Global Domestic Politics

A citizen’s guide to
running a diverse planet

John M. Bunzl

International Simultaneous Policy Organisation

v1.2

First published in 2013

By International Simultaneous Policy Organisation

P.O.Box 26547, London SE3 7YT, UK.

Simpol.org

© John M. Bunzl 2013

The right of John M. Bunzl to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted under UK Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of International Simultaneous Policy Organisation.

Acknowledgments:

I would like to thank Bill Piper, Denis Knubel and Dirk Weller for their help with illustrations and editing.

Cover design: Orbit Graphic Communication

Contents

Why binding global governance?

Mapping different value-sets

Two key obstacles to global governance:

-   Diverse values

-   Non-democratic nations

Tainting global governance with inadequate, nation-centric notions

Re-imagining global governance afresh

Destructive international competition

Overcoming destructive international competition

How can this be put into practice?

Notes and references

Supporting Simpol

Endorsements

Global Domestic Politics

A citizen’s guide to running a diverse planet

Why global governance?

Today, many of us realise we face an abundance of problems that no nation can tackle alone. Climate change, global financial market crises, excessive transnational corporate power, global poverty, terrorism, resource depletion and organised crime are all examples. We might call these problems global or world-centric due to their transnational nature. But while it may seem obvious no nation, nor even a small group of nations, can solve them alone, we’re far from fully acknowledging the enormity of what this implies.

A look back through human history would show that whenever problems of large-scale pollution or social injustice occurred, they were always ultimately solved by governance; that is, by the implementation and enforcement of appropriate laws, taxes and regulations which either outlawed the damaging behaviour altogether, or deterred it through taxes or other disincentives. In the past, these problems were generally no more than nation-centric; that is, they rarely impacted beyond an individual nation’s borders. Today, however, they’re world-centric, but we possess no form of effective, binding governance on a world scale. We have no entity of global governance capable of managing or solving them.

This places us in an invidious position. Whereas nation-states and their governments came into existence before the Industrial Revolution, and so were in place and able to deal with the problems created by industrialisation, under globalisation the reverse is the case. For globalisation’s problems have come upon us before any form of binding global governance has had a chance to evolve. So we find ourselves, now, entirely without the necessary institutional means for solving them. Yet few of us seem to realise just how potentially catastrophic this is.

To compound this, most of us—our political leaders included—remain substantially unaware of the systemic, competitive global forces that governments are subject to; market forces which, as we’ll later see, not only prevent politicians from addressing global (and many national) problems, but often drive them to make them worse. Not only do we lack adequate global institutions to deal with this dilemma, our national ones, too, are struggling.

The way we think

Albert Einstein famously noted that “we will not solve present problems with the same thinking that created them”, so rightly identifying that it’s the limited and inadequate way in which we think that always lies at the root of our inability to solve problems. For our problems themselves are not the barrier, but the way we think about them.

So, how do we think about them? Our problems, as we noted, are world-centric; they transcend national borders. Solving them thus requires a matching, world-centric level of thinking that sees the world as a whole system. But the way we tend to think about the world today remains at best nation-centric.

Thinking nation-centrically means we still think about and understand the world from a predominantly national perspective; with one nation—usually our own—in mind. Thinking nation-centrically means we still have faith, overtly or tacitly, in the nation-state system. It means we still believe our government, and governments generally, have the ability to solve global problems and that, sooner or later, they will solve them. It also means we tend to assume people in other countries generally see and understand the world in the same way we do—or ought to.

This perspective is completely understandable because in the West we’ve been brought up to believe in the power of our government, and in its ability to solve problems. We also take our democratically elected parliaments for granted, we support our national sports or Olympic teams, we celebrate national events and festivals, we have a national flag, anthem, and so on. Indeed, we hardly even realise just how deeply conditioned we are to believe in our government, and in the idea that governments are powerful actors—the actors on the world stage.

But we are in for a rude awakening. For, the failure of governments to seriously address, let alone solve, global problems is an early indication that solutions won’t be achieved with our present, out-dated, nation-centric level of thinking, nor with the nation-state system it gave rise to. Our problems won’t be solved if we leave governments solely to their own devices. Not only must our thinking catch up to become world-centric, so must the way we govern ourselves.

In this briefing we’ll clearly explain the systemic forces that render national governments inadequate in the age of globalisation. Understanding these forces and how they operate will help us access a higher, world-centric level of thinking. It will help us better understand why only a move to a form of binding global governance can suffice if we’re going to make this small planet of ours reasonably just and sustainable.

Acknowledging that governments—the entities we’ve so long assumed to be in control and capable of protecting us—can no longer adequately do so feels very deeply unsettling. Unsettling for three principal reasons: First, because of the fear and insecurity it evokes in us. Second, because finding a solution requires a move to a new, world-centric level of thinking, and that involves the difficult task of letting go of our present, nation-centric way of thinking. But finally, and perhaps most importantly, because accepting the relative impotence of our governments means having to take responsibility by intervening ourselves. As George Bernard Shaw pithily put it, “Freedom means taking responsibility. That is why most men dread it”.

It is my personal hope that this briefing will help to overcome these fears, and embolden us to take control in our capacity as global citizens.

Scepticism about global governance

Despite growing evidence that some form of binding global governance is necessary, many of us tend to be quite sceptical, or even repelled, by the idea. Either because it conjures in us the prospect of some monolithic, oppressive global state, or because we simply don’t believe co-operative global governance could ever occur quickly enough to avoid collapse. As a result, we convince ourselves that our national leaders will somehow muddle through, or perhaps that technical innovations will come to the rescue. Or we focus our attention on local or individual actions, hoping these will, in time, transform the world. Or perhaps, we shut the worsening global situation off from our minds altogether, preferring instead to immerse ourselves in our immediate everyday lives and concerns.

Understandable though these responses are, the ever-deepening fractures in the present order, such as climate change, financial crises, global recession, resource depletion and terrorism are all problems that demand our attention. Ignoring them will not make them go away. They are, even now, intruding quite forcefully on our daily lives.

The Euro crisis, to take just one example, is generally thought to be about the profligacy of some southern European nations. But far more disturbing is that it’s not actually governments, whether northern or southern European, who are the key actors in this crisis. It is global markets. For, it’s the markets that threaten the Euro’s very survival and call the tune to which all Eurozone governments— whether Germany or others—must dance. Whatever the surface causes of the crisis, then, the central underlying question is this: Do we wish to be governed by the unaccountable and often perverse herd-mentality of global markets? Or do we wish to be governed by democratically elected governments? If it’s to be the latter, then the need for some form of binding global governance to bring global markets back under public supervision and accountability is becoming inescapable.

Whether it’s the Euro crisis, climate change, or any other negative effect of our ungoverned global market, only now are we slowly waking up to what should always have been obvious: that if we want global justice, prosperity and sustainability, binding governance has to be on the same scale as the market to be governed. Since we already have a global market, we cannot any longer do without binding global governance.

Before going any further, some readers may be confused by the term “binding global governance”, feeling unsure as to whether it means a world government or, if not, how global governance could ever be binding without such a government. Despite this, I would ask readers to bear with our discussion. For as will become clear, what we have in mind is not some monolithic, bureaucratic world government, democratic or otherwise, but an altogether different formulation: one that’s capable of delivering healthy, co-operative, people-centred, binding global laws and regulations but without the need for a top-down, distant and bureaucratic global government.

What benefits would binding global governance bring?

Beyond our civilised survival and a way out of our current problems, the likely benefits would include the following:

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Global warming could be brought within sustainable limits and the global commons adequately protected for the future;

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Just as co-operation in Europe has today made war between EU states unthinkable, the same would become the norm globally, so making large-scale wars highly unlikely;

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Consequently, military spending could be dramatically reduced, so releasing enormous sums for health, education, and development in developing countries. This, in turn, would help curb population growth, so gradually bringing it back into balance.

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Multi-national corporations, the financial sector, and the rich could be more fairly taxed and regulated, so reducing inequality and restoring national public finances to health.

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The global financial system could be reformed to serve the needs of the real economy rather than the reverse.[1]

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Wealth could be re-distributed more equitably across national borders on a debt-free basis, so supporting good governance and stronger economies in the most deprived nations.[2] This would allow people to make a decent living in their home countries, so dramatically reducing economic migration and associated inter-cultural tensions.

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Poorer countries could be enabled and required to gradually bring their environmental, social and governmental standards closer to those in the West.

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Binding global governance could enable the localisation of the economy. For example, global taxes could be raised on fossil fuels, so making long-distance transportation much more expensive. This would make local production and consumption (i.e. what is known as “localisation”) relatively more competitive, so promoting local economies and cultures everywhere. Since the tax would be applied globally, no one’s competitiveness would suffer.

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Binding global governance could ensure that the full environmental impact of goods and services was properly reflected in their cost. “Externalities”, as economists call these impacts, would thus be internalised.

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Binding global governance, if designed cooperatively and appropriately, would reduce inter-cultural and international tensions, reduce inequality, and so substantially remove the causes of terrorism.

These benefits, if we think about them, are little different in principle to those that societies in the late Middle Ages started to enjoy when they stopped competing and fighting with one another and transformed their small-states into larger nation-states. Because, together they were safer and stronger; together they were more prosperous; together they were greater than the sum of their parts.

A common concern associated with global governance is the fear of excessive uniformity; of everyone in the world losing their individuality by having to conform to a narrow, homogeneous set of global rules. But is this likely? Is it what occurred in the past?

From the perspective of evolutionary biology, John Stewart makes the point that, far from bringing greater uniformity, binding global governance, like all previous major shifts in our evolution, paradoxically promises the opposite; that is, a vast increase in diversity:

“…the unification of the living processes of the planet into a single organisation [i.e. a form of binding global governance] will not impose uniformity on them. To the contrary, the formation of managed organisations paves the way for a massive increase in diversity by allowing specialisation and a complex division of labour to emerge. This is what has occurred within cells, within multicellular organisms, and within societies of organisms. In the same way, the planetary organisation will produce unity within difference. The formation of a planetary organisation will facilitate a huge increase in the variety and diversity of living processes, including in human behaviour, and will unify this diversity into a coherent whole.”[4]

In his excellent book, The Global Brain, Peter Russell makes much the same point:

“…a human social super-organism [i.e. a form of binding global governance] would not entail our all becoming nondescript cells who have given up their individuality for some higher good. We already are cells in the various organs that compose society yet we still retain considerable individuality. The shift to a social super-organism would mean that society has become a more integrated living system. … this is likely to lead to greater freedom and self-expression on the part of the individual, and to an even greater diversity.”[5]

An evolutionary perspective

Binding global governance isn’t just desirable and necessary, it’s also a part of our natural evolution. It would be just the latest in a series of evolutionary steps that have, over the course of human history, taken us to ever-larger scales of societal cooperation: from organising ourselves in families and then into larger tribes, then into still-larger Middle-Age small-states, and then into today’s even larger nation-states. As new techno-economic developments eventually overwhelmed the capacity of each level of governance to cope, the answer was always the same: to move to the next level of governance. And so it is today: we now need to move from nation-states to some form of binding, essentially democratic, global governance.

