Re: [Gendispatch] Updated draft: Policy experts are IETF stakeholders

[Vittorio Bertola <[e-mail]>]

 

> Il 10/07/2023 08:55 CEST Andrew Alston <andrew.alston=[e-mail]> ha scritto:
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> So,
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> Speaking with no hats,
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> I have deep concern about starting to state explicitly that any group of people are welcome, because the instant you do that, it has implications that some people aren’t welcome.  The IETF works on the principle that people participate in their individual capacities. 
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This is entirely fine if you do not enter the realm of policy, especially situations where multiple stakeholders have conflicting views or interests and a balanced compromise needs to be found.
 
In participatory policy processes (as opposed to representative processes, in which either all citizens are involved or weights for various groups are defined in advance, e.g. see ICANN's internal structures), the problem with "everyone participates as individual and counts the same" is that the most powerful or richest stakeholders can just send more people to the room and dominate the discussion and the forming of rough consensus. This even happens in an unplanned and unconscious manner, by the fact that only certain types of stakeholders (the Internet industry) participate here, and so they will naturally outnumber everyone else.
 
Paradoxically, even having on the lists a handful of technical experts from other stakeholders would not change anything, unless the other participants are willing not to disregard them as the dissenting minority that can be ignored by the calling of rough consensus, which is what I've seen happen sometimes.

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Vittorio Bertola | Head of Policy & Innovation, Open-Xchange
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Office @ Via Treviso 12, 10144 Torino, Italy