Creativity

Einstein’s Supranational Government

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

During World War II, just like Altiero Spinelli wrote the Ventotene Manifesto, Albert Einstein endorsed the idea of a supranational world government, which would have guaranteed global peace  without interfering in culture, economy and national politics.

They where not the only ones to think that supranational laws and institutions could promise a new era of peace and prosperity. The United Nations and other multilateral institutions set up in the Forties of the previous century are nothing but a resized realization of more ambitious visions.

But let’s go back to Einstein and his personal path which brought him to use – one of the few – the word “supranational“.

Of course, he was Influenced by his life experience as a citizen of several nations as well as by his international  career as a scientist, he couldn’t but be a cosmopolitan. His spiritual openness informed his universalist perspective. His vision for world government, inherently pacifist, was not far from Kant’s Perpetual Peace.

Distaste for nationalism and militarism pushed Einstein to revoke his German citizenship in 1896 and, until 1901, he lived without citizenship at all. Then he got the Swiss citizenship and kept it until his death (adding Austrian and American citizenship, and again the German one in different periods).

Knowing first hand that citizenship may be relative or temporary, but humanity remains the core of what we are, Albert Einstein offers a powerful example of how personal experience and beliefs  also forge a personal political vision.

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“It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.” – A. Einstein

Why Is Supranational Democracy so Difficult to Imagine?

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

The inadequate attention that international organizations’ statutes  give to legitimacy, accountability and inclusiveness hails from the limited role that IOs played at the beginning of their history and from the subsequent scarce attention to democracy in a setting different from the national state.

In today’s different international context, it is worthwhile to challenge the unsurmountable hurdles stemming from the use of the word “democratic” in connection with an international organization.

Even though there isn’t a generally accepted theory of democracy – or more broadly of supranational democracy – in international organizations, we can examine the possible portability of the individual elements that make up this notion from the state level – for which they were originally created – to the international level. This is the experiment I’m almost obsessed about.

However, two kinds of difficulties arise from the fact that we are not considering a community of individuals, but of nations.

The first obstacle is the difficult applicability of the principle of equality, inherent in the notion of democracy. It is based on the concept of equal dignity for all human beings which leads to ignore and even amend the differences that give some people a “birth right” to succeed. All states are sovereign and therefore equal inside the international community, but this principle is nothing but a fictio. Far from wanting to ignore or minimize the differences, the international community focuses upon the preservation of the status quo, which is attenuated only by the shared goal of the sustainable development and protection of fundamental rights. Even when all the countries will get, as we hope, to share similar levels of prosperity, they would be far from equal. Too many facets help mark the differences: the size of territories, populations and economies, as well as the control over natural resources and the weapon supply.

As a consequence, several organizations agree on the principle that states are differently represented to reflect their different situations. Other ones simply ignore their substantial difference, but special provisions or practices make some States more equals than others.

Important scholar studies try to offer solutions to this dilemma, but there isn’t any adequate diffusion and sedimentation of shared assessments. The reflection on the subject has followed two clearly distinct lines: the statism theory, which sees international democracy as the result of the joint action of the states, as essential building blocks; and the doctrine inspired by cosmopolitanism and transnationality, which is based on the assumption of a global demos.

Even if an international organization achieved the perfect representation of all its members and was thus fully legitimate to act, we couldn’t conclude that it was also, indirectly, fully representative of their citizens. In fact, if some of its member states weren’t democratic, or only partly democratic, they wouldn’t be representative of all their citizens. According to the Democracy Index 2015 of the Economist Intelligence Unit, only 20 countries out of 167 are full democracies.

Such a lack of legitimacy is inevitably reflected on the state’s opinions and stands in the institutions of the IO it is part of and on the overall credibility of the institutions themselves. This is a difficult legal dilemma, that can only be solved if the organizations require their members to be democratic – as the European Union does (even if it should keep a closer eye on their evolutions). It is obvious that in organizations with a universal membership the issue must be labeled as “non permanently solvable”and shelved.