But this doesn’t mean dispensing with nation-states. Rather, it means including them within a more encompassing, more liberating, level of global organisation that fully expresses every nation’s and citizen’s interests. Such an evolutionary transition is not something to be feared, but something to be undertaken and embraced with care, courage and compassion. It’s also something that needs to be achieved co-operatively and sensitively, using all the intelligence and ingenuity humanity can muster. For as we’ll later see, binding global governance need not mean losing our national or cultural identity, but enhancing it. It need not mean sacrificing our autonomy and self-interest, but strengthening them. And if we move to world-centric thinking, neither need it be as difficult to bring about as we might at first think.

The lack of awareness of humanity’s evolutionary trajectory, and our current location on it, is potentially catastrophic. For if we’ve no idea of where we are, or where we’re headed, we’re hardly likely to arrive at a prosperous, just and globally sustainable destination. Indeed, John Stewart points out that “Life on Earth is at the threshold of the next step in this trajectory—humanity has the potential to form a unified, inclusive and highly evolvable global society.” But as he goes on to point out, this cannot any longer occur through blind trial and error because that method cannot solve our problems quickly enough. Instead, “the evolutionary process itself is evolving. It is transitioning from a process that stumbles forward blindly, to one that advances consciously and intentionally.”[6]

This factor of conscious intentionality is sometimes referred to as “conscious evolution”. In this context it means that binding global governance is highly unlikely to simply emerge by chance. Rather, humanity needs to take responsibility for consciously establishing it, and to do that, we need to decide upon and follow a viable, practical, and appropriate plan. Providing such a plan is the central purpose of this briefing.

There is no shortage of non-governmental and other organisations purporting to offer solutions to current global problems. But rather than advocate binding global governance, they mostly promote all manner of other lesser actions. We are, by now, all too familiar with entreaties to give to countless charities, to buy ethically, and to recycle. We’re encouraged to support non-binding codes of corporate practice, to sign online petitions, to engage in peaceful protest, to lobby politicians, or to support organisations that do. We’re equally encouraged to support all sorts of schemes such as corporate social responsibility (CSR), socially responsible investing (SRI), shareholder activism, Conscious Capitalism, and so on—the list is almost endless and, indeed, quite exhausting. Meanwhile politicians would have us believe that changing the party in power, or changing the voting system, will help. Governments, meanwhile, continue with their efforts at international development aid, international treaty-making, and so on.

All of this we are encouraged to believe in, to support, and to participate in. All this, we are told, will eventually bring us to a just and sustainable world. And yet, despite it all, global problems continue apace, hardly impacted to any significant degree.

These approaches are failing to have an impact on the bigger picture because none of them, we will argue, address the key underlying problem of destructive international competition; a phenomenon we’ll be explaining later and which most people remain quite unaware of. But this is far from suggesting the above-mentioned approaches aren’t helpful. Indeed they are doing much good. So, the elucidation of destructive international competition will not suggest we should give them up. Rather, it will suggest something far more important: that we should stop believing in them. That we should stop believing that, singly or together, they can ever deliver a just and sustainable planet. Rather, we’ll see that they cannot, and that our prime focus should be on the only thing that can: on establishing an appropriate form of binding global governance.

This briefing is written, then, for those who are coming to accept that nothing short of binding global governance can achieve a just, prosperous and sustainable global society. It’s written for those whose thinking has started to move beyond single-issues to one which recognises that the problems we face are globally systemic; that they arise not so much out of the free choice of governments or corporations, but more out of the fact that all of us— governments, corporations and even we, ourselves— are caught in a globally competitive market system;a system that leaves us very little choice but to carry on acting in the same harmful ways. It’s written, in short, for those whose thinking has already moved beyond “blaming and shaming” others, to one that is broader, deeper, more complete and more encompassing; to a perspective, or way of thinking, we are calling world-centric. Because as Einstein would have recognised, world-centric problems won’t be solved without world-centric thinking.

Existing global institutions and other proposals for global governance

Although binding global governance can in principle be regarded as a world-centric solution to global problems, present global institutions such as the United Nations, as well as proposals for new, more effective forms of global governance, are all based on nation-centric thinking. That is, while these institutions and proposals appear to be global or world-centric, a closer look reveals them to be merely nation-centric.

In this briefing, we’ll be explaining these nation-centric inadequacies by discussing two major problems or obstacles to global governance that have so far been largely ignored: the problem of diverse values across the world, and the problem of nondemocratic nations. We’ll shortly explain why these issues are so important and how the existing global institutions and other proposals for global governance fail to address them.

But we’ll also be discussing an alternative proposal called the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) which we’ll show to be capable of overcoming, not only both of these problems, but also the problem of destructive international competition we alluded to earlier. We’ll therefore be arguing Simpol to be a genuinely world-centric proposal. More than that, we’ll be demonstrating it to be a practical campaign; a viable, practical, strategy citizens around the world can use, already today, to establish a healthy, appropriate, and essentially democratic form of binding global governance.

This briefing is offered, then, as a citizen’s guide to running a diverse planet; an exercise, if you will, in Global Domestic Politics.

Mapping differing value-sets across the world

To help explain the above-mentioned problems, we first need a simple model for categorising and mapping different sets of values or worldviews. This is vital because, although it may seem obvious that people around the world hold vastly differing values and ways of thinking about the world, the profound consequences are too often overlooked.

The subject of values is only now beginning to gain greater recognition in the field of international relations as well as amongst the public as a whole. We see in the media almost every day, for example, how modern western secular values are not appreciated, understood or accepted by traditional religious societies who see them as dangerous, decadent, and lacking any moral anchorage. By the same token, Westerners tend to see the values of traditional societies as regressive, excessively conformist, overly punitive and often characterised by discrimination against women or minorities. Reconciling, or at least taking into account, these and other divergent sets of values is therefore vital if a healthy form of global governance is to be achieved.

Although differing sets of values may at first appear disconnected or even diametrically opposed to one another, some researchers in the field offer us a different and ultimately much more hopeful perspective. Professor Clare W. Graves, for example, offers us a model for categorising values and worldviews called Spiral Dynamics (Beck & Cowan, 1996).

What the research behind this and other similar models suggests is that, far from different value-sets being opposed, separate and seemingly irreconcilable, they are but stages belonging to a single, coherent whole; a whole that can be thought of as an ascending spiral. The research shows that each set of values is merely a sequence, stage, level or wave that individuals and whole societies gradually move through as they develop and evolve over time; as they progress up the spiral. But this is far from being a linear, lock-step affair. Rather, it’s a more fluid process characterised at some points by regressions and deviations, and at others, by periods of swift progress.

The point, then, is that however seemingly opposed different value-sets may appear (and indeed are), this broader view shows that we are all nevertheless on the same journey; a journey we might call the evolution of consciousness. A highly simplified version of the Spiral Dynamics model can be seen in Fig.1. For space reasons, what we are presenting here necessarily omits many important details and nuances. But it should, I hope, suffice for our purposes.

Figure 1

One particular feature of people or societies at any of the first six levels on the spiral is that each believes its own particular perspective—its own level—to be the only valid one (Wilber, 2000). Hence, societies holding a Traditional worldview (level 4), as we already noted, see Modern societies (level 5) as decadent, while Modern societies see Traditional ones as repressive. Each effectively sees the other as wrong. It is only when people reach level 7 or 8 that they start to realise that each level is a valid and valuable part of the spiral. They realise that each level also has its limitations and that each higher level in some sense includes, and yet goes beyond, its predecessor.

These inner value-sets, worldviews, ways of thinking, stages or levels of consciousness (we will use these terms inter-changeably), are of course reflected in the outer way different societies across the world organise themselves. That is, their modes of governance and economic systems tend to be a reflection of their values. For, as we think, so we do (and vice versa)[7]. In Fig. 2[8] below, we see how the different value-sets shown in Fig.1 are broadly represented across the world in various types of governance and economic systems, and the approximate proportion of the world’s population that hold them. You will also see some national examples of each level. This is a fascinating diagram, so please take a few moments to study it.

What is immediately apparent is that the vast majority of the world’s population still holds values broadly at levels 2, 3 and 4; values we are together calling “ethno-centric” and which tend to support only tribal, feudal or authoritarian modes of governance.

Figure 2

A further important aspect, given the evolutionary nature of the spiral, is the dimension of time. For example, modern values which gave rise to the concept of the democratic nation-state and its “social contract” first emerged in any widespread fashion with the European Enlightenment; that is, at the point in history when European societies reached a level 5 stage of development. Only at level 5 will a society be able to practice democracy in the way it is generally understood today in the West. This explains why attempts to parachute a level 5 concept such as democracy into Tribal or Warrior societies (levels 3 and 4), such as Afghanistan or many countries in Africa, have proven unsuccessful and premature. This shows that in the field of international relations we ignore the issue of values at our peril.

This is not to say, of course, that individuals at higher levels of consciousness don’t exist in such societies (or in all societies); they surely do. What we are dealing with, nevertheless, are whole societies— whole collectives—where the worldview of the vast bulk of the population holds sway. Neither, likewise, are we implying any judgement on the intrinsic value of different societies. We’re merely noting where they’re presently located in a developmental sequence along which all societies appear to travel.

Just as Tribal, Warrior and Traditional societies (levels 2, 3 and 4) can be said to hold a broadly ethno-centric way of thinking which cannot yet practice Western-style democracy, Modern and Postmodern Western societies (at levels 5 and 6) broadly hold a nation-centric way of thinking; a worldview that finds it difficult to see the world as a whole system and to fully appreciate the need for global governance.[9] As is argued in more detail elsewhere, even people at an Early Integral stage (level 7) still have some difficulty in this respect (Bunzl, 2012).

Consequently, we should recognise that it’s not just levels 2-4 that are unlikely to be receptive to the idea of global governance. Levels 5-7, although more receptive, still have only a patchy interest in the subject. While some at levels 5-7 readily acknowledge the need for global coordination on certain issues, they generally fail to see the need for governance across all the issues. This is borne out by the fact that, today, binding global governance is not a topic many in the West concern themselves with.

While engaging with people at all levels is certainly necessary and worthwhile, it is only at around level 8 (Integral) that people seem to fully see and understand the urgent need for binding global governance and can conceive of it in a genuinely world-centric manner.

Given only a tiny minority of the world population holds a worldview at level 8 (Integral), the prospect of implementing binding global governance anytime soon may seem completely unrealistic. But a closer look at how previous historic transformational shifts have occurred suggests that they are often catalysed by a small, often tiny, minority.[10] This is a point famously echoed by Margaret Mead when she said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” Here too, then, the reader is asked to suspend judgment. For, despite this seemingly insurmountable difficulty, we’ll later see how binding global governance could be catalysed by a relatively small number of people.

So in the light of the Spiral Dynamics values model, let us outline, now, the two key problems or obstacles to global governance we earlier identified. We’ll then go on to explain how the existing global institutions and other proposals for more effective global governance fail to overcome them.

Two key obstacles to binding global governance

The problem of diverse sets of values

To understand this problem, let’s imagine for a moment that democratic global governance were already implemented in today’s world and that every adult consequently had an equal vote.

