Global Governance & Law

Get Full Text in PDF "The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." - Robert Hutchins Abstract When it comes to political organisation the western world likes to claim the moral high ground. It touts the benefits of free and fair elections, as if the concept of democracy were a self-evident, eternal truth. For the US State Department, democracy has taken on near-religious significance....

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract One of the most far-reaching decisions of the United Nations General Assembly was the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986. The Declaration was adopted with an expectation of optimism about progression to a new global economic dispensation. This did not happen. However, the Declaration remains an important symbol of global expectation. Notwithstanding it is an instrument that remains contested in many global fora. To the extent that...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract It is becoming increasingly clear that the concept of the absolutely sovereign nation-state is a dangerous anachronism in a world of thermonuclear weapons, instantaneous communication, and economic interdependence. Probably our best hope for the future lies in developing the United Nations into a World Federation. The strengthened United Nations should have a legislature with the power to make laws that are binding on individuals, and the ability to arrest and try...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The author sets about re-thinking the old concept of “World Peace Through Law” (WPTL), meaning replacing the use of international force with the global rule of law. He traces the history of the WPTL concept back to the British legal philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whose 1789 ‘Plan for an Universal and Perpetual Peace’ proposed “a plan of general and permanent pacification for all Europe,” with troop reductions(especially in naval forces) and “a Common Court of...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The current international security framework is based on an incomplete, anachronistic conception of sovereignty shaped largely by historical circumstance rather than principles of universal justice. Evolution of the global community over the past half century necessitates a reformulation of the concept to justly represent the rights of individual citizens and the global community as a whole. The reconceptualization of sovereignty is an essential condition for the...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Piecemeal fragmented strategies cannot address the pressing challenges facing humanity today. Economic theory has to be radically reinvented to squarely face the reality of rising unemployment, widening inequalities, growing ecological threats, frustrated social aspirations and unmet human needs. Monetary and fiscal policies are too crude and insufficient to steer the essential change of course required to address multidimensional demographic, ecological, economic...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract As globalization continues, many transformations in international and domestic laws are underway or called for.  There are too many laws and too few, too much law that is inadequate or obsolete, and too much law-breaking.  This biblioessay covers some 100 recent books, nearly all recently published, arranged in four categories.  1) International Law includes six overviews/textbooks on comparative law, laws related to warfare and security, pushback...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Sovereignty-sharing has placed European countries in a position to resolve their common problems through law, not war. As a result, the EU member states now live in peace together and take peace, justice and order for granted. The system of global governance is dysfunctional – some states are failing and the Security Council lacks legitimacy. Humanity does not have a mechanism to resolve its global problems through law, making it difficult – if not impossible – to...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract Law is both a condition and a consequence of social development, an outcome of the broader social process, a form of social organization which channels social energies based on the relative strength of past practice and precedent, the present balance of power and emerging social values. Values are the bedrock of social process and the driving force for social activism. Historically, law evolves as a mechanism for conflict avoidance and resolution founded on the...

Get Full Text in PDF Abstract This article describes the relevance of a world parliament in the context of long-term social evolution and the crisis of global governance.[*] It is argued that due to the development of weapons of mass destruction and complex interdependency, war has ceased to be a driver of socio-evolutionary consolidation of power at the world-system level. At the same time, there is an increasingly urgent need for global governance in spheres such as climate change mitigation...