Governing the Globe

...When such an appeal doesn't work, however, Americans have time, the smallest risk of global tyranny...

...They require a practical, political response, and international civil society provides the best available space for the development of this politics...

...Warfare between or among states has been reduced, but overall violence has not been reduced...

...By contrast, the political character of the member states would tend to become more and more similar...

...it doesn't supercede them...

...No state possesses the absolute sovereignty described by early modern political theorists, which makes for anarchy in its strongest sense...

...Whenever these results threaten life and liberty, some kind of intervention is necessary, but they don't always do that, and when they don't the different political formations that emerge must be given room to develop (and change...

...There are many weak, divided, and unstable states in the world today, and the global regime has not been successful in preventing civil wars, military interventions, savage repression of political enemies, massacres, and "ethnic cleansing" aimed at minority populations...

...The autonomy is not secure, because the center is always capable of canceling it...

...Diversity would be radically privatized...

...there are no stable organizations of states working to generate common policies with regard, say, to environmental questions, arms control, labor standards, the movement of capital, or any other issue of general concern...

...We see in the world today a series of global organizations of a political, economic, and judicial sort—the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO),the World Court, and so on— that serve to modify state sovereignty...

...Still, it is probably true that unity has been the dominant ambition of leftist parties and movements, so it doesn't make much sense, on this occasion anyway, to fiddle with the rightness and leftness of the continuum...

...It isn't negotiated between equals but granted by the powerful to the weak...

...There is still something to be said for division and pluralism...

...the European Community (EC) provides some modest but not insignificant examples of the redistribution that centralized power makes possible...

...in domestic society, exactly as in international society, they challenge the regulative and redistributive power of the political authorities...

...They struggle to organize a strike against low wages and brutal working conditions, but are unable to shape the economy...

...there have always been pluralist tendencies on the left, and those are the tendencies that I identify with...

...Certainly, associations that engage, train, and empower ordinary men and women serve democracy more effectively than other regimes, but they probably strengthen any state that encourages rather than suppresses associational life...

...This is still a threat, not an achievement— the corporations haven't entirely escaped the control of the nation-state—but the threat isn't imaginary...

...Reforms in these institutional areas, however, are rarely sought for their own sake...

...That last is an important value, and it is no doubt well served by the third degree of pluralism (indeed, the different levels of government allow new opportunities for self-expression and autonomy to minority groups hitherto subordinated within the nation-state...

...it drastically qualifies the powers of the center...

...In practice, however, this constituting principle is radically unlikely to prevail, and ideal types should not be fictional types...

...This seems to be Kant's assumption: "In such a league, every nation, even the smallest, can expect to have security and rights...

...Obviously, there are alternative markings...

...If the UN retained its current structure, with the Security Council as it is now constituted, the global federation would be an oligarchy or perhaps, because the General Assembly represents a kind of democracy, a mixed regime...

...Best available, but not necessarily sufficient for the task: it is a feature of the associations of civil society that they run after problems...

...The second possible failure is in the promotion of equality...

...The first is the possible failure of peacekeeping, which is also, today, a failure to protect ethnic or religious minorities...

...First, there is the anarchy of states, where there are no effective agents except the governments that act in the name of state sovereignty...

...Even if all the states were republics, as Kant hoped they would be, the federation would still be wholly or partly oligarchic, so long as the existing distribution of resources was unchanged...

...We need many agents, many arenas of activity and decision...

...The dream of a single agent—the enlightened despot, the civilizing imperium, the communist vanguard, the global state—is a delusion...

...Add to these organizations a very large number of civic associations operating internationally, including political parties that run candidates in different countries' elections and labor unions that realize their longstanding goal of international solidarity, as well as single-issue movements of a more familiar kind...

...It's best to begin with the two ends of the continuum, so that its dimensions are immediately visible...

...The larger the membership of these associations and the wider their extension across state boundaries, the more they would knit together the politics of the global society...

...But the rulers obviously don't recognize individual citizens as participants in the government of the empire, they don't protect individuals against their own groups, and they don't aim at an equitable distribution of resources among either groups or individuals...

...I will be moving toward the center, but from opposite directions, so as to make clear that I am not describing a developmental or progressive history...

...For some cultures and most orthodox religions can only survive if they are permitted degrees of separation that are incompatible with globalism...