We saw in Fig. 2 that the vast majority of the world’s population holds ethno-centric value-sets at levels 2-4 (Wilber, 2000; Beck & Cowan, 1996); value-sets which are unlikely to prove healthy if translated into global policies. Thus, on a one-person-one-vote basis, this might mean the majority imposing its own level 3-4 traditional, religious cultural values, policies and governance systems on the entire world. To implement global democracy in today’s world could, in other words, be regressive. It would invite a world-centric (level 8) political technology to fall in to the hands of a majority who possess only an ethno-centric (level 2-4) way of thinking. This, we may imagine, would result in an unhealthy, repressive and potentially dangerous situation.[11]

It becomes clear, then, that although the differing values of each national society need to be heard and taken into proper account, none of the levels beneath level 8 can be allowed to dominate.

But why should any level dominate? Privileging level 8 may at first appear contradictory to the principle of fairness. Or it may seem elitist and undemocratic. But prioritising level 8 (Integral) is both necessary and appropriate because, as we earlier suggested, it has a special quality possessed by none of the preceding levels. Whereas each of the preceding levels generally sees only its own perspective as valid and so rejects the others, level 8 is the first that recognises, honours and integrates all of the previous levels. It is, in effect, the only level that is genuinely world-centric; the only level capable of devising global policies that would be genuinely beneficial and acceptable to all.

This, I hasten to add, doesn’t mean advocating the world be run by some committee of level 8 “wise elders”. Rather, as we’ll later see, the Simpol proposal permits beneficial, level 8 global policies to be arrived at entirely consensually and, paradoxically, with the whole world’s participation and involvement.

The problem of non-democratic nations

The second of our two problems arises because, as we’ve already noted, and as Fig. 2 indicates, different value-sets across the world give rise to nations at differing stages of civic-political development (Tonkin, 2010). Nations at level 4 or earlier stages, such as the People’s Republic of China for example, will tend to be non-democratic, whereas others at level 5 or later will tend to be democratic.

In considering how all these levels of civic-political development can be accommodated within a form of binding global governance, it’s reasonable to expect that non-democratic nations would view global governance based on democracy as a threat to their national, non-democratic political arrangements. China, for example, is unlikely to allow its citizens to participate in democratic governance at the global level because that would only invite them to question why they do not already enjoy the same rights at the national level. Thus, nations such as China are likely to view democratic global governance as conflicting with their domestic political arrangements and so are highly unlikely to support it.

It’s important to recognise, then, that any global governance proposal that fails to take differing values into account, or fails to reconcile the divergence between democratic and non-democratic nations, is unlikely to prove viable. Simpol, as we’ll later see, seems to be alone in overcoming these obstacles.

Tainting the idea of global governance with inadequate nation-centric notions

With these two key problems in mind, let’s start our investigation by noticing that most of us, if we consider the topic of global governance at all, tend to infuse it with our own pre-conceived nation-centric notions. That is, the very idea tends to involve us taking our current mental model of national representative democracy and simply projecting it up to the global level.

We thus tend to assume binding global governance would necessarily be fully democratic and entail a world parliament of some kind, consisting of elected representatives from around the world. Or, perhaps, a newly-reformed United Nations which might include such a parliament. Indeed, most current global governance proposals express precisely these inadequate, nation-centric notions. The UN Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA)[12] , Falk & Strauss[13] , Voteworldparliament.org[14] , George Monbiot[15], the World Constitution and Parliament Association (WCPA)[16] and the World Parliament Experiment[17] would all be examples.

Alternatively, other proposals assume that the internet now makes the need for parliamentary representatives redundant. So they propose forms of binding global governance that are not only fully democratic, but direct; that is, which allow citizens to directly construct their own form of democratic global governance using internet-based systems for policy formulation and voting (WDDM[18]).

But with our two key problems of ethno-centric values and non-democratic nations firmly in mind, it’s easy to see that all these proposals are likely to prove unviable. For, to function with any level of legitimacy and effectiveness, a world parliament or a form of direct global democracy would have to be implemented with the consent and participation of China and other non-democratic nations. But given democracy at the global level is unlikely, as we said, to be acceptable to nations who do not practice it at the national level, it’s easy to see that neither world parliaments nor forms of global direct democracy are likely to be viable in the foreseeable future.

Moreover, by offering all adults in the world a vote, both these types of proposals assume most people around the world already possess, or are approaching, a world-centric worldview (level 7/8) and will consequently see global governance as necessary and something they would want to participate in. But as we already noted, the majority of the world’s population, particularly those living in developing countries, still remain at ethno-centric stages of development (level 4 or lower); at stages which are still struggling even with idea of national-level governance (Bunzl, 2012). This is reflected in the World Values Survey which showed that 47% of survey respondents identified primarily with their locality, while a further 38% identified with their nation (Norris, 2000), so showing that an overwhelming 85% of the world’s population hold either an ethno-centric or nation-centric worldview.

It’s clear, then, that these proposals mistakenly assume that the vast majority of the world’s population already understands the need for, and would want to participate in, global governance; a false assumption which reveals the nation-centric Modern or Post-modern (level 5-6) perspective these proposals are tainted with.

The United Nations and present global institutions

We should also consider whether the United Nations (UN) and its associated global institutions—the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank—offer a viable route to achieving binding global governance.

At first glance, these institutions appear to offer the most obvious and available route. But a closer look reveals the UN to be too deeply constrained by the nation-state system it is inescapably a part of. Indeed, the UN is not in a position of authority over nation-states, but rather the reverse. For the powers of sanction and the use of force are mandated not by the UN as an autonomous independent entity, but by the Security Council; that is, by the USA, Russia, China, France and Great Britain who are the Security Council’s five permanent members (Whittaker, 1997). [19] Thus, the only powers the UN appears to possess are not even its own powers at all.

In assessing the likelihood of the UN ever delivering a form of binding global governance, then, we are faced with a conundrum. For if the UN is ever to gain a sufficient measure of autonomous authority over nation-states, then nation-states—and especially the most powerful ones—would have to voluntarily give up the authority they already possess. But this represents something of a contradiction. As repeated failures to reform the UN have shown, any change likely to compromise the power and authority of the Security Council is vetoed.[20] As such, the prospect of the UN resolving this contradiction seems remote.

As for the IMF and the World Bank, they are governed not by the UN, nor by any equal international consensus, but by their principal shareholders who are, once again, the world’s most powerful nations.[21] Moreover, these institutions do not govern the global economy, but merely react to it. The global economy is driven by global markets; that is, by the sum of millions of individual daily decisions made by thousands of global investors, international commercial banks and transnational corporations. It is the micro-decisions of each of these entities that are influenced by, and together constitute, the macro herd-mentality of global markets—a force no one can be said to control.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO), on the other hand, has in principle a consensual structure governed by all its member-nations equally. But in practice, only the most powerful nations are able to use its rules and dispute settlement procedure to protect or project their interests (Hoekman & Mavroidis, 2000). Beyond that, the rules embodied in the WTO only serve, arguably, to fairly regulate a global trading system which, because it already structurally favours the most powerful national economies, provides merely a veneer of fairness (Sachs et al., 1998). It’s difficult to see, then, how the UN or the other existing global institutions could evolve to a position in which they could bindingly govern nation-states in a manner that is autonomous, objective, or fair; in a manner, in other words, that could be described as effective, let alone acceptable.

Today’s global institutions, we might conclude, simply remain too tightly constrained by—and too dependent upon—nation-states; they simply don’t possess the independence and authority they would need to become the institutions of binding global governance we require. Nor, notably, do they incorporate any direct accountability to citizens. Despite their world-centric pretensions, we can see that they still remain subtly, yet decisively, nation-centric; still creatures of the nation-centric worldview. But since these institutions were created by nation-states, perhaps that shouldn’t greatly surprise us.

But the excessive dependency of the global institutions also has an inverse twin: the excessive autonomy of nation-states themselves. As their routine failure to agree anything substantive on climate change or on many other global issues indicates, nations seem unable to co-operate substantively in many vital areas because of their need to pursue only their short-term national interests (Johnston, 1996). For nation-states, then, there is the problem of alienation from each other; an excessive autonomy or inability to co-operate that is inherent in nation-centrism itself: that each nation exists primarily for itself.

These twin but opposite systemic pathologies—on the one side, global institutions that are too dependent upon powerful nations and, on the other, nations that are too alienated from one another—not only ensure that global problems keep on worsening, they also remind us just how forlorn is the hope that either the established global institutions or the world’s nations could ever solve global problems if we leave them wholly to their own devices.

The e-Parliament and transnational political parties

Before we move on, two further approaches to binding global governance are worth mentioning. One of these is the e-Parliament project[22]; an independent, non-governmental initiative that aims to link all the world’s nationally elected members of parliament (MPs) in an internet forum. The idea is to provide a transnational parliamentary platform for the global co-ordination of policy.

But by linking together only the world’s elected MPs, it’s immediately clear that this initiative effectively excludes all non-democratic nations. This deficiency alone casts serious doubt on this approach. But beyond that, the e-Parliament also effectively excludes citizens in democratic nations from having any binding influence over the policies being formulated. It assumes, if you will, that simply because its participating MPs were elected by citizens to their national parliaments, this automatically gives those MPs the democratic legitimacy to develop and implement global policies too. But this would be rather like us electing local politicians for the sole purpose of determining relatively mundane issues such as local car parking regulations, only to suddenly discover they were developing the nation’s foreign policy too! Indeed, the indeterminate nature of each higher level of governance—that is, its much broader and more powerful scope of action—requires that each new level be directly accountable, as far as possible, to citizens. To ignore this requirement would, we may imagine, invite the possibility of an unaccountable global autocracy. So, in failing to meet the accountability requirement for citizens in democratic nations while ignoring non-democratic nations altogether, the ability of this initiative to produce a healthy form of global governance seems doubtful. It’s an initiative that thus remains far from world-centric.

Another approach to binding global governance favoured by some is to establish transnational political parties. The idea is that the conflict between national self-interests and the global common interest can somehow be bridged by developing political parties or international party alliances that go beyond national borders and which, these parties hope, could then coordinate their policies on a transnational, if not global, basis (Sehm-Patomäki & Ulvila, 2007). Examples, here, would be the Global Greens and the Non-violent Radical Party.[23]

But here, too, the presence of inadequate, nation-centric thinking can be detected. For the very idea of transnational political parties is seriously flawed if we consider the highly unlikely prospect of all, or even many, of these parties ever finding themselves simultaneously in office in enough nations to permit them to coordinate their policies. Moreover, the national branch of a transnational party, even if it found itself in power, could not escape its prime responsibility to protect its national interest. With few of its sister-parties in power in other countries, it would thus find itself having to subordinate its global aspirations to the prime objective of pursuing its own nation’s interests. It would find itself caught, that is, in precisely the same dilemma as all existing parties in power find themselves in today.

Political parties, transnational or otherwise, thus share, as it were, the same nation-centric “DNA” as nations themselves, and so are too deeply embedded in—too constrained by—the nation-state system they would seek to transform; another contradiction in terms (Bunzl, 2009a).

All the various examples we have reviewed show, then, how the world-centric solution of binding global governance is undermined by a failure to match it with genuinely world-centric thinking, both in terms of how global governance may practically be achieved, and in terms of how our two key problems may be overcome.

Re-imagining global governance afresh

How, then, could we re-imagine global governance in a way that overcomes these seemingly insurmountable problems?

