For what it's worth, the W3C has always reminded me of the United Nations. It doesn't really have a power base or coercive abilities of its own, and its authority is dependent on the willingness of its member organizations to sacrifice their objectives and their resources for its sake -- with the result that it's more a theater for proxy wars (Sun versus Microsoft historically, Microsoft versus the open-source movement today) than than an organization with a purpose and a goal.

Like the United Nations, though, the W3C has accomplished some of its purposes, and done a certain amount of good; but I think the author of this is expecting too much out of the W3C in a very Westphalian Web.

I hope no one turns this into an argument about the United Nations. My position on them is the same as Emperor Otto von Habsburg's on them and on the European Union: imperfect, but better than nothing. In particular, I hope no one wants to talk about which or how many countries (I count at least ten major powers plus any number of minor ones) have attempted or achieved real-world counterparts to Internet Explorer 6.

I know that using a political analogy for software is risky business, but the UN's dynamics and the W3C's are almost identical; so I hope that the insight we might gain from the analogy is worth the risk.