Globalization and a World Parliament

By Lucio Levi (*)

The Political Dimension of Globalization and the Decline of the Sovereign State

Globalization is the word which is on everyone’s lips and is arousing the disquiet that comes from the prospect of deep and inevitable change. It is the word most commonly used to designate the new era that humankind has entered as a consequence of the revolution in production, communication, information and transportation technologies.

Globalization has been studied primarily as an economic process, while its political dimension has been largely neglected. The fact that the market has become global while governments have remained national is a contradiction that highlights the most significant change brought about by globalization. In other words, globalization has produced a shift of the borders between civil society and state. This means that it has opened a new space to civil society, that is that prepolitical area of social life which is the ground where individual interests assert themselves and clash, but which does not produce those mediating mechanisms between interests from which the need originates to promote the common weal. Therefore, private centers of power such as multinational corporations, non governmental organizations or criminal organizations have taken a global size and acquired an increasing freedom of action with regard to the regulating power of states.

Here lies the root of the decline of the sovereign state, that will be overcome only through the establishment of new forms of statehood at world level. This is the condition that will allow to restore the pre-eminence of politics toward global civil society.

The Response of Governments: International Organization

The response of governments to globalization has been to pursue international co-operation, not because it is their inclination, but because they have no other choice. The expansion of the phenomenon of international organization shows the way governments are going along to seek a solution to problems they cannot solve alone.

The weakness of international organizations lies in their decision-making procedures, that are based on the principles of unanimity and veto, and in the lack of executive powers. The most widespread definition of this way of managing globalization is the expression global governance. This is a formula that justifies the established world order, which is based on the principle of national sovereignty and on the dominance of multinational corporations in the world market and of the United States in world politics.

It is a formula that hides the illusion that a solution to the main international issues can be based on a mutual consent among sovereign states. Federalism is the antithesis of the internationalist approach. Its strength lies in the alternative goals of world government and international democracy. However distant and though they can be pursued gradually, these goals are the answer to the need to control globalization and to start the process of establishing peace among nations through law.

The Decline of Democracy

When sovereign states decline, there is a parallel decline in democracy. The sharpest contradiction of our age lies in the fact that the problems on which the destiny of peoples depends, such as those of security, control of global economy, international justice or protection of the environment, have assumed international dimensions, where democratic institutions do not exist, while democracy still stops at state borders. In consequence, democratic institutions, having lost control of strategic decisions, confine themselves to govern secondary aspects of political life. The peoples are excluded from control of the questions which determine their future. In substance, we must face problems of global dimension, on which our destiny depends, while the world is still divided into independent sovereign states. The feeling widely shared by many citizens is that the most important decisions have migrated from the institutions they can control toward international centers of power, which are not submitted to any form of democratic control.

In conclusion, the decline of democracy has two aspects. On the one hand, national governments are unable to submit globalization to democratic control. On the other hand, the democratic deficit prevents international organizations from being something more than the place where sovereign states co-operate to solve global issues. It is a contradiction that can only be overcome through international democracy, i.e. through the extension of democracy to state relations.

The Process of Democratization in the World

The most revolutionary objective of our age is the democratization of the United Nations, which would allow the government of the world to be removed from the control of the big powers and the other private centers of power, like multinational corporations, and put in the hands of all the peoples of the world. Of course, it is a long term objective that can only be achieved gradually.

The democratization of the UN no longer appears a distant ultimate goal after the recent extraordinary advance of democracy in Eastern Europe, ex-Soviet Union, Asia and Latin America. Today, for the first time in history, over half of the countries of the world (120 according to the last Report of the Freedom House) have adopted a democratic form of government. Since the fall of fascist and communist regimes it seems that democracy has defeated all its alternatives.

But the vacuum of power left by the fall of the blocs has opened the way to the revival of nationalism, that has triggered off a series of processes of disintegration of international organizations and multinational states and is threatening the new born democracies.

The Need for International Democracy

Democracy, precisely because it is fragmented among many national states, too small to assure the economic development and torn apart by international conflicts, is not the strong enough to prevent the authoritarian degeneration of its institutions. Only international democracy can submit international relations, which are still the ground of diplomatic and military clash among nations, to popular control. As a matter of fact, democracy and independence can be reconciled only within the framework of federal institutions that must be created both at regional and world level.

The European Parliament is the laboratory of international democracy. After its direct election it has increased its legislative powers and control powers over the Commission, understood as the potential European government. This means that the democratization of the European Union has been a mighty tool for strengthening European institutions. It is worth recalling that the dilemma that arose during the process of European integration of strengthening first or democratizing first the European Community has been solved in favour of the second horn. The same hypothesis can be formulated as regards the problem of the democratization of the UN.

(*) Professor of Political Science and Comparative Politics at the University of Torino in Italy. Member of the Council of the Department of Political Studies. Mr. Levi participates regularly in Union of European Federalists (UEF) activities and serves as a member of the Federal Committee of the organization. He acts as editor of the quarterly publication The Federalist Debate. He has written several books on the subject of federalism, European integration and international organizations, among which are L’internationalisme ne suffit pas: Internationalisme marxiste et fédéralisme (Internationalism is not Enough: Marxist Internationalism and Federalism) and Altiero Spinelli and Federalism in Europe and in the World. He also contributed writing to the Reader on Second Assembly and Parliamentary Proposals, edited by the Center for UN Reform Education in 2003.

October 2011