Power, International Relations, and the Prospect of World

Government

Steven SlaughterDeakin University

What are the prospects of World Government?

1)What is a world government?2)Why is the idea of world

government proposed?3)How could a world government be

realised?

I) What is a world government?

The primary element of world government is the centralization of authority. This is a situation where legitimate power rests with a global political body which has a global monopoly on the means of legitimate violence (and taxation).

If the monopoly is not legitimate = world empire.

If the centralization of authority is not a complete monopoly = various forms of global governance.

We live in a world without a world government• We live in a decentralised world where sovereign states are

the ultimate sources authority in world politics as they do not accept the authority of other actors over their domestic affairs.• Sovereignty first developed in Europe around the time of the

Peace of Westphalia (1648). After Westphalia monarchs agreed in principle to not interfere in other states.• Sovereignty spread around the world in recent centuries to

become the organizing principle of world politics.• In this decentralized system, international law and

international organizations have been created to enable coexistence and cooperation but they are dependent upon state action to work.

We do live in a world with global governance

Global Governance suggests all forms of authority, cooperation or management – be they public or private and formal or informal – that lead to the achievement of common goals. This means that global governance encompasses various institutions and practices set up by states (especially International Organisations) and those set up by individuals (Non-Governmental Organisations).

The rules and mechanisms of global governance are uncoordinated, uneven and fundamentally incomplete and sometimes they are effective and succeed in addressing global problems and sometimes they fail - with disastrous consequences. But they do not amount to a world government.

International Political Spectrum

Unity/ Centralised Disunity/ decentralised World State

Cosmopolitan Democracy (formal system of democracy across states)

Global Public Sphere / global civil society (activity if individuals overlaid over states)

UN Charter International Society (agreement about sovereignty plus human rights values)

Westphalian International Society (agreement about sovereignty)

International Anarchy (war as regular and normal)

The Development of the Idea of World Government

• The Enlightenment: Immanuel Kant "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (1795).

•Post World War Two: Increased public support after world war II -World Federalist Movement (1947-), Albert Einstein, Gary Davis etc.

•Post Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Cosmopolitan democracy Scholars such as David Held and Richard Falk who argued that people ought to be “citizens of the world”. Various forms of transnational activism, especially the protests and activism of the global Anti-capitalism Movement from the 1990s.

II) Why is the idea of world government proposed?

1) Inability of states to avoid War

“In the long term, deterrence is bound to fail: to predict that it will succeed forever, never once collapsing into a nuclear war, is to engage in a utopian and ahistorical kind of thinking.… When it fails, the ensuing war is likely to kill hundreds of millions of people, and possibly exterminate the human race”. (Campbell Craig, 2003: 172)

2) The inability of states to address global problems. States do not always create effective forms of cooperation and “pass the buck” to other states.

3) The inability of states to effectively address and prevent problems that require long term thinking for all humanity, eg climate change.

4) The interconnected nature of contemporary security threats require holistic thinking that states struggle to develop and sustain.

5) The inability of states to promote global justice or social stability in the face of accelerating economic globalisation where no one state can control this global economic system.

National democracy practically undermined by globalisation: important decision making is occurring global governance or global markets.

6) The morally arbitrary nature of nation-states limits compassion for people outside the state: refugees and global poverty.

These factors lead todesire for a commonand universal politicalsystem to represent andsafeguard ourcommon humanity.

III) How could a world government be realized?

1) Recognition and action by world leaders.

Top down action is possible to create political integration that transcends states, for example the role that leaders played in the formation of the European Union.

As a response to a global catastrophe or crisis where the states system was seen to be one of the key causes and cosmopolitan action is seen as a key part of a resolution of that crisis.

2) Action by citizens/NGOs

The activity of citizens involved in transnational activism and civil society could lead to various forms of increased political integration.

•Many NGOs wary of authority• Not all NGOs cosmopolitan oreven progressive• Not all NGOs internally democratic•Many NGOs are from the West

3) Proposed United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

Some form of experiment of creating a third democratic chamber of the United Nations alongside the Security Council and General Assembly.

Either by nations delegating their elected legislators or through some direct global vote (normally with some form of weighted voting to give smaller states more representation)

First proposed in 1920 in response to the formation of the League of Nations and in 1945 with the formation of the UN. More recently the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly was formed in 2007.

4) Incremental activity by policy makers to improve existing forms of global governance by making them more accountable and responsive to public inputs. In the long term some form of world government could result.

Concluding thoughts

Should we have a world government?

Is centralisation of global authority an unproblematic thing?

Are there good aspects of sovereign nation-states?

Should we just focus on improving and enhancing global governance?