Proposal for a Modest World Government

Structure of a Democratic World Government

By John Taylor; 2009 Feb 27, Ayyam-i-Ha, 165 BE

I just read the chapter on taxes in Jim Stark's "Rescue Plan for Planet Earth." We have been under the weather around here (Thomas ended our Baha'i class last night just after it started with some projectile vomiting), but I hope to discuss the entire book as soon as I can. World governance is the most important subject in the world right now, and whatever the book's flaws, and mine, I am determined to give it due attention.

Today, I want to sum up the conclusions I arrived at after several years of thought experimentation on the structure of a world government. Little is original; although I have made adjustments, the greater part was proposed by Jan Amos Comenius in 1670, by Immanuel Kant in 1795, and Baha'u'llah in 1868.

First of all, I think we should take several fundamental principles very seriously, especially subsidiarity and what might be called face-to-face democracy. Subsidiarity is the principle that whatever can be done locally is done locally. Its reverse is over-centralization, which is one of the preconditions for totalitarianism and dictatorships. Local people are usually the most knowledgeable and best qualified to resolve the issues that affect them the most. The main structural result of applying subsidiarity in world government would be that the planetary founding fathers and mothers would concentrate on erecting continental parliaments at the same time. At the same time, we should reform democracy itself, starting with local governing institutions. The goal of face-to-face democracy would be to eliminate corruption, pandering to the people, and other inherent drawbacks of democracy as we know it.

Continental Government

With the exception of Europe's EEC, there is at present no continental government for any of the four populated continents. If only because air travel contributes disproportionately to global warming, the lion's share of exchange and intercourse for governing the planet should be done on the continental level.

Because the population of India and China is so great, we should treat these nations as continental governments in their own right. Thus a total of eight new continental governments would form at the same time as the world government: Europe, Africa, Australasia, North and South America, Asia, China and India. These continental governments would constitute the executive branch of an integrated world parliament. A council of about twenty members, with at least two from each continent, would be elected from among continental parliamentarians. The extra members would be allotted in approximate proportion to the population that each continental government represents.

This council would not be an independent government. Peacekeeping forces, lawmaking and most other functions of governance would be continental responsibilities. The limited role of the world council would eliminate the possibility of a coup, since it would have no army or other type of coercive power. Instead it would plan and run an ongoing agenda-setting conference, which I shall discuss presently.

Face-to-face Democracy

The great merit of having elections is that the personal knowledge of many people ideally averages out to a choice of the public servant with the best ability, character and integrity. This only comes about when as many electors as possible have personally met those they are to choose by voting. Otherwise, image and personality block out character and democracy reduces to the lowest common denominator. Populism and crowd mentality predominate and, as Aristotle predicted millennia ago, the rule of the people degrades into rule of the wealthy.

The only practical way to avoid timocracy, rule of money and privilege, is to take very seriously the duty of every elector to vote only for those they have met and personally know merits the responsibility of office. The motto of every voter has to be:

"I am in a position to judge the character only of people I have interacted with personally and have seen doing their job. A vote for anybody else, for example someone I know by reputation or have seen on television, would be based on flimsy, second-hand information."

Without this commitment from voters their votes can be manipulated, directly or indirectly. As it is, nominated elections at best oblige leaders to bribe the people, as well as many others, against the peoples' own long-term interests. Local elections, then, should choose delegates for a continental congress, which would in turn elect the parliamentarians of a continental parliament. They in their turn vote in a world council. In this way, every vote would be based as much as possible on direct, un-borrowed personal acquaintance.

What Would A World Counsel Do?

The daily work of governing, as mentioned, would be the responsibility of democratically elected continental parliaments. They would vote in a planetary counsel of about twenty parliamentarians to run an all-embracing conference involving every specialty, profession and area of interest in society, civil, academic and religious. This all-embracing conference would be an ongoing constitutional convention, held yearly in rotating continental capitals. The counsel's job is to set the agenda for meetings and act as intermediary between the recommendations the specialists make there and the standing continental parliaments.

Next time I will talk about the planning decade around which these conferences will be organized.

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John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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