Contemporary history and theory
Contenido
La teoría de la administración sobre las partes interesadas, la teoría de la gestión de proyectos de las partes interesadas y la teoría de los organismos gubernamentales multipartes han contribuido a sentar las bases intelectuales de la gobernanza multipartes. Sin embargo, la historia y la teoría de la gobernanza multipartes se aleja de estos modelos de cuatro maneras esenciales. Las teorías anteriores describen la forma en que una institución central (ya sea una empresa, un proyecto o un organismo gubernamental) debe relacionarse más formalmente con instituciones conexas (ya sean otras organizaciones, instituciones o comunidades). En la gobernanza multipartes, el elemento central que vincula a las diversas partes interesados es una preocupación pública (por ejemplo, la protección del clima, la gestión de la Internet o la utilización de los recursos naturales), no una organización preexistente. En segundo lugar, las teorías anteriores tenían por objeto fortalecer una institución preexistente. En la gobernanza multipartes, los grupos de partes interesadas pueden fortalecer las instituciones asociadas, pero también pueden marginar las instituciones o funciones de los órganos de gobernanza existentes (por ejemplo, las autoridades gubernamentales de reglamentación, el sistema de las Naciones Unidas). Como las teorías anteriores se referían a la mejora de las operaciones de las empresas y la gestión de los proyectos, no era necesario que abordaran las consecuencias para la gobernanza pública de la adopción de decisiones por parte de múltiples partes interesadas. También proporcionan poca o ninguna orientación a los grupos autónomos de múltiples partes interesadas sobre sus normas internas de gobernanza, ya que la institución preexistente tenía su propio sistema de toma de decisiones en funcionamiento.
Dado que la multiparticipación es un sistema de gobernanza en evolución, buena parte de su fundamento teórico es una combinación de escritos teóricos formales y teoría derivada de la práctica. El escrito teórico más extenso y las propuestas prácticas más detalladas son la Iniciativa de Rediseño Global (GRI) del Foro Económico Mundial.
Contribution of the World Economic Forum's Global Redesign Initiative
The 600-page report "Everyone's Problem: Strengthening International Cooperation in a More Interdependent World" [4] is a comprehensive proposal to redesign global governance. The report seeks to fundamentally change the global governance system built since World War II. It consists of a series of comprehensive policy documents on multi-stakeholder governance, prepared by the leaders of the World Economic Forum, and a wide range of policy options on specific issues. These policy recommendations and thematic programs were designed to show the capacity of the new governance structure to respond to a series of global crises.[5] These global policy areas include investment flows; educational systems; systemic financial risk; philanthropy and social investment; emerging multinationals; fragile states; social entrepreneurship; energy security; cooperation in international security; mining and metals; the future of government; ocean management; and ethical values. What distinguishes the World Economic Forum's proposal is that it was developed as a cooperative effort of more than 750 experts from the international business, government, and academic communities working in sixty separate working groups for a year and a half.
The WEF also had fifty years of experience in bringing together key stakeholders from political, economic, cultural, civil society, religious and other communities to discuss the way forward in world affairs. As the three co-chairs observed in their introduction to the GRI report: "The time has come for a new paradigm of international stakeholder governance, analogous to that embodied in the theory of corporate stakeholder governance on which the World Economic Forum itself was founded."
This process of explicit theoretical writings combined with theory derived from practice has also occurred in the United Nations system, in independent and autonomous global commissions, in debates on Internet governance, and in private non-state ethical and environmental standard-setting bodies.
Contributions of intergovernmental bodies of the United Nations system
The United Nations effort to define multi-stakeholder governance is generally considered to have begun with the 1992 World Conference on Environment and Development (better known as the Rio Conference). There, governments created nine large non-state groups that could be part of the official intergovernmental process. Ten years later, in Johannesburg, the follow-up conference created a new multi-stakeholder implementation process officially called "type II conference outcomes", in which transnational companies, NGOs and governments committed to working together to implement a specific section of the conference report.[6].
A separate effort by governments to define multi-stakeholder governance has been a series of General Assembly resolutions on “partnerships.” In the first of these (2002), the resolution drew "to the attention of Member States the multi-stakeholder initiatives, in particular the Secretary-General's Global Compact Initiative, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the multi-stakeholder dialogue process of the Commission on Sustainable Development, and the Task Force on Information and Communications Technologies."[7] Over the next 17 years, governments continued to develop their understanding of governance.[7] through the adoption of eight other related resolutions.
