The Argument for a New Federation of Democracies

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The Argument for a New Federation of Democracies

• John Davenport
• Department of Philosophy
• April 24, 2006.

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Step One How do we justify creating a higher
level of government?

• Using the Federalist Papers as a model, we find
  the following three kinds of argument
• There are crucial public goods that are not
  attainable by market mechanisms, and that can
  only be secured by law and/or collective action
  at a level higher than the present system of
  sovereign states.
• A present system of sovereign states is unable to
  coordinate effectively to solve problems
  concerning these public goods. Because of
  various collective action problems, bilateral or
  multilateral treaties and cannot provide these
  goods.
• A higher level of government that could address
  these problems ought to be directly answerable to
  the people of all its member states.

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American Examples

• Alexander Hamilton,
• co-author of the Federalist Papers

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Problems of the Second Continental Congress
operating under the Articles of Confederation

• Could not effectively coordinate resistance to
  the British could not pay veterans after the
  war could not provide sufficiently for common
  defense
• Had difficulty coordinating a common foreign
  policy with states making their own foreign trade
  pacts
• Had trouble introducing a national currency,
  resulting in economic inefficiencies from
  conversions
• Lacked sufficient centralized power to coordinate
  national economic policies and fund major
  infrastructure development
• The Big One could not control the spread of
  slavery, which undermined the moral legitimacy of
  the new democratic form of government.

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Similar Problems in 20th Century Europe

• Needed to form a common market to produce
  economic growth after World War II
• Needed to pool strength to resist the USSR
• Needed to form a shared foreign policy, including
  the ability to negotiate trade pacts as a bloc
• Eventually needed to establish a common currency
  to prevent competitive currency pricing
  practices
• Eventually needed to encourage greater cultural
  solidarity social exchange and common law.

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Jürgen Habermas German Philosopher who defends
Transnational Democracy
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Habermass Deliberative Conception of Democratic
Legitimacy

• What distinguishes legislation by majority
  rule from mere tyranny of the majority?
• The rights of individual citizens when society is
  organized through a system of law
• Law is an outcome not of an aggregation of
  private interests, but rather of collective
  reasoning about the common good (ideally, it is
  acceptable as reasonable by all interlocutors)
• Loyalty to a democratic constitution including
  both civil rights and popular sovereignty, rather
  than to a particular ethnic or cultural heritage,
  is the social glue
• Thus legitimate democracy is not limited to
  nation-states in the classical sense of
  territories unified by their shared ethnic or
  cultural heritage it can exist at the
  transnational level.

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Step Two The Global Public Goods

• Fundamental Human Rights and Basic Needs
• Definition of a code of basic human rights to
  which all nations must adhere, and perceived
  violations of which can be appealed to a world
  court.
• Proactive response teams to prevent genocidal
  aggression before it happens.
• Unification of democratic nations in resistance
  against totalitarian regimes
• 1. A framework for imposing binding sanctions
  and isolating unjust regimes
• 2. A world army to provide a unified,
  nonpartisan, immediate and credible deterrence
  against outlaw regimes.
• Prosecution of crimes against humanity and
  operation of war crimes tribunals.
• Unified and reliable responses to disease,
  famine, refuge problems, and disaster situations
  long-term development plans to reduce poverty and
  childhood disease.

• 500 Skulls in One Rwandan Site

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Global Public Goods continued

• World Environment Natural Resources
• Preservation of resources in which the whole
  world has a stake, e.g. clean oceans, clean air,
  fresh water, arable soil, natural wonders,
  Antarctica, etc.
• Containment of ozone-destroying pollution and
  response to global warming.
• Controlling use and distribution of limited vital
  resources, such as fossil fuels.
• Maintenance of endangered animals and their
  threatened habitats, such as rainforests,
  wetlands, and coral reefs
• A regime through which the whole world can
  cooperate in sharing the costs of preserving the
  environment for future generations, e.g.
  compensating impoverished nations for the
  sacrifices imposed on them for preservation.

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Global Public Goods continued

• Management of a global economy for sustainable
  growth with fairness
• Maintaining stability in relations among
  currencies and banking systems, and ultimately,
  determining interest rates and monetary policy
  for a world currency.
• Responding to regional crises and providing
  healthy environment for investment and stable
  growth to avoid triggering worldwide
  cascade-effect recessions.
• Assuring fairness in relations of immigration and
  movement of seasonal labor across existing
  national borders.
• Providing a framework to open markets to imports
  and exports and resolve trade disputes with
  binding authority (currently the function of the
  World Trade Organization).
• Laying the basis for a regime of international
  labor law, e.g. to help trade unions to
  internationalize their organizations in response
  to the emergence of multinational corporate
  giant' companies with vast holdings and
  influence.
• Control of arms sales and transfers of dangerous
  technologies, including powerful weapons.
• Elimination of tax havens, international tax
  fraud, and linkage of tax regimes across nations.
• Providing minimal industry standards for fair
  labor and safe work conditions.

