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how to overcome competition among nation states?
John BUNZL
Monday, 10 February 2003 19:34:56
Dear Friends and Participants,
I wonder if a few basic reflections might be worth considering during our coffee break:
When speaking of a World Parliament we are, effectively, talking about world democracy. And to become functional and legitimate, political power would need to be vested in such a World Parliament (WP).
But to vest any political power in a World Parliament, the institutions which presently possess the exclusivity on political power - namely, nation states - would first have to relinquish some of their political power or sovereignty to a WP. Virtually all nation states would therefore have to co-operate - or be brought to co-operate - with one another in establishing a WP. To * create * a WP without them is pure fantasy and unrealistic for, if we did so, our WP would possess no political power.
(That is of course not to say that this WP debate should not occur, or is not important - far from it! It means only that we should be clear about the realities.)
We should also be clear, however, that global democracy and co-operation are * not * in the immediate interests of the global economic elite who control or influence many politicians. Nor is it perceived to be in the interests of the most powerful nation, the USA, who seeks to preserve its complete freedom of action and is thus not interested in global co-operation. And without the USA, global democracy is, of course, impossible. So unless US citizens in particular, and citizens of other countries, can find a way to bring their governments to co-operate, we can safely forget about global democracy.
Effectively, therefore, to achieve a WP our problem could be summed up as: * How do we citizens bring presently competing nations to stop competing and start cooperating? * For democracy itself is predicated on co-operation.
Indeed, we could say that democracy * is * co-operation.
So how do we get from competition to co-operation?
Let's imagine nation states as a group of boys fighting over a packet of sandwiches. If they carry on fighting, the sandwiches will be destroyed in the chaos - all will go hungry. If any boy unilaterally stops fighting, he then has no chance of getting a sandwich - he would go hungry. So to maintain a chance of eating, all the boys must continue fighting. They are all locked in to a system from which they cannot escape. That, I suggest, is our dilemma! Game theorists call it * the prisoner's dilemma *.
Can anyone suggest a way citizens can get the nation state boys to stop fighting? Until we commonly recognise that there exists a solution to this dilemma, we all, I think, remain prisoners.
Best wishes John Bunzl - Director International Simultaneous Policy Organisation (ISPO) <http://www.simpol.org/>
WP21 Alliance Forum on a World Parliament for the 21st Century
E-mail : world-parl@forums.alliance21.org
Fax 1 717 264 5036
Information, inscriptions, désinscriptions: germa@alliance21.org
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