In the most recent resolution on partnerships (2019), governments identified a set of principles that should define a multi-stakeholder partnership. Governments "underline that the principles and approaches governing such partnerships and arrangements must be based on the firm foundation of the purposes and principles of the United Nations, set out in the Charter... [A partnership should have a] common purpose, transparency, not giving unfair advantages to any United Nations partners, mutual benefit and respect, accountability, respect for United Nations modalities, seeking balanced representation of relevant partners from developed and developing countries and countries with economies in transition, and not compromising the independence and neutrality of the United Nations system in general and of the agencies in particular".[8].
In the same resolution, governments further defined "common purpose" and "mutual benefit and respect" as voluntary associations and as "collaborative relationships between various parties, both public and non-public, in which all participants agree to work together to achieve a common purpose or undertake a specific task and, as mutually agreed, share the risks and responsibilities, resources and benefits."[9].
Contributions of civil society organizations participating in the United Nations system
Civil society organizations have held a series of parallel and specific exchanges on the theory and practice of multi-stakeholder governance. Two elements of the definition of multi-stakeholder governance that are not central to the debate between governments were discussed, namely: 1) the connection between democracy and multi-stakeholder governance and 2) the evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of multi-stakeholder projects.
Dodds, one of the founders of the Stakeholder Forum, argues that "involving stakeholders in the decision-making process makes them more likely to partner with each other and with governments at all levels to help deliver on the commitments associated with agreements [adopted at the intergovernmental level]".[10] In this perspective, the evolution of multi-stakeholder governance marks a positive transformation from representative democracy to stakeholder-based participatory democracy.
The Amsterdam Transnational Institute (TNI) report on multi-stakeholder engagement[11] takes a different perspective. Considers that democracy is at great risk due to multi-stakeholder governance. The TNI maintains that the lack of a legitimate public selection process of "interested parties"; the inherent power imbalance between categories of "stakeholders", particularly transnational corporations and community groups; and the intrusion of business interests into official international decision-making are contrary to the development of a globally representative democratic system. Gleckman, a TNI associate and senior fellow at the Center for Governance and Sustainability at UMass-Boston, makes other arguments about the inherently undemocratic nature of multi-stakeholder governance.[12].
Contributions from international commissions
The 1991-1994 Commission on Global Governance,[13] the 2003-2007 Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy,[14] and the 1998-2001 World Commission on Dams each addressed the evolution of the concept of multiple participation as a force in global governance.
For example, the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was established in 1998 as a global multi-stakeholder body by the World Bank and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in response to growing opposition to large dam projects. The twelve members of the commission came from diverse backgrounds and represented a broad spectrum of interests in large dams, including governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), dam operators and grassroots movements, businesses and academics, industry associations and consultants.[15]
In the WRC's final report, the chair, Professor Kader Asmal, outlined the commissioners' views on multi-stakeholder governance. He wrote: "We are a commission intended to heal the deep, self-inflicted wounds that open wherever and whenever too few determine for too many how best to develop or use water and energy resources. That is often the nature of the power and motivation of those who question it. Recently governments, industry and aid agencies around the world have been faced with the task of deciding the fate of millions of people without including the poor, or even the popular majorities of the countries that They believe they are helping. To give legitimacy to these decisions, true development must be centered on people, while respecting the role of the State as a mediator and, often, as a representative of their interests... we do not support globalization directed from above by a few men. We do support globalization directed from below by all, a new approach to global water and development policies.
Contributions of key parties in Internet governance
The role of multi-stakeholder processes in Internet governance dominated the 2003-2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). However, the summit failed to address the digital divide as developing countries would like.[17].
The final outcome of the summit, the Tunis Agenda (2005), enshrined a particular type of multi-stakeholder model for Internet governance, in which, at the behest of the United States, the key function of administration and management of the assignment of names and addresses (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN) was delegated to the private sector.[18]
This US policy of using multi-stakeholder processes to effectively favor the privatization of functions that had traditionally been performed by government agencies was well expressed in a 2015 statement by Julie Napier Zoller, a senior official in the US Department of State's Bureau of Economic and Trade Affairs. She maintained that "Each meeting that is enriched by multi-stakeholder participation serves as an example and precedent that opens the doors to multi-stakeholder participation in future meetings and forums."[19].