Fwd: [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?

[William Drake]

It may be that we are moving toward greater mutual understanding with
ALAC.  Or maybe we're just confused at a higher level....

Begin forwarded message:

> From: William Drake <william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch>
> Date: October 21, 2009 6:44:34 PM GMT+09:00
> To: At-Large Worldwide <at-large at atlarge-lists.icann.org>
> Cc: "Roberto Gaetano" <roberto at icann.org>, ALAC Working List <alac at atlarge-lists.icann.org
> >
> Bcc: "Drake, William" <william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch>
> Subject: Re: [At-Large] "placeholder" reps not placeholders?
>
> Hi Dominik
>
> On Oct 21, 2009, at 1:26 AM, Dominik Filipp wrote:
>
>> Bill,
>>
>> I see some points be more clarified for those not sitting inside
>> ICANN. If I understand well, the NCUC viewpoint presented by you is
>> that the NCUC in the new charter supports democratic election of
>> councilor seats in the GNSO council and those elected councilors
>> will have obviously voting right exactly as they have it now (the
>> NCUC has three seats). The difference between NCUC and some At-
>> Large presented positions is only in a way how the councilors will
>> be nominated or elected, democratically or hard wired. In other
>> words, there is no doubt or discussion but a general consensus
>> between the NCUC and At-Large on the basic fact that NCSG
>> constituency should have voting councilor seats in the GNSO council
>> in any way.
>> Am I right?
>
> Yes, absolutely.
>
> As I said yesterday in response to Roberto,
>
>> Agreed.  As far as I can tell, everyone sees the 'powers' fairly
>> similarly, except that NCUC thinks council seats should be filled
>> by elections, SIC thinks the EC should just hash out the allocation
>> of seats (which to us sounds like a recipe for trench warfare), and
>> some in ALAC feel there should be hard wiring.  Hopefully we can
>> have a focused discussion on the relative merits of these
>> approaches and the trajectories/scenarios they may point to in
>> order to move this to another level.
>
> That's it.  We think hard wiring will result in fragmentation within
> self-regarding silos, with people treating the NCSG as a mere shell
> within which they can pursue their stand alone agendas rather than
> feeling an incentive to work with the broader civil society
> community.  And once you get to more than six constituencies, you'd
> have to start monkeying around with formula for division of the
> spoils.  It is often the case that noncommercial interests and
> viewpoints are in a distinct minority in the council as they are in
> ICANN more generally, so encouraging fragmentation is just a recipe
> for staying powerless, in my view.  And as I've said, democratic
> elections would probably yield the same sort of distribution of
> council seats anyway, unless a constituency is constitutionally
> screwed up (e.g. if the consumer group is populated by groups with
> corporate members who have entirely different agendas) or just a
> vehicle for a few non-geographically diverse folks, or the candidate
> is personally impossible to work with, etc.  I can't see CS people
> who work on say privacy not supporting a good candidate from a solid
> constituency who's advocating positions that are broadly appealing
> to other CS people.  In other civil society networks I participate
> in---the iG caucus in the IGF, the CSISAC in OECD, etc---mutual
> support and broadly shared visions have been more than sufficient to
> bind people together and produce elections to leadership positions
> that were non-divisive (without every faction demanding "it's" rep,
> although here that'd be more of a priority I guess).  I can't see
> any reason the same level of trust and collaboration couldn't
> prevail in NCSG, other than the generally dysfunctional, trust-free
> culture that seems to pervade in ICANN.  And the SIC's model is even
> worse, they have the executive committee somehow just "working it
> out" amongst itself, which will just transfer the fragmentation and
> competition into a more intensive and divisive process.
>
> Whatever one's perspective on the options is, it ought to be the
> case that we can have a reasoned, adult conversation about how each
> would likely play out, and it's costs and benefits.  We did that
> internally in NCUC and came to the view that elections were the best
> way forward.  But we've not had the opportunity for a similar
> conversation with the board/SIC, or with ALAC for that matter.
> Hopefully we're about to do that with the former now, but re: the
> latter, there's no NCUC-ALAC meeting scheduled, so I guess it's a
> matter of talking over beers.  Whether that'll be sufficient I don't
> know, but it's all we can manage, I guess.
>
> And BTW, as a member of the council, can I just add that it's
> slightly puzzling to me that people should be fighting over this
> particular "prize."   If done properly, it's a ton of work, much of
> it on procedural arcana (my bandwidth has unfortunately been largely
> absorbed with restructuring hijinks, looking forward to getting past
> that eventually and having more to work on the substantive policy
> issues).  But I guess ICANN should be happy that folks are just
> dying to get in there and do it...
>
> Bill

***********************************************************
William J. Drake
Senior Associate
Centre for International Governance
Graduate Institute of International and
  Development Studies
Geneva, Switzerland
william.drake at graduateinstitute.ch
www.graduateinstitute.ch/cig/drake.html
***********************************************************


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