Question: How is the the democracy balanced in icann? Is the representative or the direct way of taking influence in the decisions of icann preferred? What do you suggest?

Nominee Replies

Alf Hansen - posted on 2000-10-08 13:24:39 Good question. I repeat from what I said in my answer to the previous question: ICANN should base its decisions on consensus. This cannot mean that every small and large topic have to be discussed at length on all levels resulting in a 50% or more yes-votes. This will not work in practice, and ICANN will die because it is not able to move forward. Consensus in ICANN should mean that there is a well defined and accepted PROCESS for decision making, and the PROCESS itself should be established based on real consensus with votes. When the decision making process is agreed, the ICANN organisation can do its work without consulting everybody and without doing elections all the time. When the process has been agreed and accepted, and we have not reached that point yet, the Support Organisations (SOs) and the At Large membership must be given the conditions to express their concerns and views as advises to the Board, and the Board will listen and make decisions based on the Board's own judgements, not based on counting votes from various elections in some DNSO constituency or some At Large Region. The important thing for the Board is to LISTEN to and DISCUSS with the SOs and the AT Large members, and the SOs and the At Large members must understand and trust that they are really listened to. When the Board has made its decisions, one thing is certain: Everybody will NOT be happy about it, but that is how democracy works. A big challenge is to build up the SO and the At Large structures in a scalable way. The DNSO has tried with a Names Council and a DNSO General Assembly. Here in the European At Large, we are talking about this list to be the European At Large Forum, perhaps after some time there will also be a European At Large Council, with elected representatives (and even staff) who can build structure into the membership.