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Ideas on Improving Global Governance

Is Yuval Harari really against global democracy and global government?

20/5/2021

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We are sharing this blog post as a part of our collaboration with Democracy Without Borders, and the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly; the original blog post can be found here: https://www.democracywithoutborders.org/16851/is-yuval-harari-really-against-global-democracy-and-global-government/
Introduction
In two interviews published recently on YouTube, the historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Harari has said: “I think that you can’t have democracy, at least in the world of today, without a strong sense of nationalism.” (link) and: “I don’t believe in a single global government all over the world, I think it’s a bad idea. It’s not only that it won’t work, it’s really a bad idea.” (link)

Yet Democracy Without Borders advocates a world order based on global democracy and the principle of federalism, which implies global government. In particular, these goals are to be found in a new long-term theory of change. When an academic with the reputation of Yuval Harari calls one’s core goals into question, one wants to understand why. It turns out that his opposition is not clearcut.

Global democracy and a sense of connection​

Considering democracy first, Harari goes on to explain what he means by “a strong sense of nationalism”: “If you don’t feel connected, if you don’t feel you have a shared fate with the other people in your country, there is absolutely no reason in the world to accept the verdict of democratic elections.”

However, feelings of connection can exist beyond the national level. The climate crisis, the pandemic, and other global challenges are creating an increasingly strong sense of planetary connection. As surveys show, more and more people identify as world citizens and are becoming acutely aware that humanity shares a common fate on spaceship Earth. We cannot avoid making decisions that affect our common future, and the question is how best to do this. Democracy Without Borders argues for debate and decision-making in a global democracy that is seeking the common good, instead of the current system of 193 separate sovereign nations, each defending their own narrow national self-interest, negotiating lowest common denominator compromises at the UN and elsewhere.

It’s not that you first need a sense of connection and then you can tackle challenges together. It’s the other way round. Common challenges forge the sense of connection and spur the change necessary for an effective response. As humanity confronts ever more pressing global crises, the common feeling necessary to underpin common decision-making is rapidly emerging. Greta Thunberg and Fridays For Future are a good example. Global democracy is being called into existence by existential threats.

This is not to say that global democracy does not face other formidable obstacles, such as an autocratic China and a kleptocratic Russia. It is merely agreeing with Harari that a feeling of connection is a prerequisite for democracy, but arguing that exclusive nationalism is not the only way to achieve this. The rapidly emerging feeling of planetary connection makes global democracy increasingly feasible. National and global democracy can co-exist, as discussed below.

Global government and federalism​

On global government, Yuval Harari continues: “The key message is not that we need to replace nation states with a global government. No, we need nation states working together on the common interest, because there is no contradiction between advancing national interests and cooperating with other countries.”

and, in the context of Covid: “…in the United States, the failure of the Federal Government to come up with a single plan for the whole United States. Now this doesn’t mean that federalism doesn’t work and that we need to dissolve the US into 50 independent nation states. It means we need to try harder.”

Indeed, nation states should not be replaced with a global government and there are few, if any, who suggest this. Instead, an additional layer of global government needs to be created to facilitate cooperation between nation states in the common interest, based on the principle of subsidiarity. Just as the United States functions better under a federal government than it did as independent states (in the short-lived confederation from 1783 to 1789), so a world federation could more effectively tackle global challenges than 193 independent nation states. A federal global government would not replace nation states. It would work with and complement them, dealing only with global issues that are not better addressed at lower levels of governance. Harari rejects a unitary world state, in which a global government replaces nation states, but seems not to contemplate a world federation, in which a global government complements nation states.

He goes on to suggest that there is no contradiction between advancing national interests and cooperating with other countries. This is like saying there is no contradiction between advancing your own interest and cooperating with the other prisoner, in the prisoner’s dilemma. It all depends on how the game is set up. Global governance as currently structured is not designed to serve the common good, it is designed to defend the national interest of the winners of the Second World War. This is not the same thing. Three decades of ineffective (in)action on reducing carbon emissions demonstrate the urgency of reforming global governance to serve the common good.