Given how our nation-centric notions of governance only seem to undermine us, our first step must be to abandon—to let go of—our nation-centric mental models. Let us completely forget for a moment, then, our pre-conceived ideas about democracy, parliaments, representatives, political parties, laws and courts. Instead, with our minds now cleared, let us imagine a wholly informal situation simply to see what it might take for people with conflicting interests to overcome their conflict; let’s re-focus, in other words, on what it takes to establish any form of order or governance at all.

Let’s suppose, for example, we are walking past a school playground and we observe a group of children fighting over a packet of sandwiches. How could they come to stop their destructive brawl, which is likely to end up with the sandwiches being destroyed, and arrive at a co-operative agreement under which the sandwiches could be shared? How, simply put, could the transition from outright chaos to ordered governance be navigated?

Fanciful though this scenario may seem, it closely resembles the dynamic all nations find themselves subject to under globalisation; in a near-anarchic situation in which they all compete destructively for inward investment and jobs (Gray, 1998).

In our playground example, the conflicting interests of the children are, of course, clear. Any child that wins the fight would gain all the sandwiches; a potential benefit which makes it in each child’s interests to keep fighting as hard as s/he can. Any child that stops or weakens their stance almost certainly excludes him-/herself from any chance of a sandwich at all. And yet from a broader perspective, continuing the fight seems likely to result in the sandwiches being completely destroyed, so resulting in no benefit to anyone. In this way, we can see how a vicious circle is set in motion. Despite the high probability of the sandwiches being destroyed, the fight continues—and there seems to be no way out. This destructive scenario, as game theorists will recognise, is similar to what is known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma; a dilemma from which there is ordinarily no escape.[24]

Destructive international competition

It is here, then, that we come to the key phenomenon that underlies global problems. For as we suggested, this vicious circle is actually quite close to the predicament nations find themselves in under globalisation; in a dilemma that arises because the factors that determine national economic success or failure—capital, corporations and investment—today move relatively freely across national borders. Governments therefore have no choice but to implement only those policies that attract or retain those factors. Policies to solve global problems—that is, which increase social or environmental protection and would therefore increase business costs—are thus effectively excluded or diluted because they would inevitably endanger the nation’s economic competitiveness, and increase unemployment. Governments therefore find themselves quite unable to act substantively on global problems, and often find they have no choice but to exacerbate them.[25]

Concerning climate change, for example, the London Financial Times (November 16, 2006) outlined the problem succinctly:

“governments remain reluctant to address [this] threat because any country acting alone to curb its greenhouse gas emissions, without similar commitments by other governments, risks damaging the competitiveness of its industries.”

With respect to the regulation and taxation of corporations, especially multinationals:

“Governments vying to attract inward investment are weighing the advantages of cutting business costs…[Corporate] Tax rates have been falling across the world over the past quarter of a century.... This trend is forcing some experts to the conclusion that governments have embarked on a race to the bottom.” (Financial Times, January 19, 2007).

Concerning human rights, inter-racial equity and economic justice in developing countries:

“The South African government has exempted foreign companies from having to sell a 25% stake in their local operations to black business… The government exempted foreign players because “we had to be mindful that we also have to position South Africa in a global environment where there is fierce competition for investment”, said Mandisi Mpahlwa, South African Minister for trade & industry.” (Financial Times, December 15, 2006).

Regarding worker’s rights and sweat-shop wage exploitation:

“Asda [part of Walmart] is today offering customers a passable two-piece suit for the price of a round of drinks in a London bar. Bangladeshi student, Shafiqul Islam, said “People can’t survive on £12 a month, but if the government protests, Asda and others will go to China or somewhere else.” (The London Paper, January 22, 2007).

And concerning attempts to regulate global financial markets following perhaps the most severe financial crisis in history:

“Row erupts as watchdog calls for tax on the City. A fresh row has erupted over ‘excessive’ banking bonuses after Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the City watchdog, claimed Britain's financial sector has grown ‘beyond a socially reasonable size’. His comments caused an uproar in financial centres yesterday, including Edinburgh, with leading figures and organisations warning that Britain would lose yet another major industry to competitors abroad. John Cridland, deputy director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said: ‘The government and regulators should be very wary of undermining the international competitiveness of the UK's financial services industry’ (The Scotsman, November 29, 2009).

What these examples reveal is that all the global issues people generally perceive to be “the problem” are not the problem at all, but merely symptoms of a deeper, underlying dynamic. Be it climate change, global poverty, worker’s rights, corporate accountability or financial market instability, they all remain unaddressed and/or exacerbated by essentially the same vicious circle faced by the children fighting over sandwiches. That is, any nation that moves first to more tightly regulate or tax corporations or financial markets would be punished by capital, corporations and investment moving elsewhere to avoid such regulations. Any nation that moved significantly to do the right thing would lose out. Thus, it’s not that governments don’t want to deal with these problems, it’s that they can’t. The deeper conclusion to be drawn is that maintaining national competitiveness is fundamentally incompatible with solving global problems. It is this world-embracing global dynamic, then, that we are calling destructive international competition.[26] It is this vicious circle, and how it may be overcome, that should be our central concern.

Now, it’s necessary to point out that many political economists dispute the above contention. While they agree there is evidence of governments “racing to the bottom” in some specific and isolated policy areas, such as corporation tax, there is, they say, little evidence of a more generalised phenomenon (Drezner, 2000, 2001). But while the words “destructive international competition” might seem to be just another way of saying “race to the bottom”, it crucially includes an additional and much more widespread effect: that it prevents governments from acting adequately; a phenomenon known as “regulatory chill” (Blair, 2008).

What we are contending, then, is that even if no generalised race to the bottom may be occurring (which is arguable), destructive international competition does at least lead to significant regulatory chill. Indeed, whether social and environmental protection regulations are racing to the bottom, staying still or rising slightly, is not the issue. Because, whichever is the case, global problems are still far outpacing regulation and the ability of governments to cope. Destructive international competition, it seems then, still remains the key barrier.

David J. Blair is one of the few economists to acknowledge this when he points out that “Race to the bottom critics tend not to devote much attention to [regulatory chill]…” and their neglect of it is, he says,

“a major shortcoming of many analyses of the impact of globalisation on environmental regulation because [regulatory chill] involves a much larger number of countries than those that are most likely to weaken or dismantle existing environmental laws and regulations.” (Blair, 2008, p. 7).

Thus, the theory of destructive international competition encompasses both regulatory chill and race-to-the-bottom theories. But instead of simply seeing them in isolation, i.e. in terms of whether regulations themselves either weaken or stay still, it sees them relative to the urgency of global problems; that is, it sees them systemically and world-centrically.

At this point let’s revert to our evolutionary theme. Because, if we look back to earlier crises in evolution, we find that the dynamic of destructive competition has always been—and likely always will be—the key barrier to evolutionary progress. As evolutionary biologist John Stewart points out, this barrier applies

“to all living processes. The circumstances that cause it are universal. Individuals who use resources to help others without benefit to themselves will be out-competed. They will be disadvantaged compared to those who use the resources for their own benefit. … The barrier has applied whether the evolutionary mechanisms are those that adapt corporations, individual humans, other multi-cellular organisms, single cells or autocatalytic sets.” (Stewart, 2000, p. 57).

In identifying destructive international competition as the key underlying problem, then, we are deeply connecting with the timeless, universal barrier that all societies of organisms threatened with wipe-out have had to overcome. If we fail to deal with destructive international competition, then quite simply, we fail. While this situation persists, financial market chaos and, ultimately, the destruction of the environment are the likely outcomes: the sandwiches, and humanity with them, are likely to end up destroyed.

But it’s not just governments that are caught in this way. Corporations are too. For the inescapable reality for virtually all corporations is that acting responsibly and sustainably would almost inevitably cost them more. It would mean paying higher wages and conforming to more stringent, more costly, standards. And higher costs, if they are not equally incurred by competitors, ultimately mean going out of business. As a report in The Economist concurred, “firms that go green will merely burden themselves with higher costs than their less virtuous competitors.”[28] Any corporation trying to do the right thing would lose out.

Now, advocates of corporate social responsibility (CSR), Conscious Capitalism (and the like) often cite research showing that, over the longer-term, corporations adopting a more socially and environmentally responsible business strategy—the so-called “stakeholder value” business model—outperform those that remain with the profit-maximising “shareholder value” model (Strong, 2009). Their assumption, consequently, is that all corporations should—and ultimately will—follow the stakeholder model because it’s in their self-interest; because it would give them a competitive advantage.

But if we look at what’s actually happening in the world, we find there’s usually only one major company in any given market sector that makes the stakeholder strategy the centre of its business model and brand image. In the UK cosmetics sector, for example, there is only The Body Shop that takes that approach, and no one else. In the U.S. ice cream sector, there is only Ben & Jerry’s and no one else. In contract flooring, there is only Interface and no one else. Why is this? If adopting a stakeholder approach means improved performance and a competitive advantage, surely companies would be falling over themselves to emulate one another?

The point CSR advocates are missing is that while it may be attractive and profitable for one major company in a given market sector to make environmental and social responsibility into a profitable market niche, that may only make it harder, rather than easier, for competitors to follow. Because the money a competitor would have to invest to ethically out-compete an already-ethical market leader may be better and more profitably spent by differentiating itself and its products in other ways; by investing in superior product quality, for example, or in branding, in more catchy advertising, lower prices or superior customer service. As the widely respected expert on competition, Prof. Michael E. Porter, points out, “Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value” (Porter, 1996, p. 45). Thus, we’d be foolish to take one or two examples of good corporate behaviour to mean others will necessarily follow.[29]

The deeper reality, rather, is that efforts to encourage individual corporations to behave more responsibly, while doubtless helpful, can never be sufficient. Like governments, it is not that most corporate executives don’t want to behave more responsibly, it’s that destructive competition doesn’t allow them to.

Likewise, approaches by which we, consumers, seek to harness our buying power to pressure corporations towards more ethical and responsible behaviour can never be adequate either. For as George Monbiot points out:

“Those who do seek to make ethical purchasing decisions will often discover … that the signal they are trying to send becomes lost in the general market noise. I might reject one brand of biscuits and buy another, on the grounds that the second one was less wastefully packaged, but unless I go to the trouble of explaining that decision to the biscuit manufacturer I chose not to patronize, the company will have no means of discovering why I made it, or even that I made a decision at all. Even if I do, my choice is likely to be ineffective unless it is coordinated with the choices of hundreds (or, depending on the size of the company, thousands) of other consumers. But consumer boycotts are notoriously hard to sustain. Shoppers are, more often than not, tired, distracted and drowning in information and conflicting claims. Campaigning organizations report that a maximum of one or two boycotts per nation per year is likely to be effective; beyond that, customer power becomes too diffuse.”[32]

Ultimately, then, only globally implemented governance can ensure that all corporations are properly taxed, regulated, and conform to appropriate standards—wherever in the world they operate. That is, destructive international competition can only be overcome by global co-operation and governance.

The consciousness barrier

Obvious though this may seem, it remains far from obvious to most people. For if it were, binding global governance would already be an established topic in daily discourse; it would already be the public’s most urgent priority. Indeed, given destructive international competition underpins virtually all our global problems, we might wonder why it still goes largely unrecognised amongst the media, NGOs, and even amongst politicians?

