The Dominance Objection to World Government Answered

World government has had its sceptics from all sides of the political space, and one of the more prominent critiques has come in the form of the ‘dominance objection’. Critics of world government from a postcolonial perspective have expressed a fear that world government will become a tool for the domination of the strong over the entire world, not only politically and economically, but also through cultural hegemony. In this worldview, national sovereignty is a means to defend the autonomy of marginalized groups and as a safeguard against oppression, and there is a perception that relinquishing it will open up the risk of oppression again. I see this view as the product of yet another assumption that is the product of methodological nationalism, and the presumption that identities will continue to be salient in politics—and I argue that only by superseding identity groups entirely can true equality be realized.

Post-colonialist thinkers have aptly noted that the establishment of nation-states was itself an imposed process in much of the world. Many borders and groupings have been arbitrarily created and imposed, and then expected to develop into a coherent nation after colonialism. The gap between nations’ ambitions for domination or greatness and political reality has caused too much blood to be shed and too much injustice to be committed—be it war, genocide, discrimination, or displacement. Throughout the past few centuries it has always been nations who have sought to conquer, suppress, exploit, and pillage one another. What more evidence do we need to convince ourselves that we can spare ourselves all of this if we got rid of nations?

So far people in those groups who have been marginalized by the national system have been striving to gain equal recognition within the identity system, trying to claim their fair share of global power and wealth and enhance their standing amongst other identity groups. One often hears of proposals to reform the United Nations and other international institutions (such as expanding the UN Security Council membership)—but can these be considered truly equal (Fed. 71)? While the distinction of nationality exists there cannot be true justice, thanks to the sovereignty of nations. Freedom from domination can only come when the cause of domination, namely the particularism of identity groups, is removed.

The drive for domination is a core feature of the nationalist ideal, with nations commonly striving to impose their will, expand, and compete with one another. By contrast, world government is founded on the opposite principle of the unity of humanity, where identity groups should have no bearing on one’s social, economic, or political prospects. For those who have been oppressed by identity group-based systems, unity offers the best way to equality and justice. Domination necessarily requires a division between two entities to exist—the oppressor and the oppressed (Fed. 12). World unification rules that out entirely by fusing humanity into one group.

Part of the dominance grievance comes from the perception that people are having their lives controlled by far-off ‘outsiders’ that they have little contact or influence with. Sceptics believe that the scale of the world risks deepening this perception—that there is a disconnected elite ruling the world. Alas the fact is that this is already true for the scale of nations in reality too (Fed. 15). Anyone more than two social links away is for all practical purposes a stranger, meaning that true familiarity can only span a few thousand people at most. It is only identity that creates the illusion of closeness, and similarly we should be fine with a world government too.

One common rhetorical move by post-colonialist thinkers has been to blame dominating group behaviour on the traits of some identity groups—that some groups are just oppressive by nature. They assert the identity of marginalized groups as standing up to the dominating nature of other identities, often going into great detail of history and sociology to highlight this dominating nature. Yet history and sociology also show that any group will display such behaviour if it finds itself in the position to do so. It is not that only some groups have a dominating tendency (and to claim so is itself a hidden form of group supremacism), but that only some have the circumstances to manifest it. Simply reshaping the balance of power, such that the past or present dominators are shunted out, does not solve the problem of domination but merely replaces them with new ones. Domination by groups can be ended not by the empowerment of other identities, as often argued, but rather by removing them from power (Fed. 14). A world government, based on the principle of separating identities from the state (Fed. 14), offers the path to do this.

Another way in which a world government will drastically change the dynamics of identity interaction is that it will reduce every group to a minority. No identity group makes up anywhere close to a majority at the world scale. Thus it will bring an end to the majoritarian dominance and oppression that occurs in so many nations today. When every identity group finds itself in a minority, they would naturally be forced into a more cooperative position. And political representatives of these groups will be much more inclined to seek protection for rights when they no longer have the ability to trample upon those rights. When no one is mighty, dominance ceases to be an option for political order.

Thus world government—as a government of and for the entire world’s people—is actually on the side of equality. Critical thinkers instead worry about the loss of identity that unity would entail, which seems to be considered more important than equality. But world unity is not about losing identity through being absorbed into another identity group. It is about dissolving all identity boundaries entirely. If the postcolonial agenda is truly on the side of equality, it must prioritize this over simply furthering identity self-interest which is what created all this domination in the first place. So if the concern is that world government represents domination over identity groups, that is precisely its objective. But the point is that this is to happen equally to all groups rather than selectively.

Objections such as these are articulated against a world government are based on what are only speculations about its nature, and there is no limit to such speculation. I can add some more: a world government as an environmentalist dictatorship imposing veganism on the whole world, or a world government where banana lovers have established hegemonical control over the people. Such negative speculation is of no help to humanity’s future. The point is not what form a world government could take but which one we will build. Coming with a pre-conceived notion of a world government as negative and attempting to substantiate it with such speculation only hinders efforts to improve the world. Rather, those who would like to see a just and representative world order should contribute their perspectives and efforts to ensure that a world government indeed becomes so.

Some radically subjectivist thinkers even see concepts such as rights, citizenship, and even the state itself as Western or imposed notions, and instead hark back to other primordial forms of social organization based on ‘local’ theorizing, customs, or history. If that is believed to be the case, then let these thinkers join the discourse and contribute towards constructing a universal consensus with inputs from all humanity. It is hardly productive to refuse to participate in political theorizing or initiatives but criticize them from outside on the grounds of subjectivity. Subjectivity is not a viable option for humanity as it moves forward with the project of unification (Fed. 13, 23). Rather, inputs from all across the world are much needed for a world government to be truly universalist. By all means, postcolonial thought can be very meaningful to world unity if it focuses on augmenting the discussion with new ideas rather than critically rejecting concepts merely on grounds of them being ‘foreign impositions’.

Political theory in the present is bogged down in the problem of post-modernism and subjectivity, wherein people seem to care less about the merit of ideas themselves and more about who said them. New and existing theories alike are seized upon by subjectivists as limited to a subset view, being quickly labelled as ‘European’, ‘Asian’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘postcolonial’, and so on—giving them an excuse to shirk from ideas they refuse to engage with by hiding behind the claim of contextuality. This has in part led to the demise of political theory itself, because new ideas are no longer able to become influential to the whole field; they are too often dismissed as representing a subjective viewpoint, and we are deprived of the value they could have brought to the field. Concepts in political theory are not subjective by default just because of the author’s identity; they are subjective only when they draw upon other non-universal constructs (like culture and religion). World government is an idea which has the potential to break this trend and make political theory truly universal, superseding both hegemony of ideas and subjective scepticism.

There is a major hypocrisy in objecting to a world government on grounds of its supposed imposing character, and instead defending a system of nations under which so much imposition has taken place. Those who consider themselves to be victims of an unjust and discriminatory system should not be pitting themselves against its most promising alternative and falling back to the status quo. The ‘emancipation’ of the marginalized that is sought will remain elusive under a system predicated on group domination. Rather, it is only through unity that the roles of oppressor and oppressed can be abolished.