Global Democracy and Representation

For those who consider democracy normatively desirable, it should be concerning that under the national world order much of the world still does not have it. Far too many states now have entrenched undemocratic regimes with limited political rights, and political scientists have even spoken of a global democratic decline in recent years. So long as sovereign nation-states remain, there seems to be little possibility that the vision of worldwide democracy can be realized, or means to bring it about. Proponents of democracy who believe that it should be brought to everyone should give due consideration to the potential of a World Union in this regard. A world government is the only feasible mechanism to bring democracy to all humanity and ensure equal political rights for all.

For an individual to participate meaningfully in the democratic process it matters greatly which other people they are bundled along with in the democratic collective. If a person is made part of such a polity where the majority is opposed to their interests, or is focused on entirely different issues, then for that person democracy is meaningless, is a de facto tyranny. So in a world partitioned into countries, national boundaries may be very unfavourable to many people in being represented democratically, even to the point of disenfranchising them.

This becomes a very important consideration when concepts such as the ‘general will’ are derived from democracy and when the collective decision affects individuals’ lives. The organization of the world into the particular states of today cannot be justified only by the historical-political coincidences that gave it its present form; rather humanity must look for the form of political organization that ensures the best fit between individuals and polities to ensure true democracy for all. However that raises the question of which traits to choose to provide the best fit—why not use religion, language, ideology, or shoe size? There is an assumption in nationalism that people of a nation form a community with a unified interest that would be best served by statehood, but there is no proof that nations are better than all other groups for clustering. Ultimately, as argued in Fed. 13, there is no possible way to structure the state system to provide perfect or even decent compatibility to each individual. Rather than pursue this futile objective, we might as well look beyond a multi-state system.

The multi-state order as it is structured today also has the flaw of being constituted of highly unequal sub-units, both in terms of size and population. In some countries a very small number of people have their own sovereign government and self-determination, while in others one is bundled with over a billion people into a single state. People in some nations are much better represented than in others given the huge variation in the ratio of representatives to the population, from 1.8 million per representative in India to less than a thousand in the smallest countries. On the other hand, tiny countries have a very limited jurisdiction, while governments in larger states can secure more for their citizens.

This inequality is highly unfair and unjust for the people of the world, and is not in keeping with the spirit of democracy. Even though democracy has political equality as a core principle, there are vast disparities in representation and rights without a justified basis, based only on arbitrary national divisions. At the world level, this is to give different rights to different groups which is unacceptable for democracy. Furthermore, a large portion of the world does not even have a democratic government, again based only on inherited nationality.

Amidst all this talk of global democracy, one wonders where is the democracy at the global level? The international structures and institutions of today were constituted amongst countries purely for their own interests, and have no representation or accountability to the world’s people. Whatever goes on at the international level in the name of ‘global governance’ is not done by the consent of the people or by their voice, but only that of the nationalist establishment. What we have is not global democracy but global nationalist-ocracy.

It is not sufficient for international institutions to have democratic legitimacy that they be constituted amongst democratic nations; they must have a democratic character themselves. That is why international governance elicits such disdain from many in the public—they feel that they have no say in what goes on between nations, many of which are not democratic themselves. Indirect representation is no representation; whenever there is multi-layered representation each level only represents the interests of the level below it and not ‘the people’. International organizations are and will be driven by the interests of nation-states and not those of all humanity, which are quite often very different. Even in the ideal scenario of all nations being democratic, such a clash is bound to occur. When these organizations can make or shape policies that affect all of humanity, then democracy demands that humanity be represented in them.

In global democracy, providing a federal structure of indirect representation through nations is a tradeoff with true democracy for the people—for the more nations are involved in the government the less room there is for direct and true participation of the people. A key principle of a world union is that it should have a direct connection with the people, to ensure that it does not become too alienated from the population but rather facilitates governance and unity for all. A world government is to be a government for all the people in the world, not nations; hence it should represent the people directly rather than having ‘trickle-down’ representation through nations. That does not, however, preclude additional representation of lower levels of government in the higher levels.

Sceptics of global democracy claim that homogeneity or a sense of community in the population is a prerequisite for democracy; they believe that the population must agree on some fundamental principles for democracy to work, and that this consensus can only come from a pre-existing identity such as nationalism. Yet community is a construct, and can just as well exist for the world (Fed. 15). While it may seem that national identity provides a basis for democracy, this is only because as of yet democracy exists only in nation-states (selection on the dependent variable). Nationality is not the only super-essential factor that can bind a state, and we could build a new consensus based on world unity.

That said, theorists might as well forget about obtaining a universal consensus about any basic principles for the world or even within any identity group. Such universal agreement can only come from universal indoctrination, as with nationalism today. In practice no regime is ever built on universal agreement; there can always be found someone who disagrees with any principle or decision. Stability comes from having that disagreement on different issues distributed among the population rather than concentrated in a few people, ensuring that everyone has a stake in the system and setting the conditions for democracy.

For almost all the people in the world there never was a social contract, or any other process by which they chose and legitimized a government. They were simply born into a state and indoctrinated into its allegiance. The entire system of nation-states itself was never approved directly by the people even in the past, but was imposed by just a few nationalist revolutionaries or politicians. Even the near-universal support of humanity for nation-states illustrates not the merits or legitimacy of this system, but the power of universal indoctrination. From a democratic perspective, there is thus nothing wrong or illegitimate about replacing the national system. And a world government gives humanity the chance to collectively choose a form of government and take politics into the hands of the present rather than what was passed on from the past.

The modern era has brought much delocalization to the political sphere, such that the people’s issues are no longer purely territorial in nature. Human interactions and interests are increasingly transcending geographical distance, and in this context humanity requires new, non-territorial forms of representation. The national order is not suitable for incorporating this, being based on fixed territorial divisions and identities of geographic proximity. Rather, this can be realized only through a universal union of humanity where territory is only one mode of representation, and ideologies and interests can also be represented.

Hence we also need not be concerned that political issues at the global level would be too large-scale for people to be involved in, for ideology is overcoming distance and scale barriers to bring together people globally. Even as local issues are dealt with by local governments, the global political space would be one of ideological contestation on issues affecting all humanity. There is much empirical evidence showing that voter turnout and involvement is much higher for national elections than local ones, and we can expect the same to hold for a world union once ideology supersedes identity in the global political space.

I do not proclaim global democracy as a necessary feature of world government, or go into great detail about its specifics. Democracy should not be considered the end-point or ultimate in systems of governance, and it is important to keep options open for other forms of government. Humanity may very well move to a post-democratic world in the future—we could have technocracy, direct popular participation, or AI governance, to name just a few possibilities. Even as we proceed with a democratic conception of world government at present, we must not close ourselves to advancements beyond democracy.