Much of the answer lies in the presently predominant abstract/rational (Modern and Postmodern) level of thinking (levels 5-6), as John Stewart explains:

“For someone to 'see' something cognitively, they have to be able to represent it mentally. … If they can't represent something, it won't exist for them. … At the abstract/rational level [i.e. levels 5-6] individuals tend to attempt to model phenomena by reducing them to a collection of fixed objects that interact according to fixed rules and laws that are not affected by the context in which the objects are embedded. So when abstract/rational individuals think about governments they tend to personify them as agents that are free of their contexts and that can choose how they wish to act on the world. These individuals are unable to represent in their mental models the contextual systems and processes in which governments are embedded and in which they participate. They therefore cannot think these through and see their consequences.”[34]

Laske, too, points out that “One of the stark limitations of formal logic [i.e. of the abstract/rational mode of thinking characteristic of levels 5-6], despite the great human achievement that it is, is that it only deals with closed systems, not open, transformational ones. It cannot size up nonphysical moving targets (Laske, 2008, p. 43).”

Destructive international competition, notably, presents just such a case: it is a non-physical phenomenon in constant flux which cannot be seen or touched. To understand it as a vicious circle no nation can escape—to see it in its world-centric fullness—one must already have moved beyond both an abstract/rational (levels 5-6) way of thinking, and perhaps even beyond an Early-integral way of thinking (level 7).[35] Instead one must reside at a world-centric, Integral, systemic level (i.e. at level 8); a level very few indeed have attained.

This explains, then, why most people and organisations cannot yet recognise the all-embracing dynamic that destructive international competition represents or, at least, they cannot do so fully. They cannot see, moreover, how we—whether as citizens, consumers, employees, public servants or business people—are all enmeshed in it too. We could say, if you will, that people at levels 5-7 see the fish—that is, they can identify all the entities such as individual corporations and governments and their destructive behaviour (and then promptly blame them for it)— but only level 8 can also see the water; the substance the fish swim and compete in, and which substantially determines their behaviour from the outset. And what we cannot see, we are destined to remain subject to (Laske, 2008).

Ken Wilber, the prominent American philosopher, also acknowledges this in the case of the inadequate thinking that pervades the environmental movement; a movement that could be said to reside, broadly, at level 6 (Postmodern):

“Gaia’s main problem is not toxic waste dumps, ozone depletion, or biospheric pollution. These global problems can only be recognized and responded to from a global, world-centric awareness [i.e. from level 8], and thus Gaia’s main problem is that not enough human beings have developed and evolved from egocentric [levels 1-4] to sociocentric [levels 5-7] to worldcentric [level 8], there to realize—and act on—the ecological crisis” (Wilber, 2000 p. 525).

As Einstein so rightly recognised, then, it is our way of thinking or consciousness that must evolve if global problems are to be correctly interpreted and then appropriately acted on (Bunzl, 2012).

Pseudo-democracy

The severe restriction on government action that destructive international competition subtly enforces is not, however, its only unwelcome side-effect. Of particular importance is its effect on democracy.

Since the free-movement of capital and corporations forces governments to maintain their international competitiveness, their policies, as we saw, are severely constrained. Not surprisingly, all parties in power in virtually any country end up implementing substantially the same, narrow, business-and market-friendly “competitiveness” agenda. That’s why we find left-of-centre parties adopting policies traditionally espoused by right-of-centre parties. It’s why New Labour’s Tony Blair was often said to be the best Conservative leader since Margaret Thatcher. Or, as the former Conservative prime minister, John Major, himself once put it, “I went swimming leaving my clothes on the bank and when I came back Tony Blair was wearing them” (The Week, 29 October, 1999).

While the mechanics of free and fair elections may still exist, the quality of democracy has been subtly but substantively degraded, reducing it to what I have elsewhere described as pseudo-democracy (Bunzl, 2001, pp. 30-36); a kind of electoral charade in which, in terms of macro-economic and environmental policy at least, it no longer matters much which party we vote for, or whether we bother to vote at all. It’s little wonder, then, that today’s modern democracies are characterised, on the one hand, by chronic voter apathy and, on the other, by a resurgence of far-right political parties.[37]

Destructive international competition thus severely constrains governments and, by consequence, the ability of citizens to remedy the situation through conventional democratic processes. What all this amounts to is a “legitimation crisis”; a breakdown in the adequacy of the existing, nation-centric worldview and its governance systems to command allegiance (Habermas, 1973). Not only are our governments stuck in a vicious circle they can’t escape, pseudo-democracy means conventional party politics can no longer help us. We citizens no longer have any effective means of redress—a perilous situation indeed.

What to do?

Given the global problems confronting us, let’s now take stock of our overall predicament in terms of the existing approaches to reform offered to us.

We saw, firstly, how the existing global institutions are caught in a contradiction: to gain any authority over nation-states, nation-states would first have to give up their own authority—something they’re highly unlikely to do. The global institutions, although doing their best, don’t therefore seem to offer a near-term solution.

Nation-states, meanwhile, are locked in a vicious circle of destructive international competition which prevents them from taking the necessary action. Left to their own devices, they too, offer little hope.

One consequence of destructive international competition, we saw, is pseudo-democracy: that all parties in power have no choice but to follow much the same competitiveness-oriented policies. Thus, attempts to substantively change governments’ policies, whether through the established political system or from outside it, simply cannot succeed to any significant degree. No amount of changing the party in power, changing the voting system, protesting or petitioning can push a government to take action likely to significantly harm its economic competitiveness.

But when it comes to attempts that circumvent governments and politics altogether, we also saw that these fare no better. For attempts at improving corporate behaviour via voluntary codes of practice, corporate social responsibility or ethical consumerism, and so on, cannot have anything more than a limited, temporary and inadequate effect. And important though it is, we will hardly transform the world merely through charity. With governments fearing to tax and regulate business adequately, corporations and banks can only continue to compete destructively with their peers to the general detriment of society and the environment.

Beyond that, what options remain? Some may think opting out by shutting themselves off in isolated, self-sufficient eco-communities offers a solution. But as crises and dislocations hit the global economy with increasing frequency and severity and as citizens in towns and cities become increasingly deprived and desperate, self-sufficient communities are likely to be the first to be overrun and destroyed.

Our predicament, then, appears to be that there is no way out; that there is nowhere for us to turn. And this, we can readily acknowledge, feels deeply unsettling indeed.

But this need only remain so if we confine ourselves to nation-centric thinking and to the existing national level of governance. It would only be true if there were no way to overcome destructive international competition.

In the remainder of this briefing we will show that there is a way; a way that requires us to re-focus on governments. Because, for all our frustrations with politics and politicians, governments still remain crucial. Indeed, the vicious circle of destructive international competition can only be overcome if virtually all governments can be brought to co-operate. And that, if you will, is just another way of expressing what we have argued all along: that only a move to co-operative global governance can possibly provide a solution.

As we re-focus on governments, our newfound awareness of pseudo-democracy means we needn’t lose time engaging with party politics in the conventional manner. But equally, we needn’t make the mistake of abandoning party-political processes altogether. For what we have in mind is a completely new mode of political engagement capable of turning those processes to our advantage. That is, an unprecedented, world-centric way of doing politics that works through established political processes and yet is capable of driving our governments to co-operatively deliver a form of binding, people-centred global governance.

Later in this briefing we’ll discover what this new politics looks like, how it works, and how we can play our part.

Overcoming destructive international competition: establishing the principles for a global agreement

Before we discover this new politics, let’s first look at the broader principles and concepts upon which a world-centric form of binding global governance could be constructed. For, it is these principles that constitute the basis of the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) campaign; the campaign we are suggesting—and will show—to be capable, not only of overcoming the problems of diverse values and non-democratic nations, but also the problems of destructive international competition and pseudo-democracy. Simpol, we will see, expresses the “new politics” we have referred to.

Global, simultaneous action

Let us deal, first, with how destructive international competition may be overcome. Some readers may already have realised that the solution resides in achieving an agreement based on simultaneous action. If the children brawling in the playground could agree to simultaneously cease their fight and agree to share the sandwiches, a rudimentary, informal form of governance would have been established and the destruction of the sandwiches avoided.

For this to occur, it’s vital that each child comes to realise that the most likely outcome is no longer that s/he may gain all the sandwiches, but that they’ll be destroyed if the brawl continues. In this way, what each child regards as being in their self-interest changes; in fact, it’s reversed. Each child starts to see that their self-interest ceases to be to compete and fight, and starts to be to co-operate and share. The essence of establishing governance lies in how that vital transition can practically be made and managed.

Before going any further, let’s pause for a moment. For, almost without realising it, we’ve already reached a fairly radical and quite surprising conclusion: that achieving governance does not depend on structures or institutions, nor even on democracy. Rather, it depends on agreement and simultaneous action against a backdrop of worsening circumstances in which the common interest to cooperate starts to become in each competitor’s self-interest.

By abandoning our pre-conceived, nation-centric notions of governance, then, we see that global governance could be achieved by simultaneous action. We also see that co-operation, paradoxically, is not about self-sacrifice, but about self-interest. Or, to put it another way, we could say that the more intense and damaging competition becomes at one level, the greater is the drive towards fruitful cooperation at the next (Sahtouris, 2000; Koestler, 1979; Vermeij, 2004; Bunzl, 2009a).

Articulating a future co-operative context

A vital part of this process is that the possibility of simultaneous action, and a viable route to achieving it, be actively articulated. One of the children needs to start suggesting it. People need to talk about it. As more and more do, a new future context starts to take shape in people’s minds; a mental model starts to be built in which fruitful co-operation starts to be understood by the whole society as both desirable and realistic. This applies as much to the children in the playground as to the world’s nations and, perhaps most of all, to us.

Because, without even the idea of such a context or how to reach it, all players—whether children, governments or citizens generally—of course remain locked in the present competitive context; locked, that is, in the present, destructive vicious circle they cannot see beyond—a circle that has only chaos and collapse as its end-point. It’s the articulation of a future co-operative context, then, and a viable means of achieving it, which give birth to the pull or drive towards ever-higher and larger levels of governance. It’s this drive, indeed, that has taken human social units from families to tribes to Middle-Age small-states to nation-states. It is this evolutionary drive that calls us again, now, to co-operatively establish a form of binding global governance.

Accommodating non-democratic nations

Having seen that governance fundamentally depends neither on democracy nor on existing institutional structures but on an agreement to act simultaneously, we arrive at yet another surprising conclusion.

This is that the issue of whether each nation’s decision to co-operate in such an agreement is made democratically or in some other way is entirely secondary. The primary issue is simply the fact that all nations have agreed to co-operate; the fact they see co-operation as in their self-interest. From this we could imagine that, while democratic nations may decide to participate in binding global governance as a result of their own internal democratic processes, non-democratic nations may do so by the simple decision of their government.[39]

By basing global governance on agreement rather than democracy, then, we see how both democratic and non-democratic nations could find such an arrangement viable and acceptable. We see, indeed, how the problem of accommodating both democratic and non-democratic nations is effectively resolved.

