Statement of Purpose, World Federalist Association (1987)
World Federalism means having democratically accountable political institutions to deal with issues at the most appropriate level, according to the principle of subsidiarity. Thus local decisions should be taken at local level, national decisions at national level, and global decisions at global level. It is this latter, highest, level of government which is presently lacking, and which will have to be established if the world is to have a peaceful and prosperous twenty-first century.
Of course, achieving a world government in practice will be difficult, but I think there are several grounds for optimism. Indeed, the mere existence of the United Nations
is an implicit recognition on the part of national governments that a higher level of international government is at least desirable. Moreover, although presently hamstrung by an outmoded concept of state sovereignty, the UN does at least provide a framework from which a genuine world government might evolve.I think that world government can be seen as the logical end point of an evolution of political institutions which been in progress for several centuries now. The greatest success to-date for the federal principle is undoubtedly the US federal constitution, hammered out over the Summer of 1787 at Philadelphia. Ultimately, this federal constitution enabled a continental-sized area to come under the control of a single democratic government, which previously would have been considered impossible (and was in fact considered impossible by the anti-federalists in 1787). Needless-to-say, the success of the federal constitution has been responsible for everything subsequently achieved by the US as a superpower, including its space programme and the landing of man on the Moon in 1969. Indeed, I have argued elsewhere (see space interests/publications
) that higher level (i.e. global) political federation will probably be required before the human species will be able to afford much more ambitious space ventures.The next great historical experiment in federalism is taking place in Europe today. The US experience demonstrated that federalism can unite large geographical areas. It is now up to Europe to show that it can also unite many different nations, speaking many different languages and having a long history of conflict. For these reasons I am a supporter of the European Union
, although I agree that its institutions could be made more democratically accountable. I consider the successful introduction of the Euro as a single currency to have been one of the greatest geopolitical accomplishments of recent decades, and a major step towards European political and economic integration.
However, European federalism should not be seen as an end in itself.
Rather it should be seen as a
political experiment which, if successful, would pave the way for other
multi-national regional federations which, possibly acting through a reformed
United Nations, could ultimately form the foundations of a genuine
federal world government. The European experiment is particularly important here
because if federalism can be shown to work in Europe, where the
modern nation-state was invented (in the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman
Empire), then there is every reason to believe
that it can work anywhere. On the other hand, if the European experiment fails,
then there would be real grounds for pessimisim concerning our ability to
develop international government on any significant scale, and therefore
real grounds for pessimisim concerning the future of the human race.
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