Final remarks

This article does not attempt to trace Yuval Harari’s evolving views on global governance. For example, in an early version of his bestseller Sapiens he wrote: “As the twenty-first century unfolds, nationalism is fast losing ground. More and more people believe that all of humankind is the legitimate source of political authority, rather than the members of a particular nationality, and that safeguarding human rights and protecting the interests of the entire human species should be the guiding light of politics. If so, having close to 200 independent states is a hindrance rather than a help. Since Swedes, Indonesians and Nigerians deserve the same human rights, wouldn’t it be simpler for a single global government to safeguard them?” (From Animals into Gods: A Brief History of Humankind (2012), p. 244)

This call for a single global government to replace nation states seems to be at odds with his more recent comments. Later versions of the book have different text.

It sounds, from those recent interviews, as though Yuval Harari considers global democracy infeasible, and global government undesirable. This matters because he is an influential thinker. However, on closer listening, his opposition is not so clear. Humanity increasingly does have the feeling of connection and a shared fate necessary to underpin global democracy, and a federal global government would facilitate cooperation between nation states without threatening their existence, exactly as Harari desires.

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Over 100 civil society groups issue statement for a more democratic UN

13/5/2021

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Picture
We are sharing this blog post as a part of our collaboration with Democracy Without Borders, and the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly; the original blog post can be found here: https://www.democracywithoutborders.org/16550/over-100-civil-society-groups-issue-statement-for-a-more-democratic-un/
​

On the occasion of the International Day for Multilateralism on 24 April, a group of 100 civil society organisations has issued a joint statement calling for a more democratic UN. Signatories include organisations such as Avaaz, Greenpeace and Open Society Foundations as well as networks such as the Coalition for the UN We Need, Forus International, Together 2030 and Together First.

The campaign is spearheaded by CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Democracy International and Democracy Without Borders. Under the header “We the Peoples,” a reference to the first words of the United Nations Charter Preamble, the joint document is calling on the UN to implement three specific reforms aimed at giving people, elected representatives and civil society a stronger voice and more influence. 

Three demands with “transformational potential”
The statement “for inclusive global governance” first calls for a World Citizens’ Initiative which enables citizens to put items on the agenda of the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council if proposals reach a certain threshold of popular support.

Further, the campaign promotes the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly composed of elected representatives to act as a watchdog and “connecting the people with the UN and reflecting a broad diversity of global viewpoints”.

Finally, the document recommends setting up a UN Civil Society Envoy “to champion the implementation of a broader strategy for opening up the UN to people’s participation and civil society voices”.

The document points out that the proposed changes “will enhance the legitimacy of global governance and facilitate its transformational potential”. According to Lysa John, Secretary-General of CIVICUS, “these three initiatives have game-changing potential to overcome blockages in the UN system. If implemented in earnest they will enable the UN to respond more effectively and with greater inclusivity to global challenges such as discrimination, inequality, conflict and climate change,” she explained. 

The Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, Andreas Bummel, said that “strengthening and revitalizing multilateralism requires to allow for more input and participation beyond member states. This is what our three proposals will achieve.”

Input for the UN’s “common agenda”
A resolution adopted by the UN-General Assembly on the occasion of the UN’s 75th anniversary in 2020 tasked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to compile a report on furthering a “common agenda” which includes upgrading the UN and boosting partnerships.

“It is of the utmost importance that we use this opportunity to make the UN fit-for-purpose. We are calling on UN Secretary-General Guterres to usher the UN into a new, more participatory era,” said Bruno Kaufmann, Board Member of Democracy International. 

In 2020, the UN undertook a broad public consultation. According to the UN’s final report, a UN Parliamentary Assembly and a UN World Citizens’ Initiative were among the proposals most frequently mentioned by citizens in the field of renewing the UN.

On social media, the campaign is using the hashtag #WeThePeoples. The civil society statement remains open for endorsement on the website here. 

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Carpe Diem

11/5/2021

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“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune” so urges Brutus in telling Cassius to seize the day in Shakespeare’s “Julius Cesar.” Sun Tzu who in the “Art of War” states “opportunities multiply as they are seized” greatly influenced both Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. These sentiments endure. Those whose endeavours prosper are those who see the opportunity for their cause and exploit it. 

