ABSTRACT
Multistakeholderism poses a different set of management and governance challenges than the conventional international governance system. This chapter looks at multistakeholder groups (MSGs) at the micro and practical level. The chapter has a series of rhetorical questions that can be used to appraise an MSG at the micro and practical level. It has three different potential uses. In the first instance, it is intended to contribute from a bottom-up perspective to the overall assessment of the democratic characteristics of multistakeholderism. Second, it is intended to provide a tool to appraise the currently operating experimental MSGs to evaluate their democratic integrity. And third, it offers a series of questions to help organizational leaders, public policy researchers, students of global institutions, and citizens assess if they should accept an invitation to join a specific MSG or to endorse an MSG as the preferred way to deliver a specific public good.
The rhetorical questions in this chapter are organized around four democratic aspects of the governance of a multistakeholder project: (a) the composition of the multistakeholder group; (b) the standards used for internal governance; (c) the accountability outreach to external communities; and (d) financial matters. The commentary on each question reviews how that topic is usually handled in democratic nations and in multilateralism. After the commentary on each question, there is a section on basic democratic practices that should reasonably be expected from a multistakeholder group in regard to each of the decision-making points.
