Pathways to Democratic Global Governance
Chris Hamer
World Citizens Association (Australia)
Institute for Global Peace and Sustainable Governance
Outline:
• Motivation
• Occasion
• Pathways
• Lessons
• World Community of Democratic Nations
• Conclusions
Motivation
CPACS motto:
“Peace with Justice”
WCA :
“Peace is Maintained by Justice, which is a Fruit of Government”
(William Penn, 1692)
Global problems require global solutions; e.g. current problems
which remain unsolved by or current UN system
• Nuclear weapons
• Climate change
• Poverty, disease and war in the Third World
We need a global parliament to deal with them
But ‘realists’ maintain this is naïve, Utopian, impossible ..
IS DEMOCRATIC GLOBAL GOVERNANCE POSSIBLE?
Occasion
WFA
(Keith
Suter)
IBO
(Ven Minh
Tam)
WCA
CGGIP
Academic research
IGPSG
Community outreach
Advocacy
WFA: World Federalist Association of Australia
WCA: World Citizens Association of Australia
IBO: International Buddhist Organization for Culture Education and Social
Development
IGPSG: Institute for Global Peace and Sustainable Governance
CGGIP: Centre for Global Governance and International Peace
Paths to Democratic Global Governance
World Federation
AU
UNASUR
UNPA?
EU
EEC
ECSC
UEF
Jean Monnet
Regional
Route
UN Charter
R2P
?
ICC
NATO, OECD
AUD
Clarence Streit
Democratic
route
UN
WFM
WCPA
League of
Nations
UN Reform
route
Constitutional
route
Lessons
Press forward on all fronts – but
We cannot achieve the objective in one giant leap!
Jean Monnet’s strategy – an evolutionary approach
• Start small, with limited objectives
• Stay flexible
• Evolve in stages, through successive Treaties
How to duplicate this in the global context?
One suggestion: the democratic route
Democracy is a fundamental principle of modern government
A World Community of Democratic Nations
• Include NATO and the OECD as two arms of the new organisation
• Refocus NATO as the global security arm of its members
• Open membership to stable democracies worldwide
• Adopt a qualified majority voting system for decision-making
• Introduce a Court to settle disputes between members
• Outside interventions strictly under UN authorization
•
Channel development funds to less-developed members through
the OECD
• Look to grow membership over time towards universality
Advantages
• Natural extension of current trends: Bosnia, Afghanistan, Libya
• Gives NATO & the OECD an important new purpose
• Cures dysfunctional decision-making within NATO
“Sooner or later, NATO will have to address whether you want
350 committees all acting on the rule of consensus. What‘s
the logic of one or two countries being able to block action by the
remaining 24 members? Why not have a system where they can
just opt out?”
- General James Jones, former SACEUR
• Provides a ‘strong right arm’ for the UN
• An embryonic parliament already exists: the NATO Parliamentary
Assembly
• A Court would provide the nucleus of an eventual system of binding
international law
• Provides a foundation which could grow freely towards an eventual
world federation, following the strategy of Jean Monnet
• Related proposals have come from both sides of politics in the US:
John McCain & Ivo Daalder, and Europeans such as Jose Maria
Aznar, Eduard Balladur
Conclusions
• Democratic global governance is unlikely to be achieved in one
giant step
• The best strategy would be stage-by-stage evolution, following Jean
Monnet
• The exact route is not yet clear
• Proposals on the table at present include
– UNPA: a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
– UNEPS: a United Nations Emergency Peace Service
• We have argued for a World Community of Democratic Nations as a
logical next step