Accommodating citizens in democratic nations

Vital though it is to achieve global consensus, we must not forget that citizens in democratic countries must have a binding say. For as we already noted, to invite just the world’s governments alone to design and implement global policies without any in-put from or accountability to citizens would be to invite a top-down global autocracy; exactly the scenario so many “New World Order” conspiracy theorists fear.[40]

In doing so, we need to ensure the views of citizens in highly populous democratic nations, such as India, are not permitted to overwhelm the views of citizens in less-populous ones. For, if we failed to prevent that, citizens in small democratic nations would effectively have no influence at all. An appropriate balance could be achieved, we’re suggesting, by citizens in each democratic country engaging in their own democratic process to formulate the policies that are to be globally agreed and implemented. But when it comes to trying to achieve agreement on those policies at the international level, this would then be subject to the equality of all nations, whether they are democratic or not. This arrangement is depicted in Fig. 3 below.

Figure 3

Clearly, this would effectively give greater weight to the votes of citizens in smaller democratic countries. But this seems to be the only practical way that accountability to citizens in democratic nations can be assured, while equally including non-democratic nations; that equality amongst nations being, after all, inherent in the concept of all nations agreeing to act simultaneously.

Under this global governance arrangement, then, all nations would be respected on their own terms and none would be ignored. Meanwhile, citizens in democratic nations would have a binding influence on the policies to be implemented. The global agreement itself would thus become greater than the sum of its national parts.

But what about global democracy?

Some of us, particularly in democratic countries, may see this proposal as a betrayal of global democracy; to somehow compromise the ideal of every adult on the planet having a vote. But it’s worth remembering that when democracy itself first emerged with the European Enlightenment, it did not emerge in a perfect form, but in what was then only an embryonic, workable form. It took many centuries for it to evolve into the form people in the West know it today. In much the same way, we could imagine that strict global democracy—one equal vote for every adult on the planet—might only evolve some time after global governance of the kind we are proposing here had been achieved. In that case, today’s nations might gradually lose some of their autonomy in favour of more globally and strictly democratic arrangements. But today, such arrangements would, for reasons we’ve outlined, be extremely premature as well as unviable.

Overcoming diverse sets of values

Returning to the first of our two key problems, the arrangement we’re proposing also offers a far greater prospect of overcoming the fact that many millions of people still hold an ethno-centric worldview (levels 1-4), and so are unlikely to be interested in global governance. But this problem evaporates when we recall that these populations generally live in non-democratic countries, or in countries where democracy is not sufficiently secure; in countries, in other words, where the simple agreement of the government to a set of global policies could suffice to build the global consensus needed.

Despite this, there remains the risk that these governments might still insist on ethno-centric policies. But we’ll later see how this can be avoided.

At any rate, I hope we can already see how our return to core ideas about how co-operation occurs has allowed us to model the outlines of a genuinely world-centric form of global governance; a framework capable of accommodating all levels of development and their diverse national political arrangements in a manner that should be acceptable to all.

Making global governance a win-win proposition

Building consensus on simultaneously implementing an agreement of course begs the question of what the content of that agreement might actually be? Agreeing to share a packet of sandwiches is, after all, a tad less complex than agreeing the policies to solve global problems.

Before answering that question, we can acknowledge that there’s one quite obvious characteristic common to virtually all global problems. This is that each policy remedy would almost certainly result in some nations being more disadvantaged (or advantaged) by the policy than others. Dramatic cuts in carbon emissions, for example, would be far more costly for China or the USA to achieve because those two nations are the world’s largest emitters. Having the highest costs, there’s no incentive whatever for them to co-operate—and not surprisingly, they don’t! This, indeed, goes a long way to explaining why present UN-sponsored attempts to solve global problems routinely fail to achieve anything significant.

The solution, of course, is to address two or more issues at a time; that is, we need a multi-issue policy framework. Rather than attempting to deal with climate change as a single isolated issue, the addition of another issue would allow nations that are disadvantaged by carbon reductions to be compensated. If, for example, negotiations on a global tax on currency transactions (Tobin Tax)[41] were included alongside a climate negotiation, the countless millions of dollars this tax would raise from financial markets could be used to compensate those nations that may lose out by dramatically cutting their carbon emissions. In this way we can see, in principle at least, how it could be made in the interests of nations such as China or the USA to cut their emissions drastically; how it could be made in their interests to co-operate.

That said, to avoid negotiations becoming overly complicated, no more than two or perhaps three issues should be dealt with at a time. This would mean, then, that a group of two or three complementary global policies could be negotiated and then simultaneously implemented by all, or virtually all, nations. Then, a few years later, a further such group of policies could follow the same process. In time, a repeating pattern of global negotiation and simultaneous implementation would have become routine and could be repeated whenever necessary. This could also include policies to modify, improve upon or, if necessary, reverse policies that had been implemented previously.

It’s vital to understand, then, how the simultaneous implementation of a multi-issue agreement has the potential to radically transform international relations. For by breaking the vicious circle of destructive international competition, and by combining issues in a way that produces a win-win outcome for each nation, a global agreement could be arrived at and sustained, not by force of arms, by force of law, or by a world parliament. But simply by the fact that co-operating in this way is in each nation’s self-interest.

Here, we can touch base again with the evolutionary nature of what we’re proposing. For if we look back to earlier crises in evolution, not only do we find that destructive competition was always the key barrier, we also find that co-operation was always the solution (Stewart, 2000). For as John Stewart reminds us, overcoming destructive competition has always consisted in “building co-operative organisations out of self-interested components”[42]; that is, by making co-operation in each entity’s self-interest.

How can national sovereignty not only be preserved but enhanced? The Subsidiarity Criterion.

Fundamental though simultaneous action and a multi-issue policy framework are, there’s an equal need for subsidiarity; that is, for a reliable means of appropriately preserving national sovereignty within a global governance regime.

To achieve this, we need to clearly distinguish between those issues that need to be dealt with at the global level, and those that can safely be left to the national level. This is vital to assure individual nations and their peoples that their autonomy—their national sovereignty—is preserved and is not limited any more than is necessary to solve global problems. What still works at the lower, national level would thus be safe-guarded, while what doesn’t work, or cannot be solved, would be taken up and dealt with at the global level by the global agreement we’re describing.

Here we encounter yet another surprise. Because this requirement is inherently satisfied by the logic of the need for simultaneous action. That is, a satisfactory distinction between national and global policies is already accomplished if we differentiate policies that need simultaneous action from those that don’t. Which is which becomes evident if we apply this question, or Subsidiarity Criterion, to each policy proposal:

“Would the unilateral implementation of the policy measure (i.e., its implementation by a single nation or by a relatively small group of nations) be likely to have an adverse effect on the nation’s (or group’s) competitiveness?”[43]

If the answer is no, then the policy concerned is clearly one that individual nations, or restricted groups of nations, can happily implement independently, as they mostly do today.[44] Policies in this category could include those such as national housing policy, health and education policy, or culturally defined issues such as capital punishment or abortion. For policies where the answer is yes, on the other hand, these policies—and only these—need to be dealt with at the global level because only simultaneous implementation can overcome the barrier that destructive international competition represents. Accordingly, policies are differentiated into two distinct categories: unilateral policies or simultaneous policies. Unilateral policies effectively belong to the national context, while simultaneous policies belong to the nascent context of global cooperation we are describing. The simultaneous mode of policy implementation thus represents, potentially, the new, higher, more authentic level of world-centric civic-political complexity: humanity’s next evolutionary step which is the new level of cooperative global governance.

It’s important to recognise, here, that implementing policies simultaneously at the global level does not curtail national sovereignty, but enhances it. Because, it’s precisely these policies that individual nations would like to implement today, but cannot because of their fear of losing out to others. Thus, by making these policies feasible again, simultaneous implementation can be said to enhance national sovereignty. It brings a greater range of possibilities back into our hands. Indeed, the application of the “subsidiarity criterion” would enable all sorts of global problems to be dealt with in a far more effective, high-impact way, so giving humanity greater relative autonomy; greater power and flexibility as we proceed together into the future.

Also, differentiating between unilateral and simultaneous policies facilitates the implementation of both. That’s because the two different policy-types can now be matched up with their respective, appropriate, implementation methods; i.e., unilateral policies via nations independently, and simultaneous policies via the process we are discussing, thus helping to ensure the swiftest possible implementation of both types. In that way, they’re integrated.

Another important point is that, contrary to a world parliament or other more formal proposals for binding global governance, the simultaneous implementation of policies by nations would entirely avoid the necessity of altering any nation’s constitution. Since each nation would have freely decided to act simultaneously alongside others, and not under some higher, formal level of world government, no infringement of any nation’s constitution arises. This, then, is another example of how simultaneity includes nation-states and preserves their sovereignty within a binding global governance regime.

The effect of the Subsidiarity Criterion on policy

The elegant way the subsidiarity criterion differentiates policies into unilateral and simultaneous categories has important implications for the first problem this briefing addresses; that is, the danger of culturally divisive or harmful policies being included in the process.

Important to recognise, here, is that culturally divisive policies tend to have no significant bearing on national economic competitiveness. The unilateral implementation of capital punishment, for example, or abortion, would not cause the nation implementing it to suffer an economic competitive disadvantage. Policies of that kind thus fall into the unilateral policy category and so do not qualify for inclusion.

By applying the subsidiarity criterion, then, a whole host of inappropriate policies emanating from any of the pre-Integral levels of development (i.e. levels 16) would automatically be screened out, so leaving only those policies in the process that genuinely require simultaneous implementation. This, then, already provides a large part of the solution to the problem of diverse values. (Any ethno-centric policies that might nevertheless manage to slip through this net would, as we’ll shortly see, still be excluded).

The need for both global unity and national diversity in the policy-making process

Any workable form of binding global governance must also recognise that each national population will hold a different opinion about what global policies each sees as being most desirable and necessary. People in Germany, for example, may regard carbon emissions reductions as a priority, whereas people in Kenya may see poverty reduction as the main priority. It’s therefore vital for each nation’s perspective to be appropriately taken into account. The surprise, as we’ll now see, is that it is precisely by doing so that any remaining ethnocentric policies can be screened out.

For let’s remember, firstly, that it’s only those policies that end up meeting with the agreement of all (or virtually all) nations that can proceed to implementation. If a policy failed to achieve that level of agreement, it would simply fall out of the process. With that in mind, we can recall that there is an inherent conflict between each of at least the first six value levels. For, as we already noted, Modern values (level 5) conflict with Traditional values (level 4), and vice versa. Likewise, Post-modern values (level 6) conflict with both Modern and Traditional values (levels 4 and 5), and vice versa (Beck & Cowan, 1996; Wilber, 2000).

This conflict, as we’ll now see, can be taken clever advantage of. This is because potentially inappropriate, ethno-centric policies which reflect any one of the first six value-levels, if not already excluded by the subsidiarity criterion, would almost certainly fail to appeal to societies at the other levels. A policy that reflects a Traditional perspective (level 4), for example, would almost certainly be rejected by national societies broadly at level 5 or higher. Likewise, policies reflecting a Postmodern perspective (level 6) would likely fail to meet with the approval either of Traditional societies at levels 3-4 or of Modern societies at level 5, and so on. In other words, policies that reflect any level lower than Integral (level 8) are highly likely to fall out of the process for lack of sufficient global agreement.