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Global Public Goods continued

• Transnational Crime Control
• Unified systems for containing the growth of drug
  trafficking and attacking international narcotics
  rings.
• Investigation of international monetary fraud and
  elimination of safe havens for the leadership
  of global crime rings.
• Combined world efforts to eliminate black
  markets for illegal arms, trafficking in human
  beings, etc.
• Global Science and Communications
• Promoting academic exchanges and expansion of
  educational opportunities for talented students
  from poor nations.
• Pursuit of scientific projects in which the whole
  of humanity has a stake, and which can be done
  most efficiently by avoiding duplication, e.g.
  particle accelerators, space stations and space
  exploration, genetic databases, etc.
• Managing the system of international
  telecommunications, from the function and
  placement of satellites to the Internet and the
  free flow of information.

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Step Three A world government capable of
securing the global public goods?

• At present, there seem to be two main
  alternatives for global governance
• American Unilateralism
• The US is the de facto leader in world system of
  nation-states, and directs responses to crises
  through NATO
• 2. The United Nations system
• The UN Security Council is the legitimate source
  of international law U.N. agencies such as the
  World Bank, World Health Organization, and U.N.
  Commission for Human Rights coordinate global
  responses to problems.

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Which Alternative? Neither

• Lets focus on just one public good the
  enforcement of basic human rights
• The United States is not democratically
  authorized by the worlds peoples to act as
  global policeman
• Without assistance of a large network of powerful
  allies, our resources are also grossly unequal to
  the job (our armed forces are maxed out, and our
  government is 1.1 trillion in debt, including
  what it owes to the Social Security Trust Fund).
• However, the U.N. system, which was the best
  achieveable after WW II, is now broken. The U.N.
  has failed to stop atrocities in Yugloslavia,
  East Timor, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan, and elsewhere,
  let bring tyrants, warlords, and dictators down
  and develop legitimate democratic regimes. Yet
  tyranny is the single biggest cause of poverty in
  the world.

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The U.N.s flaws

• The U.N. is not directly elected by citizens of
  its member-states it is a mere treaty
  organization, like the Continental Congress (and
  thus weak).
• The U.N. is not democratic the Security
  Councils permanent members with veto include
  China, and its rotating members frequently
  include dictatorships, theocracies, and
  monarchies that systematically deny rights.
• The U.N. is out of date in 1946, power was
  equally divided in the world today, the worlds
  democracies collectively hold the balance of
  power.
• Its Charter cannot be amended without the
  approval of all five permanent members of the
  Security Council, which prevents the needed
  reforms.

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A New Alternative A Federation of the Worlds
Democratic Nations

• A permanently binding alliance of the worlds
  democracies would be both more legitimate and
  more powerful than the U.N. security council, and
  could provide the coordination necessary to
  secure key global public goods. Its governing
  council would be directly elected by citizens of
  the member states, and its enumerated powers
  would include
• Maintaining a standing armed forces, raised from
  all member states proportionate to population, to
  intervene swiftly under joint DF command when
  necessary to prevent genocide, ethnic cleaning,
  and similar atrocities.
• Providing a new, firmer foundation for
  international law and the operation of
  international courts, to ensure the legitimacy of
  entities like the World Court, the ICC, the Hague
  Tribunal, and to make their judgments
  enforceable.
• The general enforcement of human rights,
  including (when possible) the removal and
  prosecution of tyrants and warlords, and the
  punishment of crimes against humanity
• The defeat of international terrorist
  organizations and international crime rings, and
  the monitoring of all nuclear weapons and
  weapons-material available on the planet.
• The commonly undertaken and collectively funded
  defense of all democratic member states from
  hostile incursion or attack by outlaw states or
  terrorists
• The exertion of unified diplomatic pressure on
  non-democratic regimes to democratize.
• The nation-building activities necessary to
  assure all peoples on Earth a stable democratic
  nation-state of their own, with a working legal
  system free from corruption of the authorities, a
  liberal educational system free from
  fundamentalist indoctrination, and a decent
  standard of living in whatever economic system
  they choose.
• The adoption of new member-states according to
  collectively accepted criteria.