Nature of World Government

1. INTRODUCTION:

1. The subject of a world government has for long been just a curiosity; it is considered no more than a utopian ideal that cannot be achieved. Nor has there been any significant effort to bring it into practice. In this discourse I intend to not only show that a world government is a very practical and workable proposition, but to also reflect on its nature.

2. World government has been idealised mostly by nationalists, for it would involve the end of the national world-order. The nationalists, who are in overwhelming majority, have so stiffly opposed the idea that it remains just a dream. But the only way to find out is to do it, and so humanity should at least give it a try.

3. World unity is one of those principles which most accept and few fundamentally refute; it has an appeal like that of nationalism, equality, and democracy. Yet this acceptance is rather hollow, for few people actually bring it out in their actions. Almost everyone superficially agrees that humanity should come together and people should transcend nations, but inside they all are nationalists, are in the ‘subset’ consciousness.

2. OF THE NECESSITY OF A WORLD GOVERNMENT:

1. The reason why humanity needs a world government is, quite simply, the inadequacy of the national world order. It is a system in which the whole is lost among the pieces, in which humans have limited themselves to national groups. It has many inherent problems (some of which are irreconcilable) which can be resolved by a world government.

2. The world of today is analogous to a Hobbesian state of nature between nations. Humanity is an anarchic collection of groups, all of which have to fend for themselves; wars and conflicts are common; and the conditions of nation-states are indeed ‘nasty, poor, solitary and brutish’. Hobbes advocated a strong centralized power to keep things in order; the world also needs a single government so that it can stop its civil wars.

3. Having a world government is also about humanity’s development as a species. It is about moving to a higher consciousness than the group level at which humans have existed for millennia. The world has been becoming increasingly integrated economically, socially, and culturally for centuries—but not politically. World government represents the next major step in globalization.

4. The world faces a choice for the future—whether to unite and prosper together or stay divided into groups and remain in a state of limits. It is a choice between unlocking the potential of humanity and having a group identity. Humans can remain content with a system that keeps them out of hell—or they can set up a new one which has the possibility of taking them to heaven.

3. OF LIBERTY:

1. A united world, by nature, holds promise for greater freedom than even an ideal national world. Even a utopian national order will have the boundaries of nations as impediments on rights unlike a world government. Liberties of movement, migration, association, and commerce will be enlarged to unprecedented levels with the establishment of world unity.

2. Besides the direct expansion of freedom, the nature of world government is such that the scope for civil liberties will increase indirectly as well. There are four more reasons why, under a world government, the world will become a freer and more liberal place.

3. First, the world is far too large to be governed in a centralized authoritarian manner. The smaller populations of nations can be tyrannized by dictatorships or oligarchies, but the eight billion people of the world are too many to repress. At the world scale, centralization has its limits, giving individuals and local regions much autonomy and freedom.

4. Second, a united world, like all regimes, will be founded on some core principles (such as liberty, democracy, equality, representativeness, and unity). If it fails to live up to these values it will collapse and disintegrate, meaning that if it is to survive it has to be representative of the people and ensure their rights.

5. Third, when everyone is under a single world government, there is nowhere else for people to go away if the situation turns unfavourable. So every person will be an active citizen and stand up for their rights. Owing to public pressure from such a large population, the government will also take a liberal approach.

6. Fourth, in the absence of nations, there would also be no nationalistic excuses or reasons to curb liberty. ‘National security’ or ‘external threats’ would no longer suffice to justify constraints on freedom, and nor can they be misused by despotic governments.

4. OF CITIZENSHIP:

1. Citizenship is membership and identification with a state. In the nation-based world order citizenship is a privilege which gives people opportunities; it is a special status apart from being just a human. But in a united world every single person shall, from birth, have full and equal citizenship by virtue of their humanity.

2. There shall be no restrictions or eligibility conditions for citizenship of the world, unlike nations which require identification, residence, and permission. World citizenship does not entail proof of identity, because it arises from one’s humanity. Nor does it depend on residence because all humans live on the earth. And no ‘permission’ from any authority is required to be a human being.

3. For the purposes of a united world government, all persons are first and foremost human beings and have no other special status or identity above that humanity. Multiple citizenship cannot be accepted because it would involve legal recognition of some identity, some division of society. Even local citizenship entails regionalism and divisiveness. If a person belongs to a region, he/she would be considered an ‘outsider’ in other areas and may even be denied some rights. This cannot be given legal backing although it may still be a social phenomenon.

4. Citizenship of the world cannot be refused to, or taken away from, anyone because it would be denying them their humanity. Nations use citizenship as a means to distinguish insiders from outsiders, which is why they are so restrictive about it. But everyone belongs to the world and everyone shall have unconditional citizenship.

5. And so, when no one is an outsider in their own world, there will be no refugees, no aliens, no foreigners. No one shall be persecuted and forced to live in hardship because they did not identify with or belong to a subset of humanity. No one shall be held back or restricted by imaginary boundaries. No one shall be considered or treated differently because they were in a different national group.

