Democratic World Government – An Outline Structure Essay, Research Paper

Democratic World Government – An Outline Structure

Introduction – problems and benefits of World Government

The idea of world government has not received a good press for many years. It

tends to make most of us think of Stalinist dictators and fascist domination of

the globe. I wish to argue, though, that there is a viable form of democratic

world government which could bring many benefits.

A democratic world government that really worked would lead to a major increase

in the freedom enjoyed by all people on the planet. It would also make more

equitable the international balance of power which currently so heavily favours

the rich developed nations and their citizens at the expense of the much larger

numbers of citizens in the underdeveloped world.

The billion-dollar question is, though, whether there could be a form of

democratic world government which was workable and sustainable, not inefficient

and expensive, and above all which was fair?

Conventional ideas about world government, which typically picture it in the

form of a global parliament passing universal laws in order to create an

identikit legal framework for all world citizens, suffer from three severe

problems. Firstly, the near-impossibility of persuading all of the world’s

countries to hand over their sovereignty to a global government of this sort.

Secondly, the risk – of which we are, and must always be, very aware – of

permitting a future global dictatorship of a particularly intransigent kind

(imagine how difficult it would be to dislodge a Hitler if he was in possession

of the kind of absolute power available through such a form of government). And

thirdly, as we see sometimes today in the European Community, the tendency of

such a large-scale government to create detailed, uniform laws for the entire

area it governs; the impetus would be towards a sort of global standardisation,

almost certainly based in the cultural attitudes of the West, which would

massively erode the rich cultural variations which exist in the world.

A preferable system of world government, if such could be invented, would meet

all of these objections, as well perhaps as providing a global framework

designed to encourage the democratic possibilities of all nations. Perhaps such

a system might look something like the one I shall now describe.

New form of World Government – outline structure

The new World Parliament would be a single elected chamber, possibly similar in

format to the House of Commons in the UK but with places for up to 1000 elected

representatives – Members of the World Parliament, or ‘MWP’s. The MWPs would be

elected from national or supra-national constituencies, one per so many head of

population (but probably with a minimum of at least one per nation, at least in

the early decades [There are approaching 200 nation states in the world at the

moment, with populations ranging from 50,000 - St Lucia - to 5,000,000,000 -

China. This represents a variance of a factor of 100,000, so the disparity in

representation could not be tolerated indefinitely. In due course some notion of

communal MWPs, shared by small countries of reasonably alike culture, would have

to be introduced.]). They would be subjected to re-election every 5 years. The

world government envisaged here would have no army and would require only

minimal administrative support. As a result, its costs would be small. It would

not be allowed to raise any taxes, instead being funded in a similar way to that

in which the United Nations is today, by contributions from the nation-states

which make up its membership. Such nation-states would continue to exist in the

new system just as they do now, forming an essential balancing power to that of

the world government, and would be without significant loss of sovereignty.

Membership of the new system which the world government represented would be

voluntary for each nation in the world, just as membership of the United Nations

currently is [Some democratic nations choose not to join the United nations even

today, Switzerland being a prime example.]. Becoming a member would involve them

adding their signature to a world treaty, which decision would need to be

ratified by the population of the country in a referendum. Only upon so joining

the ‘club’ would a country’s people have the right to vote into the world

government one or more MWPs, and in turn the world government would only have

the right to instigate actions which related to countries within its membership.

Once in the system a country would be able to extricate itself only by majority

vote of its population in another referendum.

The world government’s purpose would be to enact laws by normal majority voting

within its chamber, but laws which were couched in general terms. Because

presented in general terms, the laws would permit individual countries to retain

or create their own culturally-based detailed laws and social practices as long

as these did not conflict with the general world-law.

The laws, although couched in general terms, would be very real. A World Court

would exist, providing a top-level of appeal for individuals once they had

exhausted their domestic forms of justice and where they thought they were

innocent under the general world law (much as we in Europe can now make an

ultimate appeal to the European court).

