A politician thinks of the next election, a Statesman of the next generation.
—JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE1
Nationalism is to nations what individualism is to individuals. In the same way that society’s problems can only be resolved when each person takes part in implementing solutions that have been devised on a collective basis, so the world’s problems can only be addressed through collaboration between countries and the international institutions whose authority they recognize.
To meet the many challenges that concern us all, particularly those involving the degradation of the environment, heads of state should play a role at the global level that is equivalent to that of provincial authorities within a nation.2 At the same time as administering their national affairs, they should defer to international authorities the power to make decisions that affect the fate of the planet as a whole.
Global warming, the loss of biodiversity, air and water pollution, the melting of glaciers, and ocean degradation are problems that local bodies acting alone simply do not have the capacity to control. These bodies must, however, be closely involved in the process of implementing global solutions.
All of these phenomena are strongly interconnected, but they are also linked to issues such as health, poverty, social justice, human rights, rampant financial systems, and many other difficulties. It is therefore essential to provide integrated solutions that control the global running of human affairs.
If a World State is, in the opinion of the French philosopher André Comte-Sponville, neither possible nor desirable, we are clearly in need of a world politics that goes “in the direction of a united humanity on a unique planet, which is trying to preserve what is essential.… Global governance will work neither against the State, nor without it.”3
Pascal Lamy, who was Director-General of the World Trade Organization for eight years, made the following statement: “Global governance describes the system we put in place to help human society achieve its common objective in a sustainable manner, that is to say with fairness and justice.”4 In his view, the best way to install greater fairness and justice is to have more global governance. The management of collective global goods—especially environmental goods—forms the basis of global governance, taking into consideration the fact that purely national responses are no longer sufficient. This opinion is shared by Laurence Tubiana, founder of the Institute for Sustainable Development, and Jean-Michel Severino, former director of the French Development Agency (AFD), for whom “refocusing the doctrine of international cooperation on the concept of public goods offers the possibility… of breaking the deadlock in international negotiations on development, with the perception of shared interests breathing new life into an international solidarity that is running out of steam.”5
According to an appeal launched by members of Collegium International6 in March 2012: “A new global order for how the world works has become essential.” In order to do this, men and women across the world must recognize that they are interdependent on multiple levels—between continents, nations, and as individuals—and to be aware of our common destiny. The interests of our human community can only be safeguarded by measures that are common to everyone, even if they run contrary to near-sighted national interests, local selfishness, the hegemony of multinationals, and the machinations of lobbyists who meddle with policy, often transforming the international scene into a gathering-place where sordid haggling prevails.
The term governance, or the “act or manner of governing,” was a synonym for government in Old French until the fourteenth century. It became obsolete but then reappeared in the 1990s. Although it is a term that irritates certain thinkers, such as the Canadian academic Alain Deneault, who considers it to be a way of justifying private enterprises’ stranglehold on the state,7 the expression “global governance” now describes the set of rules used to organize human society on a planetary scale.8
According to Pierre Jacquet, director of the French Institute on International Relations (IFRI), the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, and Laurence Tubiana: “sustainable economic integration requires that the populations reap the benefits, that the states agree on the objectives, and that the governing institutions are perceived as legitimate.”9 These three conditions are still a long way from being fulfilled.
International authorities with executive power must be able to control everything that is related to global health, human and animal rights, international justice, poverty, arms control measures, and environmental issues.
Building responsible global governance that allows a society’s political organization to adapt to globalization involves the formation of legitimate democratic policy at every level: local, state, regional, global. In order to do this, we need a network of international organizations that are fair, transparent, and democratic, and which are bestowed with significant resources and far-reaching capacities for intervention.
We have already mentioned the remarkable advances that have been made in the twentieth century: the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the creation of the United Nations, the WHO, WTO, FAO, the International Labour Organization, the International Court of Justice, the European Community, and many other international organizations. These have already accomplished a great deal, even if they are sometimes hindered by those that promote their own sovereign interests over those of the global community, not to mention other conflicts of interest.
Others are more controversial, such as international financial institutions, especially the World Bank, the IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), since they remain for the most part under the control of the United States, which determines their policies. China and India, which now represent almost a quarter of world GDP, only have, on average, 5% of the votes in these institutions.10 Joseph Stiglitz points out that the need for international institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO has never been so great, but people’s trust in them has never been so low.11
The IMF and the World Bank, for example, help developing countries, but force them in return to open their markets to subsidized Western commodities, such as agricultural products, and to adopt restructuring measures that harm their local economies, particularly with regard to small producers who cannot compete with big multinationals.
