The principle behind such a structure is that if enough input is provided by multiple types of actors involved in a question, the eventual consensual decision gains more legitimacy, and can be more effectively implemented than a traditional state-based response.
The range of actors can include multinational corporations, national enterprises, governments, civil society bodies, academic experts, community leaders, religious figures, media personalities and other institutional groups.
In a number of arenas, opposing forces are actively challenging the legitimacy, accountability, and effectiveness of these experimental changes in global governance.
As earlier theories were concerned with improving the operations of corporations and project management, they did not need to address the public governance consequences of multistakeholder decision-making.
They also provide little or no guidance to autonomous multistakeholder groups on their internal rules of governance, as the pre-existing institution had its own functioning decision-making system.
[citation needed] The most extensive theoretical writing and most detailed practical proposals comes from the World Economic Forum's Global Redesign Initiative (GRI).
These policy and thematic program recommendations were designed to display the new governance structure's ability to respond to a range of global crises.
[5] These global policy areas include investment flows; educational systems; systemic financial risk; philanthropy and social investing; emerging multinationals; fragile states; social entrepreneurship; energy security; international security cooperation; mining and metals; the future of government; ocean governance; and ethical values.
What sets the World Economic Forum's proposal apart is that it was developed as a cooperative effort involving 750 experts from the international business, governmental, and academic communities working in sixty separate task forces for one and a half years (2009/2010).
WEF also had over fifty years' experience convening leading stakeholders from the political, economic, cultural, civil society, religious, and other communities to discuss the way forward in global affairs.
TNI sees the lack of a legitimate public selection process for 'stakeholders'; the inherent power imbalance between categories of 'stakeholders', particularly transnational corporations and community groups; and the intrusion of business interests in formal international decision-making as counter to the development of a globally representative democratic system.
[14] In WCD's final report from 2000, the chair Professor Kader Asmal described the Commissioners' views about multistakeholder governance this way: "We are a Commission to heal the deep and self-inflicted wounds torn open wherever and whenever far too few determine for far too many how best to develop or use water and energy resources.
Most recently governments, industry and aid agencies have been challenged around the world for deciding the destiny of millions without including the poor, or even popular majorities of countries they believe to be helping.
To confer legitimacy on such epochal decisions, real development must be people centred, while respecting the role of the state as mediating, and often representing, their interests...we do not endorse globalisation as led from above by a few men.
[17] This US policy of using multistakeholder processes in effect to favor privatization of functions which had been traditionally performed by government agencies was well expressed in a 2015 statement by Julie Napier Zoller, a senior official in the US Department of State's Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs.
The designated Major Groups were Women, Children and Youth, Indigenous Peoples, Non-Governmental Organizations, Local Authorities, Workers and Trade Unions, Business and Industry, Scientific and Technological Community, and Farmers.
The CFS sees itself as "the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform for all stakeholders to work together to ensure food security and nutrition for all".
Hemmati, a co-founder of the MSP Institute, a multistakeholder support organization, defines stakeholders as "those who have an interest in a particular decision, either as individuals or representatives of a group.
The individual involved may have been granted permission to liaise with a given multistakeholder group, provided leave to participate in their personal, professional capacity, or formally designated to represent a specific organization.
This ambiguity between commitment of the institution as a whole and the participation of a representative of a specific office or agency can affect a number of different roles inside and outside the multistakeholder group.
Processes refer to new, rapidly evolving, complex and high impact technologies on the international market that lack domestic standards or regulatory oversight.
These groups work with social justice civil society organizations, academic and government bodies to resolve conflicts and plan a path forward.
Unlike traditional philanthropic organizations, finance-oriented multistakeholder groups operate with a governing body that explicitly designates individuals to "represent" the views of specific stakeholder categories.
This form of disengagement from the UN system was formulated by the Global Redesign Initiative as ‘plurilateral, often multi-stakeholder, coalitions of the willing and able” to work outside the intergovernmental framework.
For example the World Bank notes multistakeholder initiatives bring together government, civil society, and the private sector to address complex development challenges that no one party alone has the capacity, resources, and know-how to do so more effectively;[34] the Asian Development Bank asserts that multistakeholder groups allow communities to articulate their needs, help shape change processes and mobilize broad support for difficult reform;[35] the Global Compact believes that convening committed companies with relevant experts and stakeholders, the UN can provide a collaborative space to generate and implement advanced corporate sustainability practice and inspire widespread uptake of sustainability solutions among businesses around the world;[36] and SDG’s partnership goal (Goal 17) seeks to use multistakeholder partnerships to mobilize and share knowledge, expertise, technology and financial resources to implement the SDG program.
They have contested a strategic partnership agreement between the office of the UN Secretary-General and the World Economic Forum;[38] the planned hosting of international conferences that by-passes the traditional intergovernmental preparatory process for one centered on multistakeholder engagement with UN system secretariat (fn proposed World Food Summit); the shift for a bottom-up development to top-down multistakeholder-led development;[39] the offer of free staff from the World Economic Forum to the Executive Director of a UN system treaty body; and the process of large international multistakeholder bodies setting global policy goals through their philanthropy.
These shifts in role of the private sector alters long standing public-private distinctions and, as such, has implications for global and national democratic decision-making.
The two clearest examples are internet governance and private international standard-setting bodies which operate without developing country participation (UNCTAD's Forum on Sustainability Standards).
The degree of control explicitly or implicitly transferred to the PPP and the extent that the initial expectations for operations and prices are not met has become a contentious governance issue.
In some cases, university faculty are recruited by major firms or governments to create an academic-business-governmental organization to open new markets for that business or those in their sector.