But what would the powers of the world government be? The new system must not

permit the world government to enforce its desires in an absolute way upon the

world population because that would immediately raise the twin dangers of global

dictatorship and imposed cultural uniformity.

World Government’s only power – enforced referenda

Instead, nations would be allowed to transgress world-laws – to pass local laws,

or otherwise operate, in contradiction to them – but only where the population

of that country was in agreement with its government in that course of action.

The principal element of the new world constitutional system would be the

provision of just such a check that any country which went against a world-law

was expressing the will of its people. So the world government’s one and only

direct power would be that of requiring any nation within its membership to

undergo a binding referendum on any issue, and ultimately if necessary a general

election, which would be conducted according to a set of internationally agreed

standards. These standards, written into the world treaty, would include the

fact that the world government must be given equal opportunity to present its

arguments to the country’s people as the host government.

So say, for example, that a generalised human rights law had been passed by the

World Parliament. At some later point in time a majority of MWPs might come to

consider that a particular member country was violating this law, either in its

current activities or in a new law which it had enacted locally. Then the world

government could require a binding referendum to be held in the offending

country, so that the people of that country could have a democratically-valid

opportunity to decide whether they wanted their national government to adhere to

the world-law on this point.

If the result of the referendum was in the local government’s favour then it

could continue to operate as it had chosen, and no further action would follow.

On the other hand, if the outcome favoured the world government’s view then its

general law would take precedence in the nation. If in turn that fact was not

promptly acted upon, then the world government could enforce a general election.

The country’s population would thus become the final arbiters of the question.

The effects of this sort of setup are fairly clear. On issues where most human

individuals are likely to be in agreement irrespective of their background, such

as on the immorality of torture, the imposed referendum would ensure that

governments tending towards dictatorship would be stopped in their tracks. But

where a putative world government law was based on cultural prejudices the local

population would almost certainly be in agreement with their own government’s

decision to ignore the global law and would vote in favour of the local decision.

In doing so of course they would have effectively taken their nation out of the

world system as regards this one issue, and would therefore have to forego

access for themselves to the World Court on the global law in question.

Constraint on World Government

How would the world government be constrained to only pass laws couched in

general terms? Well, if it passed laws which were too detailed they would almost

certainly be rejected by many populations supporting their domestic governments

in internal referenda. Concern about high-levels of such refusals would probably

in itself be enough to restrain the world government from being too precise on

many issues. To buttress this impulse, though, a constitutional mechanism would

be built into the world treaty, sucha that the MWPs themselves would be

automatically subjected to a general world election en masse if more than, say,

10-20% of countries rejected a world law in national referenda.

But how would a world government which had no military power of its own impose

referenda and elections and make them binding? What if a country’s government,

perhaps tending towards dictatorship, chose simply to ignore the world

government’s requests for it to hold a referendum on some issue?

Enforcement

The answer is simple, and maintains the principle that the world government’s

only direct power should be to enforce referenda. Faced with this sort of threat

the world government would be constitutionally allowed to initiate synchronised

referenda of the populations in, say, 5 randomly-chosen nations in order to

sample world opinion at a statistically-significant level. It would put before

those populations its suggestions as to what co-ordinated sanctions should be

used by all countries against the offending nation. The result of the vote would

dictate what collective world action could be taken. The action to be taken

might be initially an economic blockade by all member countries, but ultimately

if the crisis escalated could become a collective invasion of the offending

country. It would be up to the polled populations, acting as a world jury, to

decide on behalf of the whole world whether they were going to allow the

principles of world government to be upheld by voting for such sanctions, or

were going to let the world slip back into its messy and dangerous old ways.

In practice the mere threat of the tight, global economic sanctions which could

be invoked by this method would in most cases very rapidly bring a recalcitrant

member country back into line. But if not such sanctions could quickly be put in

place after the sampling referenda. If they in turn proved inadequate and if a

sampling world vote upheld military intervention then ultimately an invasion

could be carried out. As the world government itself would have no army, this

would be planned and mounted by a collective military force made up of units

from all, or a selection of, the armies of each member country of the world – in

the same way as the UN Peacekeeping forces are today. (Once again, in many cases

the mere planning of such an action would persuade the country to drop its

resistance.)

