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140 MEDIA POLICY AND GLOBALIZATION
Okinawa meeting of the G8, where once again the role of civil society is
appreciated as being secondary to that of the private sector. Here, again,
the issue of technology is offered as a catalyst for policy towards a certain
direction, but at the same time is heralded as neutral:
The private sector plays a leading role in the development of information
and communications networks in the information society ...It is
important to avoid undue regulatory interventions that would hinder
productive private-sector initiatives in creating an IT-friendly environment.
We should ensure that IT-related rules and practices are
responsive to revolutionary changes in economic transactions, while
taking into account the principles of effective public–private sector
partnership, transparency and technological neutrality. (The Okinawa
Charter on Global Information Society, G8 Summit 2000)
It is worth noting that the main directions of policy for a future ‘Information
Society’ currently debated at the WSIS meetings (preparatory
meeting as well as the summit itself) have been set at a very early stage in
meetings among the most powerful countries in the world, the G7/G8,
and can be found in the statements made as summaries of their negotiations.
Table 5.4 shows the main principles governing the visions of IS
as expressed through these global organizations. In particular, the ideas
of a neutral technology and the prominence of the private sector are
paramount in both sets of statements.
Much of the WSIS agenda is dedicated to pursuing the fulfilment of
the minimal requirements of social cohesion objectives that conform to
the transnational circulation of electronic goods and services, the opening
up of public property to private management and the establishment
of an international regime of corporatism in electronic communications.
Within this implicit agenda, civil-society actors participate from a point
of reference of pursuing social objectives that are often characterized by
policy preferences with a restorative social justice disposition – a destatization
of governance as discussed in Chapter 2. Despite the differences
among NGOs and other civil-society actors regarding the radicalism of
their political agendas, the institutional category of civil society occupies
an increasingly prominent role in transnational and local politics
through a number of functions. Some of them are the closeness to citizens
and in particular marginalized groups, their role in implementing
policy at the grassroots level and their role in legitimizing processes of
decision-making at a transnational level (Moll and Shade 2001). Research
on transnational civil society organizations in global policy-making environments
highlights the limitations of specific NGO intervention on
social policy (e.g. Keck and Sikkink 1998; Korzeniewicz and Smith 2001).