[At-Large] - Price caps - was: The Case for Regulatory Capture at ICANN | Review Signal Blog

[Roberto Gaetano]

Hi Barry
I believe that the picture drawn by Paul R. Letho is a caricature rather than an objective picture of the multi-stakeholderism - but this is by and large irrelevant for what I want to say.

Let’s assume that we embrace his theories and we get rid of the multi-stakeholder model. What happens?
If I understand correctly, according to Paul R. Letho the stakeholders become again what they were in first place, i.e. lobbyists. So, by definition of lobbyist they will lobby somebody to get their interests taken care of. My first question is: whom are they lobbying?
Translated into ICANN world, the only “who” I see is the ICANN Board. So, the second question: who are the ICANN Directors and how do they get elected? Up to now, according to the multi-stakeholder model, some are elected/nominated by different stakeholders - pardon me, lobbyists - while others are selected by the NomCom, that I assume should disappear if we get rid of the multi-stakeholder model, because its composition is again an instance of multi-stakeholderism.
So, in short, how can ICANN get rid od the supposedly failing multi-stakeholder model and go back to what Paul R. Letho defines “democracy”?
Or, in simple words, how would a non-multi-stakeholder model be designed and implemented for ICANN?
Cheers,
Roberto


> On 01.07.2019, at 00:36, bzs at theworld.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Before it was removed in November 2016 the "Criticisms" section of
> Wikipedia's "Multistakeholder Governance Model" read:
> 
>  Criticism of multistakeholderism comes from Paul R. Lehto,
>  J.D.{{Citation needed|date=March 2014}}, who fears that in
>  multistakeholderism, those who would be lobbyists become
>  legislators, and nobody else has a vote. Lehto states that "In a
>  democracy, it is a scandal when lobbyists have so much influence
>  that they write the drafts of laws. But in multistakeholder
>  situations they take that scandal to a whole new level: those who
>  would be lobbyists in a democracy (corporations, experts, civil
>  society) become the legislators themselves, and dispense with all
>  public elections and not only write the laws but pass them, enforce
>  them, and in some cases even set up courts of arbitration that are
>  usually conditioned on waiving the right to go to the court system
>  set up by democracies. A vote is just a minimum requirement of
>  justice. Without a vote, law is just force inflicted by the wealthy
>  and powerful. Multistakeholderism is a coup d’etat against democracy
>  by those who would merely be lobbyists in a democratic system.
> 
>  https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Multistakeholder_governance_model&diff=768793583&oldid=750897618
> 
> Sound familiar?
> 
> It doesn't even touch upon how those lobbyist/legislators are chosen
> except by implication.
> 
> Sometimes summarized as:
> 
>  Multistakeholderism: A governance structure of, by, and for the
>  lobbyists.
> 
> -- 
>        -Barry Shein
> 
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