If however the sampling votes activated in such a crisis failed to back the

world government then at best the world government itself should be subjected to

an immediate election, and at worst the entire system of world government would

be threatened and might start to unravel. The important point here is that

economic and military action would be decided upon by vast numbers of ordinary

people, rather than by governments swayed by all sorts of ‘interests’ and biases.

In a very clear way a responsibility for the future of the world would reside

with each of us. The fact that it would so reside with the people of the world

would be a safeguard as ultimate as could ever be achieved against the

possibility of a dictator assuming global power through the apparatus of the

world government. The dictates of such a despotic world government would

doubtless very soon cause it to lose such a sampling referenda, and it would not

itself be in possession of any miltary power on which it could call.

The system of global governance, composed of the world government in co-

existence with multitudinous nation states, would thus embody a balanced set of

powers and checks. Nation states would retain much power, although subject to

the general will of the world government. As long as they acted in accordance

with the wishes of their citizens they would be able to implement any policies

they pleased. They could probably also defy the world government without the

backing of their citizens to a small extent with ease, but any larger revolt

would be prevented by the need to carry a majority of the population. If they

pursued their defiance they would face the ultimate threat of economic and then

military isolation in the world.

Or at least, that is how things would be as long as the world government

confined itself to passing humane and unbiased laws. It itself would be subject

to a strong counter-balance to its powers. If it showed any tendency to err from

such a widely accepted moral basis then the continued existence in the world of

a large number of varied and independently-willed nation states would guarantee

that transgressions of unpopular global laws would commence fairly rapidly.

Referenda would follow, in which local populations would almost certainly vote

against the world government line and thus eventually force its members to face

re-election.

The world government would in fact only be able to operate by sticking to a very

broadly accepted seam of morality. Indeed it is more than likely that after an

initial phase of establishing a basic canon of general world-laws, the main

emphasis of the world government would turn to reviewing the practices of

nations of the world. There would of course always be occasional requirements

for new general laws, or amendments to existing ones, but much of the work of

the mature world government would probably consist in monitoring national

conformance with world-law and deciding upon appropriate actions in cases of

transgression.

Benefits – Reducing militarisation

Could the existence of the world government do anything to reduce conventional

military tensions in the world? Well, there seems no reason why the world

government should not take the view that unsanctioned war between countries

should be totally illegal, and pass a law to such an effect. Then if war did

break out between any two countries, the standard procedure of global-sampling

referenda could be invoked to enforce devastating economic sanctions against

both of the warring nations, or to raise a collaborative army with which to

overwhelm them and enforce peace. In effect this would be an active version of

what is currently the passive UN Peacekeeping Forces. Furthermore, the world

government could impose limits on the size of armies and quantity of weapons any

country could be permitted, and then over time gradually force these down, so

producing a world which in the long-run would become stable and virtually

military-free.

In the absence of a fool-proof ‘Star Wars’ system providing a defensive

umbrella-shield against inter-continental missiles and planes, a precondition of

such action and of the functioning of the world government as a whole, would be

some sort of collectivisation of nuclear weapons and any other vastly

destructive technology. An individual country in possession of and willing to

use nuclear weapons could resist all of the co-ordinated international power at

the disposal of the world government unless at least a comparable destructive

capacity could be rapidly switched against it as a deterrent. So, as part of

signing the world government treaty countries in possession of such technology

would have to agree to make a proportion of it available for use in such

circumstances. Such weapons might be sited in a neutral, and sparsely-populated

territory such as on one of the polar ice-caps, and would remain under the

control of the individual owning countries. However in circumstances in which an

individual nuclear power was resisting the world government, and agreement on

scales of activity had been defined by a global-sampling referendum, the

possibility would exist for such countries through the world government to co-

ordinate their use of them in retaliation against a nuclear strike. No one

country need possess a huge number of such weapons as long as the collective

total would together outweigh those owned by any individual recalcitrant nation,

and as before there would be every reason to hope that the world government

could gradually force the levels down to their minimum throughout the world.