Jacquet, Pisani-Ferry, and Tubiana talk of international institutions as being incomplete, which can be attributed to the gap that “has emerged between the nature of the problems to be handled and the international architecture: the latter has not adjusted to the scale of current problems. For example, the environment has become a major area of concern and negotiation, yet it has not been endowed with the adequate institutional structure.”12
How can we make the step forward from local engagement to global responsibility? It will require three levels of transformation: individual, community, and global.
This could well be the slogan for an approach that couples personal engagement with global responsibility. My personal experience of being immersed in the world of humanitarian action for the past twelve years has shown me that what throws sand in the gears most often is corruption, battles of egos, and other human imperfections. Setting out with the aim of helping others, people end up completely losing sight of the virtuous goal they hoped to achieve.
To want to rush headlong into working for the good of others, without getting prepared first, is like wanting to carry out a medical operation immediately in the street, without taking the required time to learn medicine and build hospitals. Of course the years of study and the countless tasks required to build a hospital do not heal anyone, but once they are complete, they allow us to care for the sick infinitely more efficiently.
The first thing to do if you want to help others, therefore, is to develop your own compassion, altruistic love, and courage enough to be able to serve these others without betraying your original intention. Remedying our own egocentrism is a powerful way of serving those around us. We must therefore not underestimate the importance of personal transformation.
After personal transformation comes community engagement. In Une brève histoire de l’avenir (A Brief History of the Future), Jacques Attali declares that we are moving toward a formidable increase in the power of altruism thanks to nongovernmental organizations, which, in his opinion, will one day govern the world.13
In order to achieve this, NGOs, which have sprung from engagement at the local level and from social movements, must learn to cooperate so as to create a global synergy and build their capacities.
According to the psychologist Paul Ekman, the difference between the highly motivated members of an NGO and those of big international organizations, who are often out of touch, lies in the feeling of an emotional connection with those whose conditions they are trying to improve, as well as with those who share their vision and work alongside them. In Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution, philosopher Roman Krznaric gives many inspiring examples of people who have immersed themselves in the lives of the poor, the homeless, and racially discriminated African American or Turkish immigrant workers, in order to gain a truly empathetic insight into their living conditions.
This community engagement is often sparked by the strength of ideas, by imagination and creativity, and the inspirational power of major moral figures such as Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, as well as social entrepreneurs who marry a long-term altruistic vision with astonishingly efficient activity, like Muhammad Yunus, Fazle Abed, Vandana Shiva, Bunker Roy, and many others. It is essential to kindle hope and arouse enthusiasm at the same time as implementing pragmatic solutions capable of being replicated on a broader scale.
Environmental NGOs influenced the decision to adopt the Kyoto Protocol on the reduction of greenhouse gases. The work of Handicap International and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), whose founding coordinator, Jody Williams, won the Nobel Peace Prize, brought about the Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines. Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), for their part, helped found the International Criminal Court. Greenpeace campaigns have led to the adoption of numerous important (though still largely insufficient) measures to protect the environment.
Big international NGOs like Oxfam, Care, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Médecins Sans Frontières, Médecins du Monde, Save the Children, Action Against Hunger, Greenpeace, or Max Havelaar produce public goods all over the world, but still have little influence in countries ruled by dictatorships, for whom the very term “nongovernmental organization” is seen as a threat. In democratic states, however, their independent and objective status allows them to mobilize opinion, offer solutions, and, with more or less success, put pressure on governments.
Smaller NGOs, on the other hand, which have been set up by the million, are often capable of working extremely effectively at the local level by managing to avoid, so far as possible, incurring the wrath of authoritarian regimes, and carrying out work in the realms of health care, education, and social services that would normally be carried out by a functioning state. They embody the spirit of solidarity and determination that can be found among civilian populations in all societies.
Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill University in Canada with a strong reputation in the field of management, has proposed a radical revitalization of civil society, what he calls the “plural” sector, which comprises charities, foundations, community and nongovernmental organizations, professional associations, cooperatives, mutual funds, health organizations, and nonprofit schools and universities, as well as other organizations for whom it is inherently easier to inspire a group dynamic, create a set of values, and take a more responsible approach with regard to collective goods: natural resources and human communities.14
He thinks that we have to transcend the linear politics of left, right, and center, and to understand that a balanced society, like a stool that doesn’t wobble, needs to have three solid pillars: a public sector made up of political forces embodied by well-respected governments, a private sector made up of economic forces embodied by responsible businesses, and a plural sector of social forces embodied by robust civilian communities. A harmonious, solidarity-based society is therefore achieved when there is a balance between these three areas. Nowadays, the plural sector is the weakest of the three, and must be strengthened if it is to take its place alongside the other two in order to achieve a balance in society. “Some countries, such as the United States or the United Kingdom, need to develop it in the face of extreme pressure from the private sector; others, like China, must do it under equally extreme pressure from the public sector; Brazil, and maybe India, are in my opinion the closest to achieving a balance between the three sectors, and are in this sense the best examples of the economic model to come.”15
Mintzberg provocatively defines the capitalist credo as follows: “greed is good, markets are sacrosanct, property is sacred, and governments are suspect.” He is no kinder to totalitarian regimes, which are at the opposite extreme, withdrawing power from the hands of the people and placing it entirely in the grip of the state. Both cases lead to imbalance.
For Mintzberg, governance structures are stuck in a form of individualistic democracy that goes back to the eighteenth century, whereas resolving today’s problems requires above all else cooperation at the international level. He thinks that community groups in the plural sector are the best suited to creating the social initiatives that we need. A whole host of these are already underway thanks to social media, but many others are needed to dislodge the unhealthy alliance between big business and government.
In The Third Industrial Revolution, Jeremy Rifkin describes civil society as the place where humans create social capital. He too deplores the fact that civil society has been relegated to the background and deemed marginal by comparison with the economy or the state, even though it is the principal domain in which civilization develops:
There is no example I can think of in history where a people first set up markets and governments, and then later created a culture. Rather, markets and governments are extensions of culture… The civil society is where we generate social capital—which is really accumulated trust—that is invested in markets and governance. If markets and governance destroy the social trust vested in them, people will eventually withdraw their support or force a reorganization of the other two sectors.16
Rifkin reminds us that civil society is also an emerging economic force, and that a 2010 study taking in more than forty countries by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies found that the nonprofit “third” sector represents an average of 5% of GDP in the eight countries investigated most closely,17 which is more, for example, than that represented by utilities companies (electricity, water, gas), and puts it on par with the building trade (5.1%).18
In numerous countries, the “third sector” also represents a large percentage of jobs. Millions of people work in it on a voluntary basis, but millions of others are employed by these organizations on a salaried basis. In the forty-two countries studied, the nonprofit sector employs around 5.6% of the economically active population. At the moment, Europe is experiencing the sharpest growth in the nonprofit sector.19
Contrary to what was happening only ten years ago, many young people are spurning traditional careers in the private and public sectors in favor of the nonprofit sector.20
To make the step from community engagement to global responsibility, it is essential to realize that all things are interdependent, and to assimilate that worldview in such a way that it influences our every action. Altruism and compassion are intimately linked to this understanding of interdependence, since it allows us to bring down the illusory wall that we erect between “myself” and “others,” between “I” and “we,” making us feel responsible for our world and its inhabitants. As the Dalai Lama explains:
To acquire a sense of universal responsibility—to perceive the universal dimension of each of our actions and each person’s duty towards happiness and non-suffering—is to acquire a state of mind that, when we see an opportunity to help others, drives us to seize it rather than worrying solely about our own petty self-interest.21
How can we altruistically link local community action to that which affects the planet as a whole? In The Path to Hope, Stéphane Hessel and Edgar Morin examine the frequently incongruous aspects of globalization:
We must understand that globalization constitutes both the best and the worst thing that could ever happen to mankind. The best because all the scattered fragments of humanity have become interdependent for the first time, creating a shared fate.… The worst because it has triggered a frantic race toward a succession of catastrophes.22
This view is shared by Joseph Stiglitz, who does not see globalization as an evil in itself, but rather something that becomes perverse when states manage it in such a way that benefits vested interests, especially those of multinationals or dictators. Relying on people, countries, and economies around the world can be just as effective a way of creating prosperity as it can be for spreading greed and exacerbating poverty.23
Even though 70% of its population lives below the poverty line, Nigeria has many billionaires who have accrued immense wealth through the worldwide sale of the country’s oil reserves. The same is true of many developing countries. In such cases, we see globalization perverted through the alliance between wicked political institutions—which allow oligarchs to accumulate private fortunes—and multinationals whose sole aim is the endless accumulation of profit, even if it means leaving local communities to languish in appalling poverty. As the historian Francis Fukuyama has pointed out, bad institutions exist because it is in the interests of powerful political forces within the poor country itself to maintain the status quo.24
For Stiglitz, “globalization as [it is] currently managed promotes neither global efficiency nor equity; even more importantly, it puts our democracy in peril.”25
Globalization that is unobstructed and does not take into careful consideration the situation of those who are affected by it cannot effectively serve the majority, and benefits only the most powerful.
