Democratic World Government - an Outline Structure
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
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