Benefits – International ecology

Urgent international ecological problems, such as the excessive production of

ozone-destroying chemicals and the destruction of rainforests, could also be

dealt with by this sort of world government. It could pass laws which acted

across countries in mutual ways, backed up ultimately by the possibility of

enforcement via the global-sampling system. For example, the world government

might enact a balanced general law which imposed severe limits on rainforest

destruction, and also appropriately penalised wealthier economies whose economic

activity tends to encourage it. As always such a law could be neutralised by a

population for their own country (although I would argue that we would be much

more likely to see a positively altruistic response from ordinary people than

from their governments, which tend to react to public pressure, rarely to lead

it). But if such a law actively broke down because of high levels of veto, the

world government could try to resort to a global-sampling referendum to ‘enforce

it’ using the threat of economic sanctions. Again the ‘jury’ of randomly-chosen

populations would become the conscience of the world in deciding how important

the problem was.

There could also be an emergency procedure whereby nations affected in a

negative way by the policies of their neighbours – a good ecological example of

this is provided by the Scandinavian nations, which currently suffer from acid-

rain generated largely in the United Kingdom – could request the World

Parliament to enforce a combined binding referendum of all of the involved

populations on the topic. There might also be a procedure where a petition

signed by 0.1% of the population of a country could lead to a binding referendum

on any issue within that country via the powers of the World Parliament.

Democratic assumption

It might be argued that such a system of world government, while allowing

considerable cultural variation among its member countries, nevertheless makes

the assumption that democracy is acceptable and desirable within all cultures.

This is true, but there are two mitigating points to be made. Firstly, it should

be remembered that membership of the world system would be voluntary, depending

on governments responding to public pressure to join it, and in each case would

only be deemed to be ratified by a majority vote in a popular referendum. Where

democracy was genuinely not acceptable to a culture then there would be no such

internal pressure, or membership would fail at the initial referendum stage, and

such a country would then voluntarily remain outside the system. In practice, if

people were polled by fair referendum, it seems most unlikely that there would

be any cultures, except perhaps the most primitive, which would reject the basic

preferability of democracy over dictatorship.

Secondly, the international standards for democratic practice need neither be

uniform nor blindly instantiate the common model of Western European or American

practice. Individual nations could use any method apporved by the standards -

and there would almost certainly at the very least be a spectrum of

possibilities from the ‘one person one vote’ method to many types of

proportional representation – for both the election of their MWPs and the

conduct of internal referenda. There is no reason why forms of fair practice

which arise from other cultural backgrounds should not be incorporated. As long

as some fundamental general criteria were met by a procedure for establishing

the will of a populace then it could be approved. The criteria might include

such things as freedom of expression without fear of reprisal, and no

inequitable influence on the outcome by minority groups [%f: For example, it is

not obvious that some procedures used in small tribal communities for arriving

at consensus, although secret voting is not involved, are not fair in this

fashion].

Indeed it could even be stated in the world constitution that any form of

procedure would be acceptable as long as it was approved once by a member

nation’s population in a referendum carried out using an already approved

practice. It might well be the World Court in which the interpretation of the

standards and the arbitration on practices would best ultimately lie.

Getting from here to there – Step 1

But isn’t this all just a pipe-dream? Could we ever get from where mankind is

now to this seemingly ideal situation? Could it be done without force?

Funnily enough, it may not be too difficult. One of the beauties of this system

is that it threatens the sovereignty of individual countries only to a minimal

degree, making it difficult for them to have grounds for resisting popular

pressure to join in.

