Milton in the broad policy-making activities that I engage in, legitimate often has that compliance with rules/regulation connotation. Is there another word or words that approximate what you are looking for that may not carry the unintentional baggage? On 7/18/2014 4:48 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
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1) There was e-mail discussion about the word "legitimate" that has not been acted upon. The group needs to make a decision, but I think based on e-mail discussion that was pretty obvious. Based on this email traffic I initiated an inquiry in my stakeholder group and they would be pretty upset if the word "legitimacy" is struck. I think it shows a certain political insensitivity on the part of the technical community to pretend as if legitimacy issues with ICANN do not exist or are not important. Further, I find the main rationale for fearing the word legitimacy - the idea that it somehow supports governmental oversight - to be prima facie false, a kind of strange and idiosyncratic aspect of ICANN culture.
Here is the common dictionary definition of legitimacy: "In political science, legitimacy is the popular acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime."
The key operant phrase here is "popular acceptance of an authority." IANA is a regime. The last "A" in IANA stands for "Authority" We want and need popular acceptance of whatever authority the new, post-NTIA IANA has.
Thus, unless a better rationale for removing the word is provided I would strongly oppose it.
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