[At-Large] ICANN Accountability Mechanisms

[Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond]

I have real issues taking seriously people who refer to 
"multistakeholderism" as an "...ism" like communism, fascism, 
totalitarianism, capitalism, Buddhism, Catholicism.... There really is 
not such a thing a "multistakeholderism" but perhaps multistakeholder 
systems of governance. Lehto's criticism assumes that there is a single 
type of multistakeholder model out there and there really is not. 
Multistakeholder basically means that a variety of multiple stakeholder 
sit at the decision and discussion table, so how can one criticise it as 
if it was some form of established "system" by the elites, the cabal, 
the illuminati? Whatever? Or should we get back to absolute monarchy? :-)

Olivier

On 03/01/2022 01:35, Barry Shein via At-Large wrote:
> The following, in a Criticism section, was removed from the
> wikipedia's page on "Multistakeholder governance":
>
>    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&diff=768793583&oldid=750897618
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/at-large/attachments/20220103/1d29791b/attachment.html>