The full system could possibly be achieved in three graduated steps over a

period of a number of decades. The process would start with the setting up

through the UN of an international organisation of Electoral Observers, rather

like the current Electoral Reform Society but on a much larger scale and on a

more formal basis. Their aim would be to produce the international set of

standards and procedures for the conduct of democratic referenda and

governmental elections, allowing for the many different systems of direct,

proportional and other representation which might be used. These standards would

no doubt cover issues such as how to keep votes unattributable to individuals,

procedures for fair counting of votes, and safeguards against victimisation of

voters. The job of the UN Electoral Observers would then be to monitor the

actual practices of democracy in the world against them. That this is all not an

unrealistic scenario is shown by the fact that in 1991 the countries of the

Commonwealth gave serious consideration to the development of just such an

organisation.

No doubt many democratic countries would have no objections to the UN Electoral

Observers monitoring and reporting on their practices. Over time they would

become a familiar and accepted feature of democratic practice in numerous

countries, although clearly there would remain many countries which would

continue not to welcome them.

Getting from here to there – Step 2

After some years or decades, once the UN Electoral Observers were well

established, a voluntary treaty would be drawn up by the UN to develop the

system to a second level. The treaty would commit signatory countries to make

use of the Electoral Observers for all subsequent elections and referenda, and

to repeat any which the Observers classed as failing to meet their basic

standards of democratic practice. The established, mostly developed democracies

would almost certainly, if there was a sufficient groundswell of public opinion

in favour of such a strategic move towards underpinning the basic quality of

democracy, again tend to accept this treaty and operate under its regime. As a

result a considerable weight of moral and public pressure would build on other

governments in the world to follow suit. Gradually other countries if they had

any pretence to democracy would be forced by both internal and external opinion

into the fold. It has taken Britain many centuries of the ‘democratic-habit’ to

build up genuinely democratic practices, and such a system of independent

international observers with enforceable standards could go a long way to

assuring populations, especially those of underdeveloped countries in Africa,

South America and Asia, of the viability of proper democracy in their countries.

Getting from here to there – Step 3

It might well take decades before numbers had grown significantly, but

eventually there would come a time when a significant percentage of the world’s

population, living in a considerably wider variety of cultures than the merely

European and American, were enjoying governmental systems which operated within

the system of democratic safeguards. Finally, at that time, a world government

treaty would be drawn up incorporating the full system of global government

described earlier, for countries again to sign voluntarily. As an additional

’smoothing in’ mechanism, for perhaps the first 50 years of its life the World

Parliament might have the existing UN as its ‘upper-house’ – able to review its

laws and at least suggest amendments. It would also probably be sensible for

global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the

World Bank to eventually be brought under the control of the world government.

These very significant global powers would then be under a more direct

democratic control, and would be more likely to make a fairer spreading of the

world’s financial resources into the impoverished underdeveloped world.

As before there is every chance that there would be enormous popular pressure on

most national governments to back this final phase of development and to join

the world government system, because people would see that its effect would be

to ensure deeper and fuller democracy throughout the world. Perhaps again the

initial core of member-countries at each step would be made up of the mature

western democracies, but because of this pressure it would not be long before

membership became wider.

Conclusion

We have all witnessed in recent years the populations of many countries (the

Phillipines, China, the USSR, Eastern Europe, etc.) doing their best to bring

about local democracy. In some cases this seems to have worked reasonably

smoothly (eg. Poland) but in others (the Phillipines) the resulting government

has always been balancing on a knife-edge, threatened on all sides by despotic

forces; in some cases (China) the population has failed to win through. One of

the major benefits of the full world government system would be that populations

would only have to force their governments to sign the voluntary world

government treaty, by the sort of courageous popular action we have seen so much

of, in order to ensure their country’s future democratic health; from this

single action all else would safely follow. If their government subsequently

started to digress from the democratic path, or was overthrown and replaced by a

totalitarian alternative, no doubt it would soon fall foul of some world

government laws, and would then leave itself open to the full range of sanctions

which the world government could persuade other populations to bring against it.

A fitting plan for the opening decades of the 21st century? Perhaps. If it

worked such a system of world government would almost certainly represent a

quantum leap forward in the levels of freedom enjoyed by the poorer citizens of

the world, as well as to some extent those of us in the developed nations.