Democratic World Government - An Outline Structure
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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...