Meanwhile, the only policies likely to be palatable to all levels stem, almost by definition, from level 8 because that level, we can recall, is the only one in the spiral that integrates and takes into account all the prior levels (Wilber, 2000). Policies reflecting an Integral perspective, in other words, are the only ones likely to be both appropriate and beneficial for global implementation and capable of appealing to national societies at all the lower value-levels, albeit that each will have its own particular reason for supporting them.

We could perhaps visualise this process in Fig. 4 below. The apples on the “Before” tree, we may imagine, represent all the different global policies proposed by various national societies, each coming from its respective value-level. Thus, the process would include all sorts of apples coming from all the different value-levels, most of which, because of their ethno-centric character, would undoubtedly be harmful or inappropriate if implemented globally. It would also include a few apples coming from level 8.

Figure 4

But the process of negotiation, both within and between different national societies (or governments) at different levels of development would result in a conflict—a shaking of the apple tree—which would, we may imagine, leave us with the optimal outcome: that is, with only level 8 policies remaining: policies that are seen as genuinely beneficial and acceptable to all, and which had been approved and supported by all.

Under this proposal, then, global policy-making could be undertaken in two stages. The first stage would be national; the second, global. The first, national stage would involve citizens in each democratic nation engaging in their own independent national policy development process with the aim of producing a list of priority global issues along with the policies to solve them. In non-democratic nations, this task would be carried out by the government concerned. In either case, the subsidiarity criterion would be applied, so screening out any unilateral policies. At the same time, this stage would ensure that each nation’s priorities and perspective were taken into account.

The second, global stage would only commence much later, if and when support around the world became sufficiently widespread and when the prospect of Simpol’s practical implementation was approaching. In this second stage, representatives from each nation would be invited to participate in an international negotiation with a view to harmonising their lists and agreeing a final set of global measures to be implemented simultaneously by all nations. It would be during these negotiations, of course, that each nation’s proposed policies would come into “contact” (i.e. into conflict) with all the others; a conflict (a shaking of the apple tree) likely to result in all policies emanating from levels 1-7 failing to gather sufficient global support, and so falling out of the process. For the few policies emanating from level 8 that remained, these, as we earlier suggested, would be negotiated so compensations would allow nations that may lose on one policy to win on another. They would also involve sorting policies into groups of two or three complementary policies, and prioritising those groups. The aim, then, would be to establish an initial set of two or three level 8 policies which, because they included necessary compensations, exemptions and trade-offs, were acceptable to all nations. Subject to that agreement, then, that first group of policies—the first Simultaneous Policy— could be implemented globally and simultaneously on a mutually agreed date, while the less important groups could be scheduled for later implementation.

We’ve seen, now, how the subsidiarity criterion and the two-stage policy development process described could, in principle, overcome the problem of diverse values while still taking them appropriately into account. We’ve also seen how the concept of an international agreement based on simultaneous action could accommodate both democratic and nondemocratic nations—and how the problem of destructive international competition could be overcome. Unlike proposals for a world parliament or for direct global democracy, Simpol, because it is based on world-centric thinking, could be said to represent a genuinely world-centric proposal; a proposal we can regard as an adequate match for the world-centric solution that binding global governance itself promises.

But how can all this be put into practice? What new mode of politics can deliver it?

We saw earlier how national governments have no choice but to keep their economies internationally competitive; how they’re so thoroughly immersed in the context of destructive international competition that they cannot even envisage a future context of cooperation. We’ve also seen how conventional party politics cannot offer a way out. So it immediately becomes clear that we, citizens, must intervene; that our best hope for achieving binding global governance lies in instigating it, bottom-up, by using established national political processes, but in a completely new, transcendent way.

While this might seem a remote and daunting prospect, a surprisingly encouraging start has already been made. And it demonstrates, moreover, that only a relatively small number of people may be needed to catalyse sufficient support.

The Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) was initiated in 2000. It is a global campaign that has been pursued primarily in the UK but has already spread to many other countries. In the UK, over the course of three national elections in 2001, 2005 and 2010, a tiny number of supporters succeeded in getting as many as 27 Members of the UK parliament and countless candidates from all the main political parties to sign the pledge to simultaneously implement Simpol’s policy package alongside other governments.

But how could only a tiny number of supporters achieve such big results in such a relatively short time? The answer lies in the new, powerful way that Simpol allows us to use our votes.

We do this by writing to some or all of the competing parliamentary candidates in our electoral area, informing them that we’ll be voting in future national elections, not for a particular politician or party, but for ANY politician or party—within reason—that pledges to implement the campaign’s policy package simultaneously alongside other governments. Or, those of us having a party preference encourage our preferred politician or party to sign that pledge. In that way, we are becoming a powerful voting block; but a block in which each of us still retains the ultimate right to vote as we please. Politicians are thus clear that we’ll be giving very strong preference to candidates that have signed the Pledge, to the probable exclusion of those who haven’t.

So, politicians who sign the Pledge know that, by doing so, they’re attracting the Simpol voting block; votes that could be vital if they’re to win—or to avoid losing—their seat. And yet they risk nothing because they only have to implement the policy package if and when sufficient governments around the world have signed up too. So signing the pledge represents no risk: it’s a win-win. But a politician who fails to sign the Pledge, or who signed but then cancelled it at a later date, only loses those votes to political competitors who have signed, and so could risk losing his/her seat. In some electoral areas, particularly those that were closely contested, two or more of the main competing candidates signed the Pledge as a result of this enhanced pressure. Because, once one major candidate signs, the others have little choice but to follow. And in that case, whichever of those candidates wins, Simpol wins. Simpol, then, isn’t a campaign that requires a majority. It only needs the critical number of voters; that number being whatever is the margin of support between the main competing candidates; a margin that can be extremely fine indeed.

With many parliamentary seats and even entire elections around the world often hanging on a relatively small number of votes, it’s not difficult to see that the number of campaign supporters needed could be very small indeed.[46] Here we see, then, the disproportionate power we, citizens, already have to ensure that our governments co-operate in binding global governance.

Voting in this way, we can note, is entirely consistent with our recognition of pseudo-democracy; the phenomenon that has rendered voting relatively meaningless. Thus, voting instead for any politician or party, within reason, that supports Simpol is not only powerful, it makes perfect sense. For rather than choosing between the manifestos of the existing parties—promises which, in the light of destructive international competition, we know to be largely empty—Simpol supporters instead make politicians compete to support Simpol. Meaning and purpose are thus instantly restored to our votes, while their power is also brought to bear at the global level.

Moreover, we also see a crucial feature that distinguishes Simpol from initiatives that propose a world parliament, direct global democracy, or some other kind of global governance. Since these initiatives do not use existing electoral processes to achieve their aims, they of course need national governments to give their consent. Simpol, by contrast, offers citizens in all democratic nations a way we can use our votes to compel our governments to consent; a way we can make it in the electoral interests of our governments to co-operate globally.

Simpol, thus puts citizens back in control in a unique and highly creative fashion. For as you’ll have noticed, it doesn’t put forward candidates at elections, so it can’t be described as a political party. Instead, it allows citizens to powerfully use their votes to drive existing politicians and parties to support it. Simpol, then, is a kind of hybrid initiative: one that works through the existing system while not being a part of it; a unique novelty that makes it, arguably, the first genuine, legally binding form of global electoral politics.

If what has been achieved in the UK continues to be replicated elsewhere,[47] a disproportionately high number of politicians and governments in democratic countries could be driven towards global cooperation by a relatively low number of citizens. In this way we see how, despite so few citizens being at level 8 (Integral), a powerful process towards binding global governance could be catalysed. Indeed, as citizens at lower levels see how Simpol permits their votes to command such power, and how voting can once again have real meaning, they’re likely to be drawn to the campaign, so leading still more politicians and governments to sign on. In other words, a powerful, dynamic virtuous circle would have been set in train, potentially leading many governments in democratic countries to sign on.

As that occurs, non-democratic nations would also have a strong incentive to participate. This, amongst other reasons, would be because, rather than taking development loans from the IMF or World Bank— loans which usually come at high rates of interest— binding global governance would, for the first time, allow the savings made from reductions in military spending, or the revenue raised from global taxes, (perhaps on the rich, on transnational corporations and on financial markets), to be redistributed to these nations on a debt-free basis.[49] This would provide the necessary funds for healthcare, education and infrastructure that these countries so desperately need. Thus, the governments of poorer nations, many of which are non-democratic, would have a strong incentive to co-operate.

A global co-operative agreement such as Simpol could also provide a solution to one of the most contentious issues between nations in the North and those in the South. That being, the substantial subsidies provided to farmers in the North; subsidies which destroy the competitive advantage of Southern nations and so prevent them from exporting their agricultural produce. This makes it virtually impossible for people in these countries to raise themselves out of poverty.

But Simpol could change all this. For example, one of its policy measures could be globally agreed quotas for each agricultural product. Each nation would be permitted to subsidise its farmers to produce those products up to that agreed level. In that way, the need of Northern nations to keep their land productive and their farmers in business would be satisfied. However, for all quantities above the agreed quotas, these could be traded freely, so allowing Southern nations to exploit their competitive advantage. Further win-wins would also accrue. For, not only would all the world’s agricultural land become maximally productive to feed the world’s population, the increasing affluence of Southern nations would make them into increasingly attractive markets for manufactured goods produced in more developed countries.

Whether democratic or not, and whatever their level of development, the worsening global situation is in any case making global co-operation in all nations’ interests (Wright, 2001; Stewart, 2000). Indeed, the power of worsening circumstances to produce cooperation is often surprising and should never be underestimated. One recent example was the global financial crisis of 2008 during which all the world’s major central banks acted simultaneously to cut interest rates by 0.5%. As the London Financial Times reported, this action was “unprecedented” and a “historic piece of co-ordination”[50]. Although they were not part of the plan, the paper further reported that The People's Bank of China “moved almost simultaneously” to also cut its rate. Like the children fighting over sandwiches, a worsening world predicament means the incentive for all nations to co-operate can only intensify. What Simpol uniquely provides is an appropriate organising framework for that vital transition to occur and, crucially, a way for enlightened citizens to take the lead.

Simpol, as we previously mentioned, has spread well beyond the UK. Some Members of the European, Australian and other parliaments have signed up alongside their UK colleagues. No doubt some did so to attract additional votes, but others were in safe seats and signed up simply because they felt the campaign was worth supporting. Simpol has supporters in over 100 countries[51] and endorsements from many leading statesmen and women, economists and ecologists.[52]

Given Simpol does not require a majority to be successful, it’s vital the campaign should have sufficient democratic legitimacy prior to its implementation. Its Founding Declaration consequently specifies that implementation can only proceed once a majority of citizens in each democratic country—be they campaign supporters or not—had first given their consent. It is expected that by the time such referendums took place—that is, by the time support around the world was so strong that a global negotiation had taken place—a majority would, by then, be Simpol supporters in any case.

