Global Governance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

A significant degree of global governance of this kind has already evolved piecemeal over time in various specialized areas – international law, the law of the sea, international aviation, world trade, and more.  But there is now an urgent unmet imperative.  Among the different fields of global governance, environmental management is the most wanting in urgent answers to the crisis in the form of collective action by the whole human community.  I believe that we need both expanded global governance with respect to climate change and other urgent problems and a more concerted role in addressing them. 

What I am calling the “Global Governance Initiative” is grounded in the conviction that there must be a major change in the dynamics of global politics and in the relationships between nations.  A significant course change will be needed to meet our growing crises.  Our global system of deeply competitive nation states must shift gears and become much more cooperative in order to deal with this overarching challenge.  The competition, conflicts of interest, and sometimes bitter animosities that now exist between various countries must be subordinated to a collective mission with shared benefits and costs.  New financial resources and new organizational capabilities will also be required to stand up to these hurricane-force headwinds.  Only if we have an all-out cooperative effort will we be able to cope with the furies that we are facing, I believe. 

Our greatest threat may be each other, and a regression into tribalism and violent conflict.  Collective violence (warfare) has been one of the major themes in human history, going as far back as the evidence allows us to go.   We are now facing the very real prospect of an era of terrorism and “climate wars.”  Or worse.  Equally important, the challenges we face going forward will very often transcend national borders – from mega-droughts to lethal disease pandemics and the growing horde of climate refugees.  These crises will overwhelm the ability of many countries to deal with them unaided.  A concerted international effort will be necessary.

The basic idea is to create an overlay of new global-level services and support functions (along with new financial resources) linked to a set of negotiated social contracts with each country, rather than trying to supplant them or deny their sovereign autonomy and impose solutions.  In other words, the overall strategy would be to expand the scope and capabilities of existing international institutions, along with some added political constraints and reforms, in return for an array of positive benefits.  Call it the incremental reform model, or the big carrot, small stick strategy.

The basic challenge that we all face, and the basic purpose of any organized society, is biological survival and reproduction. We are all participants in a “collective survival enterprise.”  Each of us has no less than fourteen “basic needs” -- absolute requisites for our survival and reproduction over time. These needs are discussed in detail in my 2011 book, The Fair Society: The Science of Human Nature and the Pursuit of Social Justice. They include a number of obvious categories like food, water, waste elimination, and physical safety, as well as some categories that are less obvious but equally important, like adequate sleep, thermos regulation, and healthy respiration.

Going forward, our global community must include a universal “basic needs guarantee”.  The case for this principle is based on these four propositions: (1) Our basic needs are increasingly well understood and documented; (2) although our individual needs vary somewhat, they are shared by all of us; (3) we are dependent on many others for the satisfaction of these needs; (4) and severe harm may result if they are not satisfied. There is also much evidence that this has wide public support (see Corning, 2018, pp.213-216). 
However, there are two other important fairness precepts. Our basic needs must take priority, but it is important to recognize the many differences in merit among us and to reward (or punish) them as appropriate. The principle of “just deserts” in our relationships is another way of viewing this.  In addition, there must be reciprocity, a proportionate commitment from everyone to support the “collective survival enterprise.”  We must all contribute a “fair share” to balance the scale of benefits and costs. 

I believe this fairness recipe (equality, equity and reciprocity – I call it “The Fair Society” model), coupled with global governance and the rule of law – is the model that we need for our emerging global “superorganism” (see Corning, 2023; also, Stiglitz, 2024a).   Indeed, I maintain that democratic global governance under the “rule of law” is an essential framework for coping with our nascent survival crisis.
The solution to this growing global challenge is not to rely on some charismatic, self-serving, authoritarian leader. The world tried doing this back in the 1930s, and it did not end well (World War Two).  As the ancient Greek political theorist Plato put it, more than 2,000 years ago, the problem with this alternative is how do you “control the controllers?"

A much better alternative is more effective global governance under the rule of law, with a new social contract. We must also make major changes/improvements to the United Nations and create new agencies with the authority and the resources to address our mounting global challenges. 

In the 20th century, the classic Greek theorist Plato’s famous warning against the seductive allure of demagogues/dictators was updated by the great British wartime leader, Winston Churchill. Churchill may have had Hitler and Mussolini in mind when he famously quipped: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.” 

Plato, in his early writings, envisioned a “philosopher king” – a leader who would combine the absolute power to govern with the dispassionate wisdom of a trained philosopher.  He proposed this in his seminal political tract, the Republic (about 375 B.C.). Often overlooked, however, is Plato’s subtitle: “Concerning Justice.” His ultimate objective was to achieve a just society.  

Later on in his life, Plato came to realize that his philosopher-king concept was unrealistic and, in his last book, The Laws (about 347 B.C.), he proposed a “second-best” alternative in which all interests should be represented, and everyone would be subject to the rule of law. The Founding Fathers of the American republic were students of the Greek philosophers and embodied Plato’s mature ideas in our Constitution, which has lasted for almost 250 years, though it may now be endangered.