There is so a good point for the cosmopolitan approach: only building on some kind of legitimacy driven directly from the global demos we can overcome the “states obstacles” which are their inequality and their imperfect democratic representation.

Even so, the imperfect representativeness that we assume as inevitable, could be compensated by accountability, which can be fully obtained at the supranational level also by designing and experimenting new legal and institutional forms.

International organizations are not really equipped for substancial legitimacy as they are not for full accountability. New channels and tools need to be imagined to provide that their decisions and lines of actions reflect the values and the will of the people.We need new and fresh ideas, in line with the reality (and the technology) of an interconnected society. 

Unfortunately, we are now accessing the realm of imagination, and here there are two more powerful obstacles.

The first one is the power of the status quo: the resistance of political and economic elites, the power of traditions and cultural heritages and the trite old say “it has always been so”.

The second obstacle lies in the fact that economic and legal minds are not really educated to work with imagination, at least not on a big scale. It’s easy to imagine a new interpretation of a rule or a new financial product, but what about a whole new system? Do we feel really empowered to do that?

We hear almost every day that challenging the status quo, working with imagination, “disrupting” are the new frontiers for entrepreneurs and marketers, but this is also true for those who want to prove themselves on institutional engineering… and maybe change the world, for the better.

Accountability, inclusivity, Legitimacy

Supranational Democracy in a Nutshell

Quote | Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

A few days ago I had the opportunity to give a speech about the need for democracy at global level and about what we, as individuals, can do.

I post it here because it summarizes well what is explained in several previous posts:

 

 

 

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From Limited Sovereignty to Shared Sovereignty

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

“Sovereignty, though its meanings have varied across history, has a core meaning: supreme authority within a territory. It is a modern notion of political authority” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

It was only after the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, that -in Europe-  sovereign states appeared as we know them.

As we know them?

I am not really persuaded that I really know (or have known) “sovereign states”.

When I was a child, in the bipolar world, maybe just the United States and the Soviet Union were sovereign states. Maybe China too, in a different way.

The theory of limited sovereignty was spelled in clear words in the Eastern bloc, a bit less clearly (but it wasn’t less true), in the western one.

Since WWII, another kind of limitation of sovereignty came from international law, especially by International humanitarian law and human rights law. States were not completely sovereign anymore since they had obligations towards their enemies and towards their own citizens. The notion of domestic jurisdiction was gradually eroded.

In this sense, compressing national sovereignty was not necessarily bad, even if it came with lights and shadows: how many states signed human rights declarations only as a tool of propaganda? How many of them were willing to guarantee human rights and repress gross violations in other countries -using military force- even if standards at home were not so high?

The United Nations cannot really enforce what is officially declared or check the good faith of the states showing good will.

Eventually, the world became more and more interconnected and economically integrated: the so-called globalization. And new constraints on sovereignty were accepted – as WTO regulations – as a price to pay for the access to new markets.

Now, it is clear to me that sovereignty is nothing more than a fictional concept. The state is not anymore a supreme authority, a superiorem non recognoscens (if there ever was one).

It is a loss of sovereignty if we look at it from the state perspective. But we could try to see it from a different perspective.

From the global perspective – or the global public goods perspective – the loss of many fragmented sovereignties could be positive as far as they are replaced by some authority in charge for tackling the issues at stake and equipped to do it.

It is a shift from many not-really-sovereign entities to common authorities where sovereignty is fairly shared among the members.

Climate change offers a great example, but it isn’t the only one. The issue of nuclear nonproliferation is another one. What about financial instability?

From the global citizens’ perspective, the answer is not an allocation of power in whatever authority, but in the kind of authority they can interact with, and control. An authority provided with legitimacy and accountability, whose policies are inclusive.

The United Nations are not yet this kind of authority, nor the Bretton Woods institutions, but single projects and processes are leading the way. See, for instance, the World We Want platform.

Some regional organizations, as the European Union, paved the way (to some extent), but they can still improve.

