[IRPCoalition] Time-sensitive: 24 hour sign on period for ITU Plenipot joint recommendations

[Milton L Mueller]

The UN has never been about "we the people." It has always been about "we the states." With nearly half the states in it being nondemocratic, and international law treating any and all states as sovereign individuals with equal rights, "democracy" in the UN system means one government, one vote.

Not 'democratic' in the good sense at all. We can agree on this, however:

we should find alternative and effective ways of manifesting [snip] democratic impulses in this new era and with new mechanisms and processes.

But personally I think private sector-based MS institutions are doing a better job of that than anything that will come out of the UN and its clientelist co-optation of civil society and development groups. And some of these institutions work better and preserve the freedom and autonomy of communications better precisely because they are _not_ democratic in the old sense of pure majority rule.

Milton L. Mueller
Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor
Syracuse University School of Information Studies
http://faculty.ischool.syr.edu/mueller/mueller/Home.html
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