[wg-review] consensus vs rough consensus vs votes

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sat, Jan 06, 2001 at 09:25:08PM -0500, Milton Mueller wrote:
> Kent is partially correct that some groups might have effective veto
> power over things that ICANN or the DNSO might decide. 

There is no doubt.  NSI held off the USG for months while they prepared 
their IPO.

And on Sun, 7 Jan 2001 21:02:53 -0800 Karl Aurbach wrote:
> For the most part, I'd prefer it if the board rarely, if ever, exercised
> its power to make DNS policy but rather left it up to well run ICANN
> public policymaking processes.

This statement is a "glittering generality" that we all support. 
However, Karl's rejection of consensus processes is actually a sure-fire
recipe for ensuring that it is the ICANN Board and Staff that will do
most of the actual policymaking work.  This is actually quite obvious:
Suppose, for example, that a WG voted 80-20 to make a change to the NSI
contract, and passed a firm policy statement up to the board to that
effect.  However, further suppose that NSI strongly disapproves.  The
net effect is that the NSI legal staff and the ICANN legal staff are the
ones who actually end up making the policy, if it gets made at all.  

Milton went on to say:
> However, this veto power is exercised (or not) completely
> independently of the DNSO and its processes.

Totally irrelevant.  Essentially *all* the effects of a policy proposal
happen completely outside of the DNSO and its processes.  It simply
doesn't follow that the DNSO should ignore such potential problems.  In
fact, it would be pathologically stupid to ignore them.

> So it makes absolutely no
> sense for us to pretend that a DNSO working group has to have
> "consensus" among all these groups before it formulates ANY policy
> proposal.

(By "these groups" I take it to mean the groups that have "effective 
vetos".)

You indulge in the fallacy of overgeneralization.  WGs per se can come
up with all kinds of trial balloon policy proposals; WGs per se can also
be totally unbalanced in terms of their representation, and come up with
proposals that are "real consensus" in the confines of the WG, but not
consensus in any way in the outside world.  WGs can fail, or be insane. 
If the NC did a good job of "managing" the consensus process, WG
failures should be rare, but they are always possible, and in that case
the NC is duty bound to reject the results of the WG.  But in general,
the mode of operation of WGs should be to gain the cooperation of all
the affected groups. 

Producing policies without the cooperation of those who have veto power
makes sense only if you favor the politics of confrontation instead of
the politics of cooperation. 

> We (DNSO constituencies and WGs) are needed to articulate
> proposals.  I believe that it is helpful and necessary to have clear
> votes to move that process along. 

Sure -- clear votes are helpful -- they give you information.

> Remember, all DNSO does is formulate (recommend) policy.  ICANN's
> Board adopts it, and the broader Internet community has to implement it. 
> That's where the "vetos" come in. 

Every time a veto comes in, it puts the policy making burden on the ICANN 
board and staff, and more seriously, lessens the credibility of the 
DNSO as a policy making body.

> Indeed, if one took Kent's ideas to their logical conclusion, one
> should abolish the DNSO altogether, and allow policy to be set by
> private meetings among the few groups with veto power: the USG, perhaps
> the EC, maybe Verisgn/NSI, the RIRs. 

You suffer from a pernicious case of overgeneralization.  That is *not* 
the "logical conclusion" of my ideas, at all.

> The ONLY "stakeholder" that truly has veto power, however, is the US
> Government. 

This is simply false.  The USG actually operates under a number of 
constraints in this area, as well.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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