5. OF FEDERALISM:

1. Nothing on the scale of the world has ever been governed in human history. At this level, a two- or three-level federal system may not be suitable, for either it would involve too many divisions or the lowest unit would still be too large. So, to allow for that, a four-level system would work well, with the world, provincial, state, and local government.

2. As for the distribution of power, it is found that many major subjects, especially of the central government, are no longer required—those which deal with ‘external’ matters: foreign relations, defence, foreign trade, immigration, etc. The world government will be much lighter without these subjects and focus on better governance for other matters.

3. Human population has a tendency to change unevenly, and over time the boundaries of administrative divisions will reflect unequal populations. Therefore, there should be a restructuring of all provinces, states, and districts at periodic intervals (for example, every twenty years) to ensure that the government remains representative and efficient.

4. The federal system will for the most part have to be built top-down from the world to the local level. For all the decentralization, local adaptation, and empowerment a bottom-up approach provides, it would follow existing social structures and arrive at nations, after which it would not and could not go up further to the world level. The world government and provinces should be designed top-down for administrative purposes, while the states, districts, and local governments can be adapted for local conditions.

6. OF THE EXISTENCE OF NATIONS:

1. It has often been thought that in a world government, the nations of today should be retained as provinces below a federal government. It has been argued that this will ensure stability, allow the continuance of existing institutions, ensure an effective transition, and most importantly, allow people to retain their national identity. This seems very tempting in its practicality, but nations cannot be sustained over the long run in a united world.

2. National identities are what is preventing the world from uniting in the first place. If nations are continued then people will stay in their narrow-minded national identification. A world government requires world unity which nationalists lack. In fact it may not be possible to build a united world government this way given the divisiveness of nations.

3. Creating provinces based on nations will create a government that is very unfairly representative. The populations of nations range from a few thousand to over a billion, and to accord all of them provincial status is to create a massive inequality of representation. And giving them unequal status also is unfair across the national provinces. One way or the other nations are unequal in political representation of people.

4. National provinces would be an administrative nightmare for the government. Besides the wide range of populations, the sizes of nations differ widely—from a few square kilometres to millions. Many nations are so small that making them provinces would be grossly inefficient. Some others are so large that they could be governed much better if they were divided into several smaller provinces. The provinces are an integral administrative unit and should be designed for effective governance.

5. A world government above nations will undoubtedly become a weak one. Nations will want to give up as little political power as possible to a federal government that would sit over them. They will particularly resent the power of ‘outsiders’ from the rest of the world over their ‘internal affairs’. So in truth what would happen is that nations will retain most of their powers, continuing to be the dominant political entity, while the federal government would be little more than a symbol and a mediator.

6. No stability can be expected in a system in which there is no unity and people are divided into selfish factions, the government is unequally representative, and provinces are governed ineffectively and inefficiently. Insurgencies, rebellions, and secessionism will abound, since there will be public resentment against the system, and the central government will be too weak to do anything about it.

7. An entirely new set of provinces must be created which has nothing to do with existing nations. The purpose of provinces, after all, is not to provide recognition to identities, but to facilitate decentralized governance. And since national identities hinder this objective, it makes sense that provinces should be drawn as different as possible from existing nations.

7. OF SECURITY AND MILITARY:

1. In a united world the government will find its security needs drastically reduced. Nations have been the leading cause of war for two centuries, as the national world order is by nature perpetually unstable and conflict prone. Humanity fights among itself when divided; when united, conflict will be scarce. There is no one else to fight when the world is together—and there is no need for military build-ups of the kind nations have.

2. There shall be no ‘world army’ of millions of people but only smaller police and security forces to maintain order. No external threats would exist to humanity's security; the only dangers are internal rebels, separatists, and terrorists. There is surely no need for weapons of mass destruction, massive arms build-ups, and military drafts in this situation.

3. Such is the size of the world that any rebels will have a hard time wreaking any significant damage. Counter-terrorism operations will be much more effective and state-sanctioned terrorism will come to an end. And if some subset of humanity manages to separate from the world, it will face social, political, and economic repercussions against the resources of the entire world. Nor will its actions have any legitimacy in breaking away from the government of all human beings. So a world government is going to find itself secure and stable beyond anything nations can contemplate.

4. In the absence of an extensive armed force, the likelihood of a military coup d’état or of the military becoming a controlling force of the government drops drastically. The world and its government are too large for a small number of troops to seize. For that matter, even governmental tyranny will be difficult without the large forces needed for authoritarian rule.

5. The vast amount of resources that nations squander on maintaining a military, and the resources saved by avoiding the destruction of war, can then all be put to use for the betterment of humanity. Large funds can be used for social welfare, development, research, and the improvement of every person’s condition, rather than on security threats humans create for each other.

8. OF THE STABILITY OF GOVERNMENT:

1. One central theme of a world government, one major concern regarding it, is the question of stability. On this it is worth reflecting on the stability of the current system from an outsider’s perspective. An unstable world government would degenerate into self-interested warring factions, setting up separate governments and vying for world dominance, distinguishing between their own people and others—which is exactly the nation-based world order of today.

