[CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: [CCWG-Advisors] jan comments on 17 april ccwg materials

[Mathieu Weill]

Dear Colleagues,

Please find below a contribution on our draft public comment report by 
Jan Aart Scholte, in his capacity as one of our Advisors.

Best regards,
Mathieu


-------- Message transféré --------
Sujet : 	[CCWG-Advisors] jan comments on 17 april ccwg materials
Date : 	Mon, 20 Apr 2015 07:19:58 +0000
De : 	Jan Aart Scholte <jan.scholte at globalstudies.gu.se>
Pour : 	CCWG-Advisors <ccwg-advisors at icann.org>, 
jordan at internetnz.net.nz <jordan at internetnz.net.nz>



Hello All

Great to see that CCWG continues to make impressive headway after the 
productive Istanbul meeting. Many thanks, Adam, for your thorough 
briefing accompanying the documents circulated on Friday. My read of the 
materials prompts the following thoughts, mainly concerning the 
community empowerment mechanism:

(1) The community empowerment mechanism increasingly looks to be based 
on SOs and ACs. A key question of course remains with what distribution 
of seats, and also whether any other body such as GAC or SSAC would have 
a voting representation.

(2) Would any adjustments in the AC and SO constructions be advisable at 
this juncture, concurrent with the IANA transition, in order that 'the 
Community' as institutionalised in the empowerment mechanism aligns 
sufficiently closely with the present actual constellation of ICANN 
stakeholders in the world at large?

(3) How (and how readily) could the the formula which constitutes 'the 
Community' in the empowerment mechanism be adjusted in future, as and 
when the prevailing arrangement is found inadequately to reflect the 
constellation of ICANN stakeholders at that future time? Consider how 
difficult it has been to adjust membership of the UN Security Council 
and the Boards of the Bretton Woods institutions, which remain largely 
frozen in the world of 1945. The world of 2045 is likely to be quite 
different from that of 2015 - will ICANN's constitution allow it readily 
to change with the times?

(4) Related to (3), could overly high supermajorities have unwanted 
consequences of excessive constitutional conservatism? To be sure, too 
low a threshold could invite constitutional instability, but too high a 
threshold could invite institutional ossification. For example, 
constitutional reform of the International Monetary Fund has been so 
difficult in good part because an 85% vote is needed to alter the 
Articles of Agreement, which has effectively entrenched a US Government 
veto.

(5) Then there is that ever-present thorn of the accountability of those 
who hold ICANN to account. How will participants in the empowerment 
mechanism be held accountable to wider stakeholder circles, both within 
ICANN (i.e. the ACs and SOs) /and beyond/? Legislators in democratic 
nation-states are subject to election by the general population, but 
delegates in the ICANN 'parliament' would only be elected by ACs and 
SOs, whose connections to wider constituencies - and that so-called 
'global public interest' - can be quite thin? How does one ensure that 
the community empowerment mechanism does not become a vehicle for 
capture of ICANN by insider activists?

Happy for this note to be made available to all CCWG if thought 
suitable. Not sure about the protocols of advisors' communications.

Greetings

Jan



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