Harvard professor Dani Rodrik writes in The Globalization Paradox26 that, even though economic globalization has increased the level of prosperity in developed countries and provided employment to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia—work that often verges on bona fide exploitation—the concept is built on shaky foundations, and its long-term viability is in no way guaranteed. Rodrik’s argument centers on a fundamental “trilemma”: that we cannot simultaneously pursue democracy, national self-determination, and economic globalization. Give too much power to governments, and you have protectionism. Give markets too much freedom, and you have an unstable world economy with little social and political support for those it is supposed to help. Rodrik argues for smart globalization, not maximum globalization.
What we need is not globalization based on the economic exploitation of Third World countries, but globalization based on access to health care, knowledge (scientific as well as traditional), and bringing about conditions of peace and freedom that let each person realize the fullness of their potential. For Hessel and Morin, it is essential that we work out how to globalize and deglobalize: we must maintain and develop “every aspect of globalization that fosters fellowship and cultural vitality,”27 but at the same time we must deglobalize in order to restore vital forms of autonomy to local populations and promote cultural diversity, local economies, agroecology, local food supplies, and small-scale artisans and businesses, not to mention safeguarding traditional practices and expertise that have stood the test of centuries.
As Pascal Lamy notes, “That there is a widening gap between global challenges and the ways of working out solutions is no longer in dispute today. One of the most important consequences of this gap is, in my view, the feeling of dispossession which is spreading among the citizens of this planet. Dispossession of their own destiny, dispossession of the means to act on an individual level as well as at a national level—to say nothing of the global one.”28 In his view, it is not globalization that is creating this impression, but the absence of appropriate ways to deal with it—the absence of democratic governance at the required level, that is, the global level.
Stéphane Hessel, during an interview with the Dalai Lama, made the following remark:
The authors of the Universal Declaration were focusing not on the West, but on all humanity. Its authors included people from China, Lebanon, Latin America, and India. It was not for nothing that René Cassin was able to attribute the adjective “universal” to this text, alone among all other international documents. We must not let dictators hide behind accusations of Occidentalism in order to escape the provisions of this text.29
The Dalai Lama unambiguously supported this position:
Certain governments in Asia have maintained that the human rights criteria set out in the Universal Declaration were asserted by the West and that they cannot be applied in Asia or other parts of the developing world for reasons of cultural difference and discrepancies in levels of social and economic development. I do not share this perspective… since it is in the nature of all human beings to aspire to liberty, equality, and dignity, and those in the East have the same rights in this respect as anyone else.… Diversity of culture and tradition cannot under any circumstances justify human rights violations. As such, discrimination against women, people from different backgrounds, and people from more vulnerable parts of society, can in some regions stem from tradition, but if they run contrary to universally recognized human rights, then these behaviors must change.30
How do we ensure that people get the best of all possible governments? As the Dalai Lama said after “freely, joyously, and proudly” putting an end to four centuries of collusion between spiritual power and earthly power with the establishment of a fully democratic Tibetan administration in exile: “The time of dictators and religious leaders having a stranglehold on governments is over. The world belongs to 7 billion human beings, and it is them and only them who must decide democratically on the fate of humankind.” These words have been uttered many times since 2011, when he handed over the last remnants of political authority that had until then formed part of his station, at the end of a process of democratization of Tibetan institutions that he had undertaken the moment he arrived in exile on Indian soil.
As Winston Churchill quipped, “Democracy is the worst form of Government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”31 But how do we make sure that the best decisions for an entire population emerge from an immense mass of individuals who do not always have access to the information needed for a complete understanding of a situation? Dictators have answered that question by deciding on everyone’s behalf, and religious leaders by deciding according to the dogmas of their respective creeds. With the odd exception, both camps have caused, and continue to cause, immeasurable suffering.
