Democratic World Government - An Outline Structure
             Introduction - problems and benefits of World Government
             The idea of world government has not received a good press for many years. It
             tends to make most of us think of Stalinist dictators and fascist domination of
             the globe. I wish to argue, though, that there is a viable form of democratic
             world government which could bring many benefits.
             A democratic world government that really worked would lead to a major increase
             in the freedom enjoyed by all people on the planet. It would also make more
             equitable the international balance of power which currently so heavily favours
             the rich developed nations and their citizens at the expense of the much larger
             numbers of citizens in the underdeveloped world.
             The billion-dollar question is, though, whether there could be a form of
             democratic world government which was workable and sustainable, not inefficient
             and expensive, and above all which was fair?
             Conventional ideas about world government, which typically picture it in the
             form of a global parliament passing universal laws in order to create an
             identikit legal framework for all world citizens, suffer from three severe
             problems. Firstly, the near-impossibility of persuading all of the world's
             countries to hand over their sovereignty to a global government of this sort.
             Secondly, the risk - of which we are, and must always be, very aware - of
             permitting a future global dictatorship of a particularly intransigent kind
             (imagine how difficult it would be to dislodge a Hitler if he was in possession
             of the kind of absolute power available through such a form of government). And
             thirdly, as we see sometimes today in the European Community, the tendency of
             such a large-scale government to create detailed, uniform laws for the entire
             area it governs; the impetus would be towards a sort of global standardisation,
             almost certainly based in the cultur...