American democracy is far from perfect. The electoral college provision is a big compromise/constraint, as is the U.S. Senate. There is also the deference paid to the institution of slavery, which culminated in our civil war in the 1860s. And, of course, there is the persisting influence of racial and sexual discrimination, down to the present day. Not to mention deep economic inequities and Gerrymandering – the partisan distortion of election districts. Today, in addition, there are deeply divisive policy differences among us and a resurgence of anti-democratic, authoritarian leaders.  However, Churchill got it right.  Even authoritarian leaders these days must use lies and sham elections to legitimize themselves.  And they have a very poor record of good governance in the public interest.

Our current crisis has many contributing causes, but the root of the matter is modern capitalism – at once an ideology, an economic system, a bundle of technologies, and an elaborate superstructure of supportive institutions, laws and practices that have evolved over hundreds of years.  Capitalism has the cardinal virtue of rewarding innovation, initiative, and personal achievement, but it is grounded in a flawed set of assumptions about the nature and purpose of human societies and our implicit social contract; its core values are skewed.
In the idealized capitalist model, an organized society is essentially a marketplace where goods and services are exchanged in arms-length transactions among autonomous “purveyors” who are independently pursuing their own self-interests. 

This model is in turn supported by the assumption that our motivations can be reduced to the efficient pursuit of our personal “tastes and preferences.”  We are all rational “utility maximizers” – or Homo economicus in the time-honored term.  This is all for the best, or so it is claimed, because it will, on balance, produce the “greatest good for the greatest number” (to use the mantra of Utilitarianism).   A corollary of this assumption is that there should be an unrestrained right to private property and the accumulation of wealth, because (in theory) this will generate the capital required to achieve further economic growth.  More growth, in turn, will lead to still more wealth.
 
The foundational expression of this model, quoted in virtually every introductory Economics 101 textbook, is Adam Smith’s invisible hand metaphor.  As Smith expressed it in The Wealth of Nations, “man is…led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.  Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it.  By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it…. In spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…[men] are led by an invisible hand to…advance the interest of the society...”  

The classical economists who followed in Adam Smith’s footsteps embellished his core vision in various ways.  One of the most important of these early theorists, Léon Walras, claimed that the market forces of supply and demand, if left alone, would work to ensure the efficient use of resources, full employment, and a “general equilibrium.”  In other words, competitive free markets can be depended upon to be self-organizing and self-correcting, and the profits that flow to the property owners – the capitalists – will generate the wherewithal to achieve further growth and, ultimately, the general welfare. The modern economist Robert Solow (1957) summed up what has been called (sometimes derisively) “utopian capitalism” as a compound of “equilibrium, greed and rationality.”

The well-known senior economist Samuel Bowles (2004), in his book-length critique and re-visioning of economic theory with the unassuming title Microeconomics, points out that capitalist doctrine offers an odd utopia.  Its strongest claims are generally false; it is unable to make reliable predictions; it removes from its models many of the factors that shape real-world economies; it ignores the pervasive and inescapable influence of wealth and power in shaping how real economies work; and, not least, it’s profoundly unfair.  It systematically favors capital over labor, with results that are evident in our skewed economic statistics and widespread poverty.  Senior economist John Gowdy (1998, pp. xvi-xvii) candidly acknowledges that “Economic theory not only describes how resources are allocated, it also provides a justification for wealth, poverty, and exploitation.”

It happens that more socially responsible alternative models have emerged in recent years. One has the suggestive title, “stakeholder capitalism.” It calls for institutional arrangements that will equitably advance the interests of all the stakeholders in a society. In other words, merit is a major criterion.

Another alternative, proposed by the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz (2024a, b), is what he calls “Progressive Capitalism”. He argues that the time has come to abandon what has also been called “neo-liberalism”, after such economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, in favor of a model that better serves most citizens, including a social safety net – what FDR called freedom from want and freedom from fear – and, more important, freedom from fascism. Progressive capitalism, which already exists in some countries, like Norway and Denmark, will better serve the greater good, Stiglitz argues.   

Comedian Mort Sahl’s ironic observation many years ago, “The Future Lies Ahead”, underscores the fact that, as ecologist Kenneth Watt sadly put it, “the future is not what it used to be”.  Indeed, the future starts now, and our species is in serious peril.  We must urgently change the basic survival strategy of our species.  The time has come for us to have global governance.  Because we are increasingly interdependent and are now facing massive and prolonged environmental challenges that most countries cannot cope with alone (especially if they start preparing for them only after the disaster has occurred), we must act collectively to build a sustainable global society – or else.  Ideally, we should mobilize the needed resources, management systems, organizational capabilities, and trained workers before these crises occur, and we must have an “all-hands-man-your-battle-stations” response when they do. As The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it, “later will be too late.”