A history of global crises and opportunities
The One World Trust (OWT) has been seeking a better-governed world since its foundation, often seizing on the main issues of the time to explain why the current chaotic management of our common resources is not only inappropriate, but also dangerous for humanity and our delicate environment. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was the Cold War and the threat of nuclear weapons that could lead to annihilation: the first time in history that humanity had the power to destroy itself and our planet, couched in the chilling concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. (Arguably, this threat continues to increase today, despite not generating the same degree of mass concern.) Inequality, growing disparity between rich and poor (even if absolute poverty has been reduced), absence of access to meaningful education, clean water and sanitation and healthcare have been with us throughout that period and have captured global attention through the SDGs and other international processes. Just as the Geneva Conventions outlawed the previous impunity of belligerents in the treatment of opponents including their enslavement so the genocide and crimes against humanity first adjudicated at Nuremberg and Tokyo led finally to the creation of the International Criminal Court. WFM/IGP (of which OWT is a long-standing Member Organisation) played so vital a role in convening civil society in support of this by creating the Coalition for the International Criminal Court in the 1990s, some 2,500 NGOs worldwide, that academic lawyers have told me that without WFM/IGP there would not now be the ICC.

There is now a new imperative — the spread and impact of a deadly virus which has no respect for national borders, ethnicity or creed. Is the pandemic the catalyst to move to a better system — as has previously been stimulated in the aftermath of conflagration and massive bloodshed? Certainly, there is the common characteristic of the loss of life: the deaths from Covid-19 in the United States now exceed the losses of that country in the two world wars and Vietnam War combined. Will this be sufficient to prick the global conscience? How does a world whose both formal and informal governance mechanisms are based on the nation state (and especially the most powerful rather than the ones most in need) achieve a higher level of effective management to deal with transnational, global issues?  The call by more than twenty world leaders and global agencies for an international treaty to deal with future pandemics may be an aspiration of hope over experience but, aided by civil society, it could become a reality. Should we seize the day?

Accountability as key
The consensus among like-minded non-profit organisations has been that we need transnational governance with accountability to the global commons: a form of federal structure (so misunderstood and misinterpreted by its opponents in certain countries like the United Kingdom where there is no tradition of this form of government but fully comprehended in existing federal states such as India and Germany).  In a world dominated by nation-states (whose borders have often emanated historically from a legacy of territorial aggression, flawed treaty agreements and colonialism, which cut across linguistic, cultural and ethnic entities, and which cause so much current conflict and tension), the concepts of subsidiarity and greater local autonomy are important components for a more peaceful world. We have seen the success of the development of the European Union and the way in which the African Union has modelled itself on it, as well as many examples (some longstanding) of transnational parliamentary bodies which have enhanced regional solidarity. Many treaty-based groupings of states have their own parliamentary assemblies, both as a form of scrutiny and as catalysts for transnational debate: the Council of Europe and NATO are among the most prominent to act as guardians of human rights and collective security.
 
Therein lies the important aspect of any form of governance: accountability. All those with power must answer to a body representative of those on whose behalf they purport to act. Major bodies which have sprung up and which take globally significant decisions, such as the “Group of 7” (or “G7”) and “Group of 20” (or “G20”), and many other global governance bodies do not have that form of scrutiny. 

The next step is up to us
We are privileged but also challenged at a time in history when there may be an opportunity greater than has occurred within a generation to take forward the goals of a better governed world. We have seen the imperative from the way in which a global pandemic has been handled and drugs distributed, the lack of public accountability of gatherings of global leaders in the G7 and G20, the continued abuse of minorities, and the climatic and environmental crises facing our planet — all matters that can only be dealt with at a supranational level. We should not forget that in the ashes of the Second World War, Churchill, Eisenhower, Einstein and others all called for a world government. We have come a significant way on the journey through the establishment of the ICC. Hopefully, more commitments on global environmental governance, at least, will emanate from the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) this autumn. Nevertheless, we have a long way to go.  With the UK hosting COP26 and now, post Brexit, looking to find a new place in the world as “Global Britain” there is every opportunity for OWT to seek to influence our own Government in taking a lead on some of these measures. The present time may not be as cataclysmic as the aftermath of war, but it may well be the moment to seize the day.
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