Most primitive tribes, as we have seen, were fundamentally egalitarian in nature. When they settled, the people who became leaders were generally those who were considered the most wise and experienced, and who had proved themselves the most. The choice of leaders therefore involved both consensus and meritocracy. As communities grew, accumulated wealth, and formed hierarchies, other systems emerged, particularly brutal power struggles and the submission of peoples to the authority of potentates. Human history has ultimately shown that democracy is the only form of government capable of respecting the aspirations of a majority of citizens.
But how do we avoid descending into populism and hasty decisions made to satisfy the demands of those who view politics as an instrument of short-term advantages and inconveniences? Politicians guarantee their reelection by acceding to demands and dare not engage in far-reaching reform whose rewards will not be reaped in the immediate future, and which often involve making unpopular decisions.
The threat of demagoguery is today particularly clear in the case of climate change denial, much in vogue in the United States, whose arguments would melt away a hundred times faster than the Arctic ice cap if a majority of people, the media, and politicians took greater heed of scientific evidence, and if those who were correctly informed were in a position to make the decisions needed to bring about long-term human prosperity. It is also essential for the scientific community to be less prone to yielding to the pressures of the financial markets, which draw researchers away from producing meaningful work in favor of seeking economic gain. The commodification of science and medicine often means that greater importance is attached to the interests of pharmaceutical laboratories than to caring for the sick, in the same way that the interests of big food companies are placed before those of farmers and consumers.32
The Berggruen Institute on Governance, founded by the German-born philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen, who decided to dedicate his fortune to improving systems of governance across the world, defines “intelligent governance”33 as finding a balance between a meritocracy built on a series of choices carried out at different levels of society (from local authorities to national positions of responsibility) and a democratic process that allows citizens to prevent potential shifts in power that might lead to corruption, nepotism, abuses of power, and totalitarianism.34
According to Berggruen and the political columnist Nathan Gardels, an informed democracy involves maximum decentralization of decision-making power, which needs to be entrusted to citizen bodies active in their relevant areas of expertise.35 In order to manage and integrate these interdependent yet decentralized powers, the authors state that it would be essential to instate a suitably competent and experienced political authority, which would have an overview of the system and take decisions on matters concerning the collective good of its citizens. This authority would constitute an enlightened meritocracy, protected from the immediate interests of pressure groups. But in order to retain legitimacy, the authority must be transparent and accountable, and its activity must be monitored by democratically elected civilian representatives.
Berggruen and Gardels conceive of a pyramid structure that would encourage the emergence, at every level of representation, of small-scale elected bodies that know each other and have the relevant skillsets and experience to assess their peers.36 Let us imagine this system being applied to a country with 80 million inhabitants. The country is divided into 100 districts of 800,000 people. Each community of 2,000 people, representing a precinct, elects ten deputies. These deputies meet up, deliberate, and elect one of their own to sit on a council made up of twenty members, representing a total of 40,000 inhabitants. They then elect one regional representative, and twenty regional representatives elect one deputy to represent the whole district (800,000 people) and sit at a national parliament of 100 deputies.
Those elected therefore represent groups that, at various levels, reflect the full breadth of the electorate. Good examples of this system can be found in Australia and Ireland. The difference with the direct election of one deputy representing 800,000 people is that at every level the people who elect the individual who will represent them at a higher level know each other and can vouch firsthand for the experience, intelligence, and skills of the people they are electing. At every level, candidates have to prove that they are competent enough (in terms of knowledge and experience) to take on the responsibility required. This solution therefore involves dividing the political system into small manageable units operating on a human scale, with each one electing the next-higher unit.37
For his part, Jacques Attali, in his book Demain qui gouvernera le monde? (Tomorrow, Who Will Govern the World?), states that federalism is the form of administering the world that has the greatest chance of being effective. Global governance must have a supranational dimension without being at all centralized. What is federalism? “Federalism,” Attali explains, “adheres to three principles: separation, which involves dividing up legislative authority between a federal government and several federated governments; autonomy, which allows each level of government to be solely responsible in its field of competence; appropriation, by which federated entities, represented in federal institutions and participating in the adoption of federal laws, feel a sense of belonging within the community and its rules, and have faith in the main body’s ability to ensure diversity and compromise.”38 In short, Attali concludes:
In order to survive, humanity must go even further than the current, vague realization of an “international community.” It must realize the unity of its fate, and primarily of its existence in its present form. It must understand that, together, it can achieve so much more than it can apart.