World Government, not "Global Governance"

World government finds hardly any mention in recent works in both political theory and international relations—but an alternative term, ‘global governance’ (GG), has gained popularity, particularly from the 1990s onwards. While world government is commonly held to be a discredited idea and associated with naïve utopianism (Fed. 1), GG has become a more fashionable term in global-level theorizing. These works often explicitly state that they are not trying to advocate for world government and try to differentiate the two terms, but most of this literature does not even attempt to justify ignoring world government and dodging away to GG. Given the lack of principled refutation, I take this to be indicative more of a lack of due consideration, likely stemming from the methodological nationalism that is so pervasive in the world today.

‘Global governance’ is a collection of approaches seeking change to the national order, but in a different direction to worldism. Instead of a world government or a state-centric world order, it envisions a more decentralized, polycentric, and inclusive model of governance. One of its key pillars is the inclusion of more non-state actors in decision-making, such as civil society, community organisations, the private sector, and other stakeholders. Recognizing some of the limitations in international cooperation, it also seeks to facilitate multilateralism and dialogue. It also places emphasis on rules and norms in international relations, and expanding its scope beyond traditional security and economic dimensions to new issues such as health and the environment. This approach is exemplified in the writings of many recent theorists of global order, and in initiatives in international relations today such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

GG can be summed up in a phrase often used by its proponents: ‘governance without government’. In the whole discourse, world government is the elephant in the room which GG revolves around while trying to distance itself from it. But if governance was possible without government we would not need government at all. Even though some semblance of ‘order’ may indeed develop in anarchic situations like the national system, it would be a huge stretch to compare this to the order a government brings. For example, even criminal gangs can emerge in situations of weak state authority and enforce some authority of their own, but one cannot characterize this as ‘governance’. GG is merely attempting to fill the gap left by the absence of world government. As with criminal gangs, GG emerges only as a spontaneous response to anarchy, rather than as a viable alternative to world government.

The fundamental legitimacy of any system of governance comes from its service to the people. As such, it should place the individual people themselves at its core. Yet the present international regime has no consideration of individual preferences and aspirations; rather, international institutions are particularly designed to keep out the direct voices of individuals and cater only to nations. Expanding on such a system to develop ‘GG’ seems to improve upon this somewhat by bringing in a more diverse range of actors—but this involves only bringing in more groups and serving group-level interests. GG represents yet another project in communitarianism overlording the individual, denying an individual any standing or participation in politics unless channelled through some group.

It is important to keep in mind that these additional bodies and actors involved in GG can also be selfish interest groups, seeking only to use their position in GG frameworks to promote their own good. Hence they can hardly be considered as having the legitimacy, or even the willingness, to act for humanity. Yet even for those who may act benevolently, their own effectiveness and ability to drive change is hindered by the lack of a global government. Thanks to national boundaries, most of these lack the coverage and presence required to be global actors. Further, they must ultimately fall back on the same old broken national system to put policies into practice, which lacks the agency to govern the world.

In any political regime, it is generally desirable to have a separation between political, economic, and social power so that they keep each other in check. Although having one type of power often brings some of the others along, having a range of actors limited to their own domain of power prevents its concentration and is conducive to liberty, stability, and prosperity. Two of these powers concentrated in the same entity is a recipe for oppression, and all three for total despotism. GG is dangerous in this regard since it actively strives to hand political power to the economic and social domains, allowing them to overlord individuals more (since after all individuals have no representation in GG) and removing the crucial ability of political power to restrain the other two instead of being beholden to them.

At a time when the world is on a trajectory towards increasing centralization and scope, the deficiency in governance that exists at the global level can hardly be addressed by an approach that calls for further decentralization or lower-level governance. When it comes to issues that affect all of humanity, devolving powers further down from nations to multiple actors would only make worse the coordination and cooperation problems that hinder global-level decision-making. More actors means more differing interests and shrinks the space of actions they could agree on (as the veto players theory explains). People may have too rosy a view of the idea of decentralized microstates, but as argued in Fed. 15, they are fundamentally unsuitable to today’s world. Instead, what is needed for actual global governance is decision-making at a higher level, as with a world government that can act in the interests of humanity as a whole.

Theorists of global governance have often taken too rosy a view of the actors they see as being involved in it, especially regarding the role of civil society. Civil society includes a wide range of non-state, non-business actors which are not only the benevolent community-oriented groups these theorists envision. Beyond just organizations like trade unions, NGOs, and grassroots initiatives, it also includes groups of extremists, divisive elements, and those that directly seek to undermine the state. Surely the inclusion of religious cults, terrorists, or groups that spread division and enmity in society into global governance is not what the theorists had in mind. Yet they too are as much a part of civil society, and to selectively enfranchise only some actors based on their perceived benevolence would defeat the purpose by causing only more political wrangling and power struggles.

This points to a broader challenge facing GG—that it cannot and will not include all possible actors but will only represent and enfranchise a subset of them. Who counts as say, an ethnic group or civil society organization that deserves representation is hardly a decided matter. This opens the floodgates for perpetual group-based wrangling over which group gets to participate in political processes, and for allegations of partiality and dominance over the selection process. Thus a political dynamic would be created where currying favour with groups overshadows individual and collective interests, and intergroup inequalities may be worsened. Hence GG is likely to only exacerbate the problem of identity politics and group selfishness, at a time where humanity needs to move beyond identity divisions for global decision-making.

