The Need for a Global Government: Democracy in the Planetary Age

One of the key challenges of modern times is the increasing gap between accelerating technological innovation and slow political adaptation. Economic, social and technological developments have led to the emergence of an interdependent world system that revolves around the entire Earth. The functioning of this complex system and perhaps the survival of human civilization depend on the provision and management of global public goods. Abolishing nuclear weapons and halting anthropogenic climate change are just two of a myriad of unsolved global challenges and new ones such as artificial intelligence that are emerging rapidly. The enduring fragmentation of the world’s political order in around 200 nominally sovereign nation-states makes effective global action impossible. While this status quo represents a threat to humanity and helps erode the institutions of the nation-state, there is a growing transnational elite that benefits from weak political processes and institutions at the global level. Based on their book ‘A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21st Century’,1 the authors argue in this piece that achieving a peaceful, just and sustainable world community requires an evolutionary leap forward towards a federal global government