It is hard to be a political visionary. The first suffragettes, fighting for women's right to vote, were seen as a fanatic minority. The first anti-slavery activists were seen as crazy extremists. The first white anti-Apartheid advocates in South Africa were seen as traitors. History, however, has a very different view of these people.
Bob Brown, the leader of the Australian Greens (which currently holds the balance of power in the Australian Senate) had recently decided to publicly support the idea of global democracy1. He was then viciously attacked by commentators in Australia. I believe that history will judge him, and those of us advocating for global democracy, very differently. If humanity is to survive, it is unlikely that it could do so without establishing some form of global democracy. We are just unlucky enough to be among those who understood that first.
World federalism vs. global democracy: Evo Morales vs. the UNPA
Before coming back to Brown, I’d like to make three comments: first, what is global democracy, and how does it relate to world federalism? Global democracy is global governance by and for the people. It can also be defined as means to an end: a structure that enables the redistribution of power and the redistribution of resources, worldwide. Can world federalism be considered a form of global democracy? My answer is a yes, definitely. All those who call themselves world federalist support a democratic union, and oppose an undemocratic world federation (imagine a global Yugoslavia). World federalists could therefore be seen as an important part of an emerging world movement for global democracy. Some even suggest to change the name from the World Federalist Movement to the Global Democracy Movement.
Second, what makes heroes? History remembers the suffragettes and the anti-apartheid activists not just because they saw what is just, but also because they took action to make it happen. In other words, history will not remember us because we knew that we need global democracy. It will remember us if we act to achieve global democracy. In the second decade of the 21st century, debates of global democracy slowly emerge in the mainstream media, much thanks to the Occupy movement. George Papandreou, in an interview to the important US based ‘Democracy Now’, said that “I believe that we have a democratic challenge around the world right now, because we have a globalizing economy, but our institutions are national. [...]. The Occupy Wall Street movements or Occupy democracy movements in the United States are saying something very, very specific, that inequality, in the end, is an inequality of power, and we need to redistribute power, not just money”. Lucio Levi often says that a tragic world-federalist mistake is that we did not focus enough on the economic issues. We now have a chance to correct that mistake.
Federalists have a lot to offer in these debates about global democracy. We have spent 60 years thinking about these issues. But knowing the right thing is not enough. Federalists need to engage more with political activists/social movements, with students/young people and with the media – three important agents of political change. Federalists need to be better in explaining themselves. Our critics are wrong, the mass majority of us do not support a world state, and support the opposite – as much local decision making as possible. We are not just a European/North-American movement; federalists are inspired by Gandhi, not just Einstein; the anti-apartheid struggle, not just European unification. These need to be better communicated.
Third, where does a global parliament comes in? The CEUNPA, the Campaign for the Establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, is to date the most successful campaign for actually creating a structure for global democracy. That does not mean that it is the only model for global governance by and for the people. Some talk of global referendums (Evo Morales and Pablo Solon, or the film ‘World Vote Now’). Others talk about electronic democracy (the website globaldemocracy.com or recent suggestions by the Occupy movement for a ‘global square’). This is not an either/or choice. We could support all the above and keep an eye on the ball, achieving real global democracy, in our lifetime.
Albert (Camus) and Albert (Einstein)
The idea of a Global Parliament is not new. In 1947, Albert Einstein wrote that "selection [of UN delegates] by governments cannot give the peoples of the world the feeling of being fairly and proportionately represented. The moral authority of the UN would be considerably enhanced if the delegates were elected directly by the people". Albert Camus, wrote that "The only way out [of international dictatorship] is to place international law above governments, which means... that there must be a parliament for making it, and that parliament must be constituted by means of worldwide elections in which all nations will take part".
I have no idea how these statement by Einstein and Camus, two important federalists, were received at the time. Bob Brown's public support for a global parliament came under immediate attack in Australia. Chris Berg wrote that Brown's idea of a world parliament was "scary", "undesirable", and probably unrealistic2. The talkbacks online were less polite.
Three arguments for global democracy: environment, social justice, peace
Senator Brown believes (as do I) that at a later stage, a world parliament could have significant powers. Berg's article discusses a very important aspect of this, which many fail to see. Like Harvard economist Dani Rodrik argued before3, Berg says that democratic global governance (what Rodrik calls global federalism) could help put people back in control of markets. What is surprising is that Berg sees that as a bad thing: “A carbon price enacted by a global parliament would remove the potential for firms to simply shift across national borders to avoid the cost increases. And the parliament would be able to impose a "Robin Hood" tax without fear that finance simply goes elsewhere. There would be nowhere else to go,[...]our most important freedom is freedom of exit. [...] If government gets too coercive or unreasonable, people and businesses will leave”.
Some might argue that a global carbon tax is actually a great reason to support a world parliament, as it could save us from a climate catastrophe.
A second reason is preventing another financial crisis. Last year I conducted research at the London School of Economics and political science on the deregulation of US banks. I looked at the US Congress debates prior to the 1999 “Financial Modernisation Act” that deregulated US banks. The bottom line was that 85 per cent (!) of US senators justified their vote for this act by the need to prevent banks from ‘exiting’ the country, or the need to prevent a loss of banks' competitiveness in global markets. If we had a global parliament that could help to establish global banks regulations, such problems could be solved. While I appreciate the will of banks to avoid regulation by ‘exiting’ a country, perhaps people’s pensions, housing, health, social security and education should also get some consideration.
In Berg's imagination, this freedom to 'exit' a country is currently also shared by people, and therefore could be taken away by a global parliament. I strongly encourage him to try to make this argument to my Palestinian friend from Gaza, F.D.4. The UN Security Council allows Israel to make the Gaza strip into a big prison, in contradiction with international law. Berg and I (an Israeli) might be privileged enough to be able to 'exit' our country, but Palestinians and others are not. In this case, a US veto, just like the threat of Chinese veto on action to stop genocide in Darfur, exposes people to war crimes because of cynical geo-politics. The USA, China, the UK, France and Russia won WWII. Why should that give them the power to run the United Nations 66 years later, as veto holder in the Security Council? If you conducted a global poll about the siege of Gaza, the majority of humanity would support lifting it immediately. So here is another reason to support a world parliament: it will, in fact, be better at protecting human rights, including the freedom to leave one's country.
Democracy, history proves, is the least-worst system of governance. I have yet to encounter a woman or a man that suggested a better way to govern society than 'by the people and for the people'. And as we live in a world where global governance is needed, then what better way than to globalise democracy? This is perhaps the most important task of our generation. I am grateful that people like Senator Brown, and like the readers of ‘The Federalist Debate’ are here to lead humanity through this journey.
* This is an updated version of an article published on 20 July 2011 in The Drum, an Australian news website
1 You could see the speech on
http://en.unpacampaign.org/news/567.phpPHPSESSID=900be1fddb1263f82ae3906c867d9e58
2 Chris Berg, “Brown's global parliament: scary proposition”, The Drum, July 13, 2011
See http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2792142.html
3 Every world federalist should know this important model by Dani Rodrik, that he recently developed into a book, http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
4 Name excluded for (human) security reasons