Figure 5

A start has also been made on developing Simpol’s policies. In 2005, UK supporters started their own national process for developing—with the possible help of independent experts—policies to be potentially included in Simpol’s policy package. This process, although embryonic, respects the subsidiarity criterion and can, once supporters in other countries start their own national processes, evolve into the two-stage process we outlined earlier. It’s important to note, then, that Simpol’s policies wouldn’t be imposed upon citizens, but developed by them. Concerning policy development, the only role Simpol itself plays is to facilitate the coming together of its supporters and to host a process by which they can, in the two stages outlined, propose, modify, negotiate, and agree global policies amongst themselves and, subsequently (with the help of their chosen representatives), with the governments of non-democratic nations.

Simpol, we can note, comprises two distinct but related processes: on the one side, the process of gaining political support and, on the other, the process of developing policy. In Fig. 5, we can see how these two processes have started to co-evolve concurrently. Moreover, they’re likely to be mutually reinforcing. That is, as political support for the campaign grows, interest in developing appropriate policies is likely to grow. Likewise, as the policies themselves develop and are increasingly seen as appropriate, this is likely to encourage more citizens, MPs and governments to support the campaign.

Figure 6*

*Adapted from an original diagram by Dirk Weller, leader of Simpol-Germany.

The over-riding principle of nations implementing Simpol’s policies simultaneously means, of course, that no nation, corporation, or citizen would lose out unduly to its peers. Each nation’s (and corporation’s) relative competitiveness would be maintained while present excuses for inaction and delay would simply evaporate, so allowing a broad range of global problems to be addressed, and ultimately solved, in everyone’s best interests.

A highly simplified visual overview of the entire Simpol process is portrayed in Fig. 6 above.

Simultaneity and co-operation

As global problems worsen, and as humanity starts to take proper responsibility for actively navigating the vital transition from destructive international competition to fruitful global co-operation, what better concept could we have to guide us than the idea of simultaneity itself? For simultaneity, we can see, reconciles two timeless, universal, equally valid and yet seemingly irreconcilable opposites: the opposites of unity and diversity. Because even if we act simultaneously with others, we each still retain our individuality and diversity (or our individual national sovereignty). We don’t stop being who we are. And yet by acting simultaneously we also achieve unity. We maintain our unique individuality, and yet we stand together, stronger in our unity; we make ourselves greater than the sum of our parts.

In our increasingly inter-dependent, globalised world, then, simultaneity reconciles our diverse self-interests with our united common interest. Unity and diversity are reconciled; self-interest and common interest become one. And there, I suggest, resides our underlying spiritual purpose; the underlying lesson globalisation is trying to teach us: that we are not separate from one another. We are not two, but one. For how else could we—how else should we—cross this crucial and historic evolutionary threshold, if not hand-in-hand, if not as one humanity, if not simultaneously, if not… together?

Simpol, admittedly, may not offer all the answers. But I hope to have convinced you that it answers more key questions than any other proposal yet put forward. With the world deteriorating as we speak, perhaps now the question for each of us is: do we have a better idea? If not, I invite you to help us get the ball rolling by using your vote in the powerful way Simpol offers. You can sign on to the campaign for free at www.simpol.org. We surely have little to lose by taking that step, but a whole world to gain.

Indeed, the paradox of this and all previous major evolutionary transitions is, that if left to reach a critical stage, competition ultimately ceases to be a strategy for individual survival but instead becomes a strategy for collective suicide. At that point—a point we’re fast approaching—co-operation becomes in everyone’s self-interest. But for a regression into chaos to be avoided and for co-operation at a new higher level to emerge, not only is global and simultaneous action required to overcome the barriers to international co-operation, an appropriate catalyzing political process is also needed. For, as Wilber so rightly makes clear:

“Every revolution, every transformation, every shift in consciousness and culture that actually sticks has of necessity a Lower-Right component [i.e., not just a theory but a new form of socio-political practice], and if that component is not present or prominent, you can dismiss any claims to have a new paradigm, a great transformation, or a new and revolutionary anything.”[54]

That, so succinctly put, then, is what the Simultaneous Policy (Simpol) offers: a transformative political practice for us to responsibly and consciously co-create the now-vital level of people-centred global governance; a world-centric governance born of an Integral civic consciousness that transcends and yet includes political parties and nation-states and “through which runs the blood of a common humanity and beats the single heart of a very small planet struggling for its own survival, and yearning for its own release into a deeper and a truer tomorrow”.[55]

---o0o--

Notes:

________________________

[1] A proposal for fundamentally reforming the monetary system can be found in Monetary Reform – Making it Happen!, James Robertson and John Bunzl, ISPO, 2003.

[2] Such redistributions would have to be carefully managed and controlled by independent agencies to avoid corruption. These safeguards could form an integral part of the global agreement discussed later in the briefing.

[4] Stewart, J, 2000, p311.

[5] The Global Brain – The Awakening Earth in a New Century, Peter Russell, Floris Books, 2007, p113.

[6] The Evolutionary Manifesto, John Stewart. http://www.evolutionarymanifesto.com/man.html

[7] For an excellent discussion on how outer techno-economic/governance systems relate with inner values and worldviews, see Ken Wilber Online. Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge Part III. The Nature of Revolutionary Social Transformation (page 1):
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/part3-1.cfm

[8] © Copyright Dr. Don E. Beck. All rights reserved. DrBeck@attglobal.net Reproduced with kind permission.

[9] For the sake of brevity and simplicity, I have greatly simplified this issue. In fact, world-centric awareness is not exclusive to level 8 but increasingly starts to creep in from level 5 onwards. Modernism and Postmodernism are, after all, based on rational thinking; a level at which we’re able to put ourselves in the shoes of others. This capacity, since it logically extends our empathy to all humans, therefore offers world-centric potential. As far as recognising the necessity of establishing some form of global governance, however, this too can emerge in some people from level 5 onwards. However it tends to be tainted, as we’ll later show, with nation-centric overtones or it may not be accompanied by a genuinely world-centric conception of how it may be achieved.

[10] See Ken Wilber, Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge. Part III. The Nature of Revolutionary Social Transformation (page 2),
http://Wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/part3-2.cfm

[11] ibid.

[12] Proposal for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. Please see: http://www.unpacampaign.org/

[13] Bridging the Globalization Gap: Toward Global Parliament, 80 Foreign Affairs, 212 (2001), Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss.

[14] Please see: http://www.voteworldparliament.org

[15] As put forward in The Age of Consent – a manifesto for a new world order. Flamingo, 2003.

[16] World Constitution and Parliament Association. Please see: http://www.worldparliament-gov.org

[17] World Parliament Experiment. Please see: http://www.tgde.org See also: Towards a World Parliament: A summary of the debate and a proposal for an electronic world parliament on the internet organised by civil society, by Rasmus Tenbergen. http://www.ifld.de/essay/worldparliament.pdf

[18] Worldwide Direct Democracy Movement. Please see: http://www.world-wide-democracy.net

[19] Chapter VII of the UN Charter provides for the possibility of mandatory resolutions, sanctions and the authorisation of the use of force. But the determination of these issues lies solely with the Security Council.

[20] Commission on Global Governance (1995). Our Global Neighbourhood, New York, Oxford University Press, p236-39.

[21] For details of voting power by country for the IMF, please see: http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/eds.aspx For the World Bank, please see: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTABOUTUS/ORGANIZATION/BODEXT/0,,contentMDK:21429866~menuPK:64020035~pagePK:64020054~piPK:64020408~theSitePK:278036,00.html

[22] e-Parliament. Please see: http://www.e-parl.net

[23] For the Global Greens, see http://www.globalgreens.org For the Non-violent Radical Party, see http://www.radicalparty.org/

[24] For more on the Prisoner’s Dilemma please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

[25] A case in point would be the widely acknowledged problem of tax competition.

[26] This dilemma has also been presented by the author in a TEDx talk entitled The Political Prisoner’s Dilemma: http://www.tedxberlin.de/tedxberlin-2012-crossing-bordersjohn-bunzl-the-political-prisoners-dilemma

[28] The Economist, October 8th, 2005. Article entitled Regulate us, please. p38. www.economist.com

[29] Indeed, if the contention of CSR advocates were really true, market competition would, by itself, force all companies to adopt a stakeholder approach. If they were correct, in other words, we wouldn’t have global problems.

[32] The Age of Consent – A Manifesto for a New World Order, George Monbiot, Flamingo, 2003, p56-7.

[34] From a personal email to me, dated 11th April 2011, for which I am most grateful.

[35] In Discovering an Integral Civic Consciousness in a Global Age, I explain why the Early-integral level (level 7) also seems to have trouble seeing the phenomenon of destructive international competition and so in recognising the need for global governance.

[37] The publication, Voter Turnout Since 1945 – A Global Report, available from Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance www.idea.int, shows that for many years voter turnouts were on the increase but, from the 1980s onwards, they went into decline. It is perhaps no coincidence that it was around this time that the Reagan-Thatcher “Big Bang” deregulation of financial markets took place.

[39] We can assume that the governments of non-democratic nations are at a level of development which is at least capable of recognising what is in their national interest.

[40] For further details, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_%28conspiracy_theory%29

[41] A Proposal for International Monetary Reform, Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 4 (1978).

[42] From a personal email to me dated June 11, 2002, for which I’m very grateful.

[43] Although we’ve referred to policies having an adverse effect on a nation’s economic competitiveness, policies adversely affecting a nation’s competitiveness in the military or other spheres could also be included.

[44] Included in this category, of course, would not only be policies having no adverse impact on competitiveness but also those likely to have a positive impact; i.e. those which give individual nations a competitive advantage.

[46] Please note, here, that there would be no point in politicians signing the Pledge simply to gain more votes, only to renege on it at some later point. That’s because, if they did, they’d then only lose the votes they sought to gain in the first place, and so would jeopardize their political careers. Reneging at any point up to the time of implementation, then, is simply not in their interests. And when it comes to implementation itself, world problems are, by that time, likely to be sufficiently critical so that no one in their right minds would be likely to hesitate. By then, in other words, implementation would have become in everyone’s interests.

[47] Although the campaign’s processes work most powerfully in countries where elections operate on a simple majority, all elections are based on competition between candidates. So the campaign should prove reasonably effective regardless of the country concerned. It may, however, need to adapt its approach according to individual national electoral systems.

[49] Robust measures and controls to ensure that funds did not fall prey to corruption or diversion could, of course, form an integral part of any agreement.

[50] The Financial Times, 10th October, 2008.

[51] Correct at the time of writing this briefing (March 2013).

[52] For details, please see: http://www.simpol.org/index.php?id=11

[54] See Ken Wilber Online. Excerpt A: An Integral Age at the Leading Edge Part III. The Nature of Revolutionary Social Transformation (page 1):
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptA/part3-1.cfm

[55] Wilber, 2000, p206.

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About the Author

John Bunzl is a social entrepreneur and businessman. He is founder of the International Simultaneous Policy Organisation. Having conceived the Simpol idea in late 1998, he wrote his first book, The Simultaneous Policy – An insider’s guide to saving humanity and the planet (2001). In 2003, he coauthored Monetary Reform – Making it Happen! with the prominent monetary reformer, James Robertson. John’s work has featured regularly in the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. He has given talks at various organizations, including the World Trade Organization and the Schumacher Society. He was born 1957, lives in London UK, has three children, and is a company director. He can be contacted at jbunzl@simpol.org

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Politische Oekologie, Munich, Germany

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