requests for explanation, let me turn the tables on you a bit. The presumption in many of these exchanges is that there's something complicated or "different" about what we are proposing, and that the "constituency-based SG model" is straightforward and poses no problems. In many ways, however, an integrated SG structure is far simpler, and we have no idea how a constituency model would work even if we thought it desirable to implement it.

Let me give you two examples. I will pose them in the form of questions because i genuinely would like to have answers from you or any other defender of the constituency-based SG model.

Q1: How does a constituency-based model produced balanced geographic representation in Council seats?

Think about this. Let's say there are 3 independent constituencies in a SG, and each of them elects 2 Council seats without reference to the other. So Constituency A elects (in accord with its own geog. representation rules) a person from North American and a person from Latin America; Constituency B elects a person from North America and a person from Latin America; and Constituency C elects a person from North America and another from Latin America. End result: each constituency has, on its own, produced as much geographic diversity as it possibly could, and yet the end result could be that only two world regions are represented on the Council. \

I would be very interested to see how you propose to avoid this problem while staying in the constituency model.
An integrated SG model, by contrast, can impose proportions on the six seats as a whole, thereby ensuring that most if not all regions are represented.

Q2: How does a constituency-based model apportion Council seats among Constituencies when they are of different size?

Let's suppose there is an "old constituency" that has 50 members, and a "new" constituency that starts and gets recognized by the Board, and has only 10 initial members (or even less). How many Council seats does each constituency get? Do they inherently get the same number of seats simply by virtue of the fact that they are constituencies? Or does their representation on the Council reflect their relative size? If the latter, who decides what allocation principle is used, when there is no pre-established SG decision-making method? And once Council seats depend on membership size, what is to stop one constituency from extending membership in an overly easy way, regardless of appropriate criteria, to inflate its relative size? Will the Board monitor this?

These questions are not impossible to answer, but they obviously impose a very complex layer of organization, monitoring and procedure that an integrated SG model does not have to worry about.

Frankly, Bob and Denise, I could produce about a dozen more questions like this. But let's see how you do with these two first.

My point is to put this discussion of SG models on a more solid footing with an equal burden of proof. If you can convince us that a constituency-based model handles such basic and obvious issues as well as an integrated model, we'd be more inclined to change our view.

--MM
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