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An Outline Structure of Democratic World Government Essay

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An Outline Structure of Democratic World Government

Introduction - problems and benefits of World Government

The idea of world government has not received a good press for many years. It tends to make most of us think of Stalinist dictators and fascist domination of the globe. I wish to argue, though, that there is a viable form of democratic world government which could bring many benefits.

A democratic world government that really worked would lead to a major increase in the freedom enjoyed by all people on the planet. It would also make more equitable the international balance of power which currently so heavily favours the rich developed nations and their citizens at the expense of the much larger numbers of citizens …show more content…

The MWPs would be elected from national or supra-national constituencies, one per so many head of population (but probably with a minimum of at least one per nation, at least in the early decades [There are approaching 200 nation states in the world at the moment, with populations ranging from 50,000 - St Lucia - to 5,000,000,000 -
China. This represents a variance of a factor of 100,000, so the disparity in representation could not be tolerated indefinitely. In due course some notion of communal MWPs, shared by small countries of reasonably alike culture, would have to be introduced.]). They would be subjected to re-election every 5 years. The world government envisaged here would have no army and would require only minimal administrative support. As a result, its costs would be small. It would not be allowed to raise any taxes, instead being funded in a similar way to that in which the United Nations is today, by contributions from the nation-states which make up its membership. Such nation-states would continue to exist in the new system just as they do now, forming an essential balancing power to that of the world government, and would be without significant loss of sovereignty.

Membership of the new system which the world government represented would be voluntary for each nation in the world, just as

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