Some atypical new international organizations opened innovative paths of supranational interaction among stakeholders: the Kimberley Process, the Internet Governance Forum, the Global Environmental Facility. They are an example of what I call democratic experimentalism.

The way from limited sovereignty to shared sovereignty is not a short or easy one, but what really matters is that it is not a loss, but a gain in sovereignty.

Europe Day, When Supranational Politics Was Born

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

The declaration of 9th May 1950 by the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman is the foundation of the European integration.

It was a proposal to Germany and other interested countries to create a common independent authority responsible for managing the French and German production of coal and steel.

Iron and coal mines are on the borders between France and Germany and they have been the reason for many wars between the two countries. Moreover, the two natural resources were -at the time- the very grounding of a prosperous economy. For this reason, what may appear as a mere economic agreement was in fact intended to preserve peace and foster prosperity.

The proposal, inspired by Jean Monnet, suggested that the classic diplomatic way to manage intergovernmental relation could be overcome by a new method: a conferral of powers to an independent authority able to bind with its decision the member states. The European Coal and Steel Community had from the very beginning a Court of Justice, whose decisions were binding, and a Parliamentary Assembly. The proposal was accepted by Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Luxembourg.

The vision was already clear in the Schuman’s declaration:

“World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.

The contribution which an organised and living Europe can bring to civilisation is indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. In taking upon herself for more than 20 years the role of champion of a united Europe, France has always had as her essential aim the service of peace. A united Europe was not achieved and we had war.

Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity. The coming together of the nations of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and Germany. Any action taken must in the first place concern these two countries.

With this aim in view, the French Government proposes that action be taken immediately on one limited but decisive point :

It proposes that Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organisation open to the participation of the other countries of Europe.

The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims.

The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible. The setting up of this powerful productive unit, open to all countries willing to take part and bound ultimately to provide all the member countries with the basic elements of industrial production on the same terms, will lay a true foundation for their economic unification.

This production will be offered to the world as a whole without distinction or exception, with the aim of contributing to raising living standards and to promoting peaceful achievements. With increased resources Europe will be able to pursue the achievement of one of its essential tasks, namely, the development of the African continent.

In this way, there will be realised simply and speedily that fusion of interest which is indispensable to the establishment of a common economic system; it may be the leaven from which may grow a wider and deeper community between countries long opposed to one another by sanguinary divisions.

By pooling basic production and by instituting a new High Authority, whose decisions will bind France, Germany and other member countries, this proposal will lead to the realisation of the first concrete foundation of a European federation indispensable to the preservation of peace. (…)”

What we define as supranational, is the original approach to problems whose dimension is just out of reach for single states, it radically differs from the international approach as it creates an authority and a will over the states, subject to the rule of law.

We have to thank Jean Monnet for the elaboration and first experimentations of this conceptual model, but the political courage of Robert Schuman was the necessary ingredient to make it a reality. The prompt acceptance by Konrad Adenauer and Alcide De Gasperi allowed this proposal to become a shared political project.

The brave campaigns by the European Federalists, after the impetus by Altiero Spinelli, founder of this political movement and author of the Ventotene Manifesto made the project evolve over time, to meet expectations of integration and democracy.

A tribute to all our founding fathers. For many of us, your message is still alive.

 

The Debate Is Open!

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

We all know which global challenges and concerns the world faces today.

Unfortunately, the international community lacks of adequate tools to manage all this.

All those who think that global citizens – as we all are- should do something will find a place for discussion in a Linkedin Group named Supranational Democracy.

it is a space to reflect and discuss – frankly and openly- about what to do and where to start from.

I think that possible solutions for a democratic globalization have to be intercultural and interdisciplinary.
Among the topics that we could discuss there there are: global governance; protection of human rights and development of civil and political rights at supranational level; digital democracy; innovative and creative governance; role of civil society and ways to raise awareness about the global dimension … and this is maybe just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s an open group: feel free to join, to invite new members, to contribute to discussions and suggest new topics for discussion… or even to watch what’s going on without joining.

