I don't know that McTim does miss the point, I think there may be some deep differences in thinking here. 

I've recently argued elsewhere that multi-stakeholder is a poor term for what we generally refer to in Internet governance as multi-stakeholderism, because the important feature isn't that there are multiple stakeholders represented, but that the process is open and participatory, so that stakeholders who choose to participate may do so. Thus, while issues of who represents civil society within transnational processes, and how those representatives are chosen, is an important issue - for civil society to address. The article suggests that who gets to represent civil society is an issue for the Indian government to sort out - and there are many of us who would absolutely disagree with the basis of that thinking. If government is choosing who are the civil society participants, then it is not open and participatory, it is government asking for a little assistance with a government process. 
	Now, I agree that IGFs at the regional and national level are great (and I've participated in both and my organisation is a very strong supporter of our national IGF). But that is not what the Indian proposal seemed to be, the Indian proposal straight out wanted to bypass the entire technical community consensus and ICANN/RIR processes. Rules for eg incorporation of civil society delegates into delegations for intergovernmental meetings would be welcome - but as long as governments like India still think policy proposals should be government created, firmly state based (the Indian proposal was about firmly linking technical boundaries to state borders and state control), without significant civil society input or approval, then what they are looking for are opportunities to co-opt a few willing civil society actors into selling the government line. The article was essentially lamenting the inability of the Indian govt to co-opt civil society to the cause of selling policy developed without them, and that they would naturally oppose.
	I certainly can't imagine a majority of civil society organisations backing a proposal that the entire internet should be reorganised to facilitate tracking and surveillance, which was one of the stated goals of the Indian proposal. Of course it went further than that - the proposal would quite rightly have been shot down even quicker by pretty much the entire technical community (and using that term not just in the restricted sense it is used within IGF etc, but in the sense of pretty much anyone with enough technical understanding to know how the internet actually works) had it been put forward anywhere but an intergovernmental forum. 
	The article you linked to essentially laments that the Indian government was hampered in selling its proposal due to a lack of civil society support, but completely misses the point that it had a lack of civil society support in part because it was created without civil society input, and had civil society been asked, the majority of CS organisations with any IG experience would have told them it was a terrible idea. India and so on lament that US has a disproportionate influence at ICANN, etc but leaving aside both the US special role via the IANA contract (which many of us are currently working diligently to replace), and the not inconsiderable propoganda value of focussing on the US as hegemon - the US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand etc have a great deal of soft power within ICANN and the I* orgs generally, but this is in part because civil society and commercial and technical community actors from those nations are not only heavily involved, but tend to support, not their governments every policy, but their nations basic stance and values - by and large, we like democracy, human rights, free expression, and are comfortable with an Internet that has been built by the private sector without asking government permission. I wasn't one of the civil society delegates at the ITU pleniplot, but I know some people here were - and I strongly suspect that they opposed the Indian proposal not because they were loyal foot soldiers in a US diplomatic offensive, but because they thought it was a bad idea.
	So, I'm all for national level consultation, but I don't that it what that article was really about. Nor should the goal of national level consultation be aligning civil society more closely with government - the goal of national level consultation on transnational IG issues should be ensuring that government and civil society are better informed about the policy positions taken by the other. 
	Cheers

		David
	
On 17 Nov 2014, at 4:39 am, Sam Lanfranco <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> McTim,
> 
> You miss the point. The issue brewing in the background is not who is a stakeholder but how processes of representation are structured. Many not-for-profit and civil society groups within ICANN have a low level of dialogue at home. Greater domestic engagement would bring more weight to their positions in ICANN policy dialogue (whether in agreement or disagreement with government or others at home) . Consensus in policy making is as much a question of the breadth of agreement as it is the weight of evidence. Outside ICANN this is seen as a weakness in ICANN's multistakeholder process, a weakness that ICANN itself is not in a position to address. That is why it is important to have dialogue (IGFs) at the national and regional level, so that when DNS and other Internet governance issues reach the policy stage, there has been a layered dialogue from local, to national, to global. Then, the few voices that are actually present and heard, and the positions they present, have come out of a process of representation and carry the weight of that process. For better or worse, it would appear that the commercial stakeholders within ICANN are much better at this process.
> 
> Also, this does not involve either "validating" representation by some accreditation process, or assuming that lower layers of dialogue will produce consensus, but it does involve effort for greater depth of stakeholder engagement in the development of policy positions before they are input into the high-level policy development process.  The WEF Netmundial initiative will face the same issue as ICANN's, and any other, multistakeholder model on this front. To paraphrase one of A. K. Sen's points about democracy in "The Idea of Justice", the quality of policy making is a function of the dialogue along the road to the Inn, and not just the quality of the dialogue around the table at the Inn. 
> 
>  Sam L.
> 
>  On 16/11/2014 10:09 AM, McTim wrote:
>> I don't grok this at all.
>> 
>> Can't non-commercial/civil society stakeholders represent themselves?
>> 
>> Why would they need to be "represented"?
>