So bickering back and forth about politics will speed up my computer? Sweet! Here I go.....
World governmentâ refers to the idea of all humankind united under one common political authority. Arguably, it has not existed so far in human history, yet proposals for a unified global political authority have existed since ancient times â in the ambition of kings, popes and emperors, and the dreams of poets and philosophers.
Proponents of world government offer distinct reasons for why it is an ideal of political organization. Some are motivated negatively and see world government as the definitive solution to old and new human problems such as war and the development of weapons of mass destruction, global poverty and inequality, and environmental degradation. More positively, some have advocated world government as a proper reflection of the unity of the cosmos, under reason or God. Proponents have also differed historically in their views of the form that a world government should take. While medieval thinkers advocated world government under a single monarch or emperor who would possess supreme authority over all other lesser rulers, modern proponents generally do not advocate a wholesale dismantling of the sovereign states system but incremental innovations in global institutional design to move humanity toward world federalism or cosmopolitan democracy.
Critics of world government have offered three main kinds of objections â to do with the feasibility, desirability and necessity of establishing a common global political authority.
First, a realist argument, forwarded by international ârealistâ theorists, holds that world government is infeasible; ideas of world government constitute exercises in utopian thinking, and are utterly impractical as a goal for human political organization. Assuming that world government would lead to desirable outcomes such as perpetual peace, realists are skeptical that world government will ever materialize as an institutional reality, given the problems of egoistic or corrupted human nature, or the logic of international anarchy that characterizes a world of states, all jealously guarding their own sovereignty or claims to supreme authority. World government is thus infeasible as a solution to global problems because of the unsurpassable difficulties of establishing âauthoritative hierarchiesâ at the global or international level (Krasner 1999, 42). A related consequentiali st argument speculates that even if world government were desirable, the process of creating a world government may produce more harm than good; the necessary evils committed on the road to establishing a world government would outweigh whatever benefits might result from its achievement (Rousseau 1756).
Second, even if world government were shown to be a feasible political project, it may be an undesirable one. One set of reasons for its undesirability emphasizes the potential power and oppressiveness of a global political authority. In one version of this objection â the tyranny argument â world government would descend into a global tyranny, hindering rather than enhancing the ideal of human autonomy (Kant 1784). Instead of delivering impartial global justice and peace, a world government may form an inescapable tyranny that would have the power to make humanity serve its own interests, and opposition against which might engender incessant and intractable civil wars (Waltz 1979). In another version of this objection â the homogeneity argument â world government may be so strong and pervasive as to create a homogenizing effect, obliterating distinct cultures and communities that are intrinsically valuable. The institution of a world government would thus destroy the rich social pluralism that animates human life (Walzer 2004). While the preceding two arguments stem from fear of the potential power of a world government, another set of concerns that make world government undesirable focuses on its potential weakness as a form of political organization. The objections on this account are that the inevitable remoteness of a global political authority would dilute the laws, making them ineffectual and meaningless. The posited weakness of world government thus leads to objections based on its potential inefficiency and soullessness (Kant 1784).
Third, contemporary liberal theorists argue mainly that world government, in the form of a global leviathan with supreme legislative, executive, adjudicative and enforcement powers, is largely unnecessary to solve problems such as war, global poverty, and environmental catastrophe. World government so conceived is neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve the aims of a liberal agenda. Even cosmopolitan liberals do not argue that moral cosmopolitanis m necessarily entails political cosmopolitanis m in the form of a world government. The liberal rejection of world government, however, does not amount to an endorsement of the conventional system of sovereign states or the contemporary international order, âwith its extreme injustices, crippling poverty, and inequalitiesâ (Rawls 1999, 117). Instead, most liberal theorists envision the need for authoritative international and global institutions that modify significantly the powers and prerogatives traditionally attributed to the sovereign state.
This entry will, first, discuss the positive and negative motivations underlying proposals for world government. In a selective discussion of the idea's history, the entry will focus on Dante's medieval treatise on the necessity of a world monarch or emperor, and then consider mainly arguments by Hobbes, Rousseau and Kant that reveal more skepticism about world government as a solution to the problem of war and peace among sovereign states. Most of the objections against the idea of world government outlined above are articulated in their writings. The historical background section will continue with the revival of ideas of world government in the twentieth century, prompted by technological progress, economic globalization, and the experience of two devastating world wars. Debates about world government during the Cold War, however, were pervaded by the ideological division of the world, and the section concludes with an exploration of socialist views on world government.
Second, the entry will explore debates in contemporary theory. One set of debates is located within international relations theory, between neorealist, âinternational societyâ, liberal internationali st, and constructivist schools. Another set of discussions about world government is located within contemporary liberal theory, involving the foremost liberal political philosopher of the twentieth century, John Rawls, and his cosmopolitan liberal critics. Both sets of discussions show that practically no one in these debates endorses the political project of establishing a world government on the model of a coercive, centralized domestic authority. Somewhat of an outlier is the constructivist theorist, Alexander Wendt, who has argued that a world state with a global monopoly on the legitimate use of force is âinevitable,â given the nature of the struggle for recognition that underlies the logic of anarchy (2003). The idea of world government has gradually given way, in contemporary scholarship, to the concept of âglobal governance,â which highlights the increasing agency of global civil society and nonstate actors, and deliberately eschews the coercive and centralized components of domestic models of government for looser, decentralized modes of achieving similar functions of government. The conclusion to the entry questions whether global governance in contemporary world conditions can really deliver the goods of global security, universal human rights, social justice, and environmental protection that have made the ideal of world government a persistent if elusive human aspiration