You are very welcome!

Susanna

The Basics of Democracy: 1. Legitimacy

Posted on by Susanna Cafaro

We associate legitimacy with free elections.

National legal orders are perceived as legitimate if they are the result of a democratic constituent process and if parliaments (and governments) are periodically renewed through free elections.

In international organizations, it isn’t so simple.

International law knows just one way to recognize as legitimate an IO: the respect of the rule of law.

It is that simple:

1. An organization is legitimate if it has been established by a valid and ratified international treaty and respects international law.

2. It works legitimately if it respects its establishing treaty and the rules and procedures adopted according to it.

This is not surprising, as most of the International organizations were created after WWII when the world was much less interconnected and the state was considered the only legal framework for democracy.

Luckily, something is (very slowly) changing.

Problems:

I. What if rules and procedures just cover a mere balance of powers, ignoring the rights of individuals or even of the weaker states?

II. How can legitimacy work in a society of states, which is not a society of equals? How a governance system may fairly represent all them?

III: Is it possible to imagine a legitimacy stemming not from states but from individuals and, if so, how?

Of course, we could imagine more and more problems to solve, but these are enough to start with… so, let’s try to offer some contribution to the solution.

I.

Beside this legitimacy descending from the respect of the rule of law there is (or should be!) another, more substantial point: an organization is perceived as legitimate if it pursues the objectives assigned to it and reflects the common values shared by its members. And perception is important when the effectiveness of the decisions adopted rests on national systems of enforcement.

II.

An organization is considered legitimate if its decisional bodies are perceived as representative of its members. As states are all but equals,  it is accepted in most international organizations the principle that Member States are represented differently as they reflect different realities (in size, wealth, power)

The decision-making bodies nonetheless enjoy a greater or lesser degree of representation depending on the way they reflect directly or indirectly the membership. When their representation is mediated by weighted voting, it is quite possible that some states do not feel adequately reflected in the number of votes they express.

Are the current parameters the correct ones to reflect their differences? Could we imagine different criteria to make some countries more prominent than others (and not just the winners or WWII or those having bigger GDP?). No matter there are better ways to reflect their contributions to the world, as the HDI index or even more creative, as the Good Country one.

III.

Of course, it would be all different if representativeness was referred to individuals, instead of states.

In this case, it would be necessary to pay specific attention to the main form of legitimacy: free elections and – as a consequence – an elected parliament. This is what already happens in the EU and this is what many scholars and activist think should happen in the United Nations. Today, 24 parliamentary assemblies are institutionally part of international organization, the oldest one being the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, established in 1946

The equal representation of the states and the equal representation of their citizens, therefore, are potentially in conflict: proportional representation applied to whole humanity would make a couple of countries rule the world (if they just voted all the same, something whitch I doubt, but still…). So, some kind of degressive proportionality has to be imagined, weighting more the citizens of small countries and less those of the bigger ones. You may think all this is nothing but a speculative exercise, but I assure you that this may be something very realistic if only it is given a chance (and for sure it is worth the effort of distinguished colleagues).

Without going so far, some international organizations are equipped with parliaments which are not directly elected, but represent nonetheless their citizens through national parliaments’ members. It is a first step. Even in the EU the story started so: the Assembly of the European Economic Community asked from the very beginning – and obtained step by step – to become a real parliament.

Interesting examples of such parliamentary bodies are the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,  the Pan-African Parliament of the African Union, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, while the Parlamento del Mercosur is rapidly evolving into a directly elected chamber. Unfortunately, these important institutional actors mostly play a consultative role.

But parliaments are not the only possible tools for democratic legitimacy.

Alternative solutions do exist, grounded on creativity and political will.

Have a look at what happens in the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercolosis and Malaria, in the Kimberley Process, in the Internet Governance Forum, in the Global environmental facility. All of them involve in original ways states, individuals and other stakeholders. And they are all different!

There is much room for legal creativity in the globalized world and it is time to take advantage of it.