The Impracticality Objection to World Government Answered

“Experience cannot possibly have decided between two courses, so long as there has only been experience of one.” - John Stuart Mill

There is a common tendency to dismiss the concept of a world government as utopian and impractical. However confidently this assertion may be made, it is an unfounded assumption, since humanity has yet no experience of being united. No conclusion can be drawn one way or the other about its practicality until it is given a try. The prejudiced dismissal of world government has so far prevented the serious consideration of this concept, and I strongly urge its sceptics to give it due regard without any pre-judgments.

Establishing a Union is like setting up a complex machine: you do not know if it will work until it is started. But if the machine is built properly according to its specifications, and if the Union is built on strong principles and institutions, there is no reason why it should not work. This uncertainty cannot be resolved until we attempt to establish world unity, and it is no reason to prevent us from doing so since that is true of everything else as well. For no other political ideal does its institutionalization serve as so strong a barrier to even theorizing about it as with world government. When people are content to talk about fairness, equality, self-determination, group rights etc. as ideals without necessarily dealing with its implementation, why should world unity not be considered in political theory?

Most of us, having lived our entire lives as nationalists, cannot relate to a united world. People often see world government in terms of today’s world, as a sort of mega-nation-state. But it is a fundamentally different concept based on new principles. The many assumptions made by the existing discourse only allow for a narrow view of world government, and one of the objectives of these papers has been to bring out and challenge those assumptions.

It is a very valid objection that nation-states’ inherent nature is such that they would never come together or submit to a world government, and even I do not see nations as coming together willingly and of their own accord to form a world government. However the vision articulated in these papers is one where the notion of separate nation-states is rejected entirely in favour of a united world. Even during the establishment stage (Fed. 17), the process may involve worldists legitimately coming to power in national governments and ‘hijacking’ the nation-state to accede or transform towards a world government. I agree that it is impractical to expect nations to voluntarily form a world union, but that does not close off other pathways to global integration by bypassing nations.

Less plausible is the objection from human nature, coming in a variety of forms. One essentially argues that humans are naturally disposed towards nationalism, or exclusive identities with ingroup and outgroup differentiation, and hence there cannot be cosmopolitanism. Yet it is by no means obligatory for humans to identify in exclusive groups (Fed. 14). For many other things in the past it seemed were obligatory in human nature, it has since become apparent that humans can differ (for example, religion/atheism and nonbinary gender). And society as a whole may come to support cosmopolitanism the way few do now. Another version blames the continuation of international anarchy on humans’ natural desire for power, which is hardly a clear linkage. Individuals’ or even groups’ power struggles can be contained within national structures, and there is no particular reason why this is not generalizable to the world.

Other issues raised in the name of impracticality include common political issues of humanity, such as distribution, justice, and managing identities. These are considerations in every political unit including nations, and are not specific to world government itself. There is plenty of theorizing as well as policy experience in managing these within nation-states, which can very well be applied to a world union. There is no need to justify every detail of the state anew for the world, but only where it is beyond the scope of existing experience. A potential problem that is a common feature of all state-systems can hardly be considered a valid objection to world unity.

Much of the early theorizing about world government took place against the backdrop of the Cold War, when people considered the ideological differences amongst human subsets to be too unresolvable for there to be world unity. It may have seemed then that humanity could never agree on common principles to organize the world—but there already exists such a consensus across ideologies: nationalism. And now that the Cold War is over, ideological differences do not constitute a formidable barrier to the formation of a world union. On one hand a world government is independent of other ideologies, and therefore compatible with all of them; on the other worldism itself can become a unifying ideology with a universal consensus like nationalism.

Sceptics of world government often appeal to the past political experience of humanity as proof that world unity is impossible; they argue that history offers no precedent for a world-scale government or for such a large, heterogeneous population coming together as a union. Yet given the immense changes in the human condition over time, the past cannot and should not be used as any indication of the long-term future of politics. The insights derived from past politics do not all apply to the globalized conditions of today. If anything we should avoid making the mistakes of the past—such as a divided world order. Moreover, Daniel Deudney has argued that the establishment of some world government would actually accord to political experience, and it is rather the continuation of a multistate world that would be novel.

There is also much scepticism about many existing theories of world government which are based on recognizing the differences and divisions between humans. And I do agree that these earlier visions were indeed impractical. They seem to ascribe too much benevolence and cooperation to groups than can be expected in a world where the hard concept of group identity remains. That is why, to achieve world government, we need a radical break from these by considering unity beyond differences. As highlighted in Fed. 13 and 14, there is to be no balancing or managing of identities, but their separation from political power and the rise of human unity above them.

