Re: [gnso-whois-wg] Proposed final version of the group's output report v1.8

[Dan Krimm <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:41 PM +0200 8/17/07, Vittorio Bertola wrote:
>Tim Ruiz ha scritto:
>> I certainly hope that such thinking is not the future of ICANN policy
>> making. While I believe that such WGs might be a useful policy making
>> tool, I think the experiences of this WG make it clear that more thought
>> needs to be give as to how such groups are constructed and managed, and
>> how the work product of such groups needs to be produced to avoid doubt
>> as to the legitimacy of its areas of agreement.
>
>I also assume that the procedural disagreements that we have been having
>here have been mostly due to the lack of established processes and of a
>clear culture about how consensus-based policy making is supposed to work.
>
>The IETF has spent 20+ years in coming to agreement on how this kind of
>process should work (see e.g. RFC 2026). I would hope that the Council
>and the Board would take care of the extensive work that was made there,
>when it comes to setting proper rules for these working groups.


It should not be forgotten that IETF addresses a policy realm much narrower
than ICANN is reaching for.  In a narrowly technical policy realm,
divergence of interests and agendas is relatively constrained.  However,
when the policy that must be addressed ranges into areas of general public
interest, there is a natural and inevitable divergence of interests and
agendas.

In such cases of general public policy, consensus is much more rare and
confined.  So, in such cases, a "consensus-based process" may simply hit
its limits much earlier and may not be capable of resolving more
fundamental political disputes.

IETF deals less with broad political power dynamics than other institutions
that address more general public policy.  When the interests of
self-interested political power apply to policy deliberations, it is
difficult to imagine how tweaking procedural rules can eliminate the
fundamental power struggles that systematically preclude broad consensus.

In short, I am skeptical that the difficulty in arriving at broad consensus
in this WG was merely a matter of culture and formalities.  An important
driving factor in our dynamics clearly was external.  In particular, anyone
who comes to a negotiation with the feeling that *any* negotiated solution
will necessarily be inferior to the status quo from their point of view has
no reason to negotiate in "good faith" because it will seem to them as if
they are giving up something for nothing.  And when significant power is
involved, no one is likely to give up power without being forced to do so
in some way.

No amount of cultural or formal adjustments in the deliberative process can
overcome this fundamental strategic reality.  Consensus comes only when
everyone views themselves as being on "the same side" in some fundamental
way, and that common interest is what drives consensus -- the rest of the
procedural dynamics are just details.

But in this WG there were too many participants that understood themselves
to be opponents before we started discussing anything.  It seems to me that
this understanding was not driven merely by cultural habits of prior
interactions or incompletely defined procedural formalities but rather by
real power struggles that inform genuinely conflicting interests.
Specifically, some people clearly thought they had utterly nothing to gain
in any consensus based on the OPOC proposal, and that informed their
participation from start to finish.

My view is that the only effective way to change this dynamic is to create
status quo circumstances in the real world that are inferior to a consensus
result for all participants.  But that would have to happen outside of the
deliberative process itself.

Dan