It is also important to note that the rise of non-state actors in global politics, which has been assumed to be a positive development by GG thought, can also be seen as a negative and concerning trend too. Several thinkers have also expressed concern about the erosion of state capacity and its replacement with non-state actors such as big businesses or identity-based groups which shamelessly pursue their self-interests without regard for the public’s greater good. These actors, unlike the state, lack accountability to the people even though they have amassed considerable power. Governance has yet to catch up and address this deficit, and state oversight and regulation is needed at the global level to protect people’s rights. This means a strong world government which can hold these actors in check, rather than a system which turns over more governmental power to these.

GG, however, seeks to limit the hard power of a strong government in favour of softer approaches. Words such as ‘deter’, ‘consensus’, ‘monitoring, ‘cooperate’, ‘shaming’, ‘coordinate’, and ‘adjudication’ are commonly encountered in GG concepts. All of these indicate a concept of governance that lacks a backbone—namely the institutionalized power of the state. With its reliance on cooperation instead of state power, GG only works in situations where all actors involved stand to gain. This happens only in very rare situations, and when it does, illustrates that humans can indeed arrive at some universality despite all our present divisions. The challenge lies in making tradeoffs to maximize the greater good; GG is restricted only to achieving Pareto optimality and cannot reach a solution of utilitarian optimality.

Unfortunately for GG, most problems in public policy are in fact tradeoffs between interests. As the world has witnessed in cases such as pandemics, financial crises, and wars, the GG system was left completely paralyzed as nations asserted their self-interest instead of cooperating. If mere cooperation would be sufficient and always mutually beneficial, there would be no need for a government. Government is needed precisely for the purpose of maximizing the overall social welfare beyond the Pareto frontier of anarchic cooperation. It needs to be able to put its foot down and drive through the greater good. That is why we need a fully-fledged global government, rather than mere GG. Much as sceptical people seem to fear this authority at the global level, this is exactly how governance works in nations today—while not uncontested, it happens all the time.

A consensus and unanimity-based approach to governance is also biased towards conservatism, even as the world requires bold decisions to shape the future. Veto players theory tells us that the greater the number of actors whose agreement is needed, the smaller is the set of policies they can all agree upon. Those who favour the maintenance of the status quo, including the nationalists amongst others, have a political advantage under consensus requirements. Global governance approaches thus place the world in a position vulnerable to paralysis and gridlock. Global decision-making can be highly consequential to humanity’s welfare—but such an approach prevents the realization of its full potential. As the experience of international organizations illustrates, some of the most pressing and consequential decisions of humanity have been held up for decades just because all the tiny subsets of humanity called nations failed to find common ground.

The GG framework also has little success to show for itself despite the hype it has generated, particularly when seen against the damage it has done to the discussion on world government. Many summits and panels have been organized, and declarations and manifestoes produced, as a result of GG approaches, but despite all the effort that goes into them they remain unable to drive change on the ground. Using fancy approaches and terminology, such as systems analysis or game theory, in the name of ‘understanding’ is of little use when the starting premise is a broken system of nation-states. Until we rid ourselves of this assumption, we will be limited to the sort of minimal tinkering solutions we see today. The best example of this today is seen with climate change: the Paris Agreement or the annual UNFCCC conferences may seem impressive in a world of uncooperative nations, but are far from adequate to actually halt climate change.

When GG ideas were introduced in the 1990s, many thinkers were basking in the end of the Cold War, and did not see any need for a hard world state. Perhaps they believed that the end of the intense bipolar rivalry would make it easier for nations to cooperate and to decentralize governance with new actors. Similarly, even the limited world government literature of the 2000s and early 2010s was (overly) optimistic about the prospects for international cooperation and governance, and initiatives like the Sustainable Development Goals. Unfortunately, the events of the past 20-30 years have provided us with ample evidence that ‘governance without government’ is a failure, stuck by the same old problem of national sovereignty.

Let GG be re-evaluated in light of recent events, particularly in the 2020s. From the COVID-19 pandemic to the numerous wars raging around the globe, to the havoc caused by nations’ economic policies, it is evident that GG is not robust to crisis but only works in peaceful and prosperous times, and has little to offer when there is serious trouble. The wave of nationalism surging through politics in the 2020s shows the futility of GG frameworks as they collapse and lose relevance. Nationalists are not constrained by GG anymore (if they ever were); they can simply ignore it. Nations are still supreme in the world order, and nationalism has been re-asserting this supremacy with a vengeance. And nothing short of eliminating national sovereignty will be able to cure the wounds of today’s world. GG does not strike the balance between practicality and desirability that world government is accused of lacking: on one hand, it involves such utopian expectations from its actors as to make a world government seem more achievable. On the other, it is not as desirable either since it is still essentially an anarchic system.

I conclude by posing a question to advocates of ‘global governance’: would they want to replace the government of any country with cooperative networks of provincial states, national civil society, and international organizations that have no binding power over them? Presumably not—the result is likely to be a major governance deficit plagued by anarchy and strife. That is exactly what happens to the world itself, and these proponents should not prevent or oppose a world government with global governance as a substitute. The test of post-justification applies here: if GG does not suffice to replace an existing government, it cannot be justified normatively over true government too.

Hopeless as GG is, it remains the only hope for many well-intentioned people around the world who would like to see change. In response to the nationalist havoc raging in the world, with its extreme selfishness, it may seem like the only pathway is to soften nationalism by making governance more pluralistic. But with the idea of a world government, we now have a solid option to replace the division of the world with human unity.