2. From the precarious, divided world of today, any move towards unity can only make it more stable. Factions in any group threaten the group as a whole; and nations are factions at the highest level and of the extreme kind. Factionalism places the interest of a subset over that of the entire group, but with nations there is no ‘world interest’ in consideration.

3. That having been said, it was argued in the Federalist Paper no. 9 by Alexander Hamilton that a union is a safeguard against domestic faction and insurrection. There is no reason why the same principle should not apply to nations and the world as it does to sub-national divisions and nations.

4. So along with the absence of major internal threats to world stability (of the degree of nations), there also exist no external agents which pose a danger. In the history of nations it has often been the case that external influence from other nations has been a major contributor to instability, but there is no ‘outside agency’ to cause coups, insurgencies, rebellions, and the like.

9. OF IDENTITY:

1. Group identities are a universal phenomenon built into the very structure of society. In this identity-centred world they heavily influence politics and are responsible for many socio-political issues such as inequality, discrimination, oppression, hate, injustice, supremacism, affirmative action, special status, undeserved privilege, diversity, group selfishness etc. Whatever identities are to society, they are certainly a negative influence on politics. So it is absolutely essential that identity and politics be kept separate, even more than the separation of religion and state.

2. The most crucial aspect of this separation is that identities are not to be granted any legal recognition, particularly any sort of status, special privilege, favour, or disfavour. Just as it requires only one spark to start a forest fire, institutionalizing and granting legal status to any one group will lead to demands for more and more…until identity groups dominate the socio-political system as they do today.

3. It has been established that nations cannot exist as a political entity under a world government. So they, like all the other identities, will be restricted to the social domain. Nationalists will not enjoy the irrefutability and impunity they have at present, and they will be treated just like extremists of any other ideology. And people will no longer be indoctrinated with, or forced to accept, nationalism any more than other principles.

4. The lack of recognition and political exclusion of identity groups does not mean that they necessarily have to be eliminated from society as well. They can continue their social activities in accordance with the law. And they shall have freedom as a group—provided that they do not violate anyone’s rights according to the hierarchy of rights, and do not commit any injustice. In case of wrongdoing they shall be punished fairly—neither more nor less than what is just.

5. As an extension of the prohibition of recognition of identity groups, no affirmation action policies are to be followed. Like identity recognition, affirmative action is a slippery slope—one instance will lead to another until identity will come to trump justice. It is morally unjustifiable to commit the entire world to a system of legally sanctioned mass discrimination in the name of upliftment. Affirmative action is exactly the kind of legal privilege that makes society identity-centred, divided, and unjust. It leads to public resentment, and people lose faith to achieve in such a system.

10. OF ITS FORMATION:

1. Setting up a world government a long and difficult task, for it is an unprecedented political change. Entirely new institutions will be set up and the old world order completely dismantled. A major shift in consciousness to the world level will have to be brought about. There are four major ways in which this change can be done: slow transformation, accession, consent and revolution, and parallel governments.

2. Slow transformation is the gradual shift towards world government through minor reforms. It would involve the step-by-step transfer of power from national governments to world institutions over many years, allowing for each change to stabilize. The world government can be formed out of existing international institutions or by establishing new ones. This process is the most stable but also the most time-consuming and requires willingness on the part of national governments to integrate the world.

3. Another way to achieve unification is to have nations voluntarily accede to a world union. A treaty of accession would be floated, which would then be ratified by each nation. After joining the federation its institutions would be merged or replaced, and provincial boundaries would be reorganized. Nations which stay out will come under public pressure when people see the development, growth, and progress in the federation. This method provides stability, takes less time, and is fully consent-based. But it requires a massive shift to the higher humanity consciousness in the minds of the public.

4. Consent and revolution is to obtain the approval of a large majority of the world for a world government, then have a revolution establishing a new world regime and sweeping aside the national order. Revolution gives the fastest results but does not guarantee stable outcomes. The new government might not be set up properly and could collapse or turn authoritarian. The revolution could deviate from its principles and lose support. There may be atrocities committed in the struggle. The opposition could resist or start an insurgency. And yet, unfortunately, this is what would happen if the people want a world government and the nationalists refuse to budge.

5. The situation of parallel governments would arise when a large share of the population wants a world government but another large number want to retain the national world order. The pro-world government population would see no scope for accession, slow transformation, or revolution, and they may choose to set up a parallel government to which they give their allegiance and which they consider legitimate. But neither system would have complete control; there would be two governments running side by side. This precarious system must either turn towards the world government or revert to the old system, but it will leave a deep schism in humanity and create an anarchic situation while it lasts. This situation would arise when extremists on both sides prevent any efforts at slow transformation or accession, and the pro-unity group does not have support for a revolution.

6. Ultimately, a world government is not an unachievable dream. It is a system which is not just practical but is far more favourable than a divided world. It offers a common future full of opportunities for humanity. Yet there seems to be a general disinclination towards, or a dismissal of, a united world. Humans need to detach themselves from their current worldview and seriously consider a world government—the possibilities go as far as the imagination.