One serious issue that could make world unity unviable is group identity. If humans continue to prioritize their group identities and group interests, and do not develop a sense of common humanity, world government cannot be successful and will break apart. For that matter, it could probably not even be established in the first place. I agree with the objectors that any attempt to force world unification onto group-minded people will surely fail; it can only take place if humans see themselves as one. That is why I maintain that social change towards cosmopolitanism is to precede political unification (Fed. 17).

One of the particularly lame arguments often resorted to is that when the pre-requisites to world government are achieved, it will no longer be necessary. If we were to start believing this objection, it would apply to all futuristic ideals, and nothing would ever be achieved. Real-world processes of change often move as a positive feedback loop, with progress building on itself. In the context of these papers, the pre-requisite is the rise of a cosmopolitan consciousness in society (Fed. 17). When this is done it is far from the case that there is no further need for political unification; rather the drive towards it becomes even more pressing when the world’s political structures are seen as inadequate to realize humanity’s goals. As envisioned in Fed. 17, the social component is only the first step, but there remains a lot to be done after that.

In general, sceptics of world government consider it in relation to the present condition of the world, as if it were suddenly established by revolution keeping all other factors constant. And looking at the fractured world around us, they promptly declare it impossible. However world unification is itself a gradual process (Fed. 17), and by the time of political integration much can change in global politics and society. Indeed, as argued in Fed. 17, a shift towards cosmopolitanism is to precede political efforts towards world unity.

And herein lies the only real challenge to world unity: human willingness. As previous papers point out, factors like size or identity can be overcome feasibly, as can the technicalities of institutions and structures. But if we fail to drive global unification, then we will not get its fruits. Let the public discussion begin and the best minds come together to deliberate the cause of world unity, and I am confident that we would be able to find solutions to every hurdle that may come in world government’s way.

There is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy in the impracticality objection—for the objection itself is a major hurdle to realizing world government. The spirited efforts of those who articulate this argument are limiting the discourse around global unification and discouraging its consideration as a serious proposal. Even once a world government is established, its opponents could bring it down through efforts to undermine it and triumphantly declare that it was an impractical idea all along, or if they choose to support it then it may work very well. That is why while some of the concerns about impracticality may be genuine, the argument must not be used as a wholesale dismissal of world government. Theorists should focus their efforts on more principled refutations and suggestions to overcome the challenges of world unity to contribute productively to politics, rather than falling back on a lazy dismissal and hindering the discourse.

And much as political theorists would like to come up with robust structures or processes, the reality is often that the fate of politics is highly contingent on the individual human factor. Especially with political change, what matters a lot is to have the right people in the right place at the right time. This is the factor that can drive a change to success against all odds, or foil even the safest changes. It is therefore important for well-meaning and knowledgeable people to join the effort and contribute to its success.

Our visions for the future are often tainted by the limitations of the present. What may appear unimaginable or hopelessly impossible at one point in time may become the reality in the not-too-distant future. Ask anyone in 1880 about powered, heavier-than-air flight or in 1940 about humans landing on the moon, and you would encounter the same sort of scepticism that is seen for world government today. Yet both were achieved within thirty years from that time.

The response given to this is one of ‘realism’, often used to dismiss political ideals like world government. It is a surrender of normativity to the eternal, unchanging features of the existing world. Yet it does not entail what many of those claiming to use it invoke. Every political theory has a normative component, alongside a descriptive one. And when realism purports to forgo normative judgement, it is actually making the strong normative choice of maintaining the status quo. True realism is only a descriptive approach, but when applied to normativity realism is merely conservatism. And this undercuts the so-called realist objection to impracticality since this realism is a normative position just like any other, none the more justified because of the descriptive validity of true realism.

And if only the sceptical realists of the 1940s had turned their attention to working out the issues with world government and driving the cause, we might have had a world government by now. Instead they dismissed the concept by saying that ‘it will take a long time’ and will only be realized in the distant future. Yet ‘a long time’ has happened since then, but we remain in the same political situation. And if we fail to advance world unity now as did those in the 1940s, then a century later we would find ourselves no better. Even if the process may seem long (Fed. 17), it has to be started sometime.

“Does the inability to realize an ideal in the foreseeable future undermine its importance?” – Yael Tamir