...THE NEXT STEP in from the left brings with it the end of subjection: the new arrangement is a federation of nation-states, a United States of the World...

...All in all, we cannot be happy with the current state of the world...

...I have in mind the familiar anarchy of states mitigated and controlled by a threefold set of non-state agents: organizations like the UN, the associations of international civil society, and regional unions like the EC...

...The strategy of this essay will be to move in from the two sides...

...The claim of all the strongly centered regimes is that this sort of thing will be stopped, but the possible price of doing this, and of maintaining the capacity to do it, is a tyranny without borders, a more "total" regime than the theory of totalitarianism ever envisaged...

...The oligarchs won't yield their positions, and any effective federal regime would have to accommodate them (though it might also drain their strength over the long run...

...But would an international society, however anarchic, all of whose constituent states were republics, be drawn into the same circle...

...But there is no assigned agent, no singular responsibility...

...More than this (since I mean to describe an extreme condition), there are no smaller groups of states that have accepted a common law and submitted to its enforcement by international agencies...

...regional federations are still in their beginning stages...

...and their own work would enhance the effectiveness of the cooperation...

...I imagine this last regime as providing a context for politics in its fullest sense and for the widest engagement of ordinary citizens...

...Following Thomas Hobbes's argument in Leviathan, I want to say that such a state could be a monarchy, oligarchy, or democracy...

...The third degree of pluralism maximizes the number of agents who might stop it or at least mitigate its effects: individual states acting unilaterally (like the Vietnamese when they shut down the killing fields of Cambodia), alliances and unions of states (like the North Atlantic DISSENT / Fall 2000 n 51 GOVERNING THE GLOBE Treaty Organization in the Kosovo war), global organizations (like the UN), and the volunteers of international civil society (like Doctors Without Borders...

...they would always represent multiple sources of political energy...

...Once again, however, I want to acknowledge the advantages that lie on the continuum's far left side, though in this case they are more hypothetical than actual, since we have less experience of centralization than of anarchy...

...There won't be an advance at any institutional level except in the context of a campaign or, better, a series of campaigns for greater security and greater equality for groups and individuals across the globe...

...Nor has global inequality been reduced, even though the flow of capital across borders (labor mobility too, I think) is easier than it has ever been—and, according to theorists of the free market, this ought to have egalitarian effects...

...Conceivably, the federal regime would turn out to be a guardian of both eccentric groups and individuals—as in the United States, for example, where embattled minorities and idiosyncratic citizens commonly appeal to the central government when they are mistreated by local authorities...

...its unity is not affected by its political character...

...All the other regimes are worse, including the one on the far left of the continuum for which the highest hopes have been held out...

...Because the criteria turn out to be inconsistent with—or at least in tension with—one another, my argument will be complicated, but it could be, and no doubt should be, much more so...

...The second is the global empire, whose members are the subject nations...

...The reason for the rejection is easily explained: the global state would be much like states today, only on a vastly greater scale...

...All this makes for insecurity and fear not only among the rulers of states but also among their ordinary inhabitants, and insecurity and fear are, as Hobbes argued, the chief cause of war...

...everything waits for political debate and decision—and may wait too long...

...State leaders watch each other nervously and respond to each other's policies, but in every other sense, the centers of political decision making are independent...

...These inequalities are probably harder to deal with than any political differences among the states...

...52 n DISSENT / Fall 2000...

...At the far right is the regime or the absenceofregime that political theorists call "international anarchy...

...The hegemony of the imperial nation divides it from the others, without abolishing the others...

...Kant argued that republican citizens would be far less willing to accept the risks of war than kings were to impose those risks on their subjects— and so would be less threatening to their neighbors (Perpetual Peace, First Definitive Article...

...they would operate across state DISSENT / Fall 2000 n 47 GOVERNING THE GLOBE borders and recruit activists and supporters without reference to nationality...

...This is the third degree of global pluralism, and in its fully developed (ideal) version, it offers the largest number of opportunities for political action on behalf of peace, justice, cultural difference, and individual rights...

...every state acts alone...

...On the left, I have so far marked off only two arrangements, moving in the direction of greater division but maintaining the idea of a single center...

...SO WE NEED to move further toward centralization...

...FINALLY, the move to the third degree of pluralism really is a move...

...To find a place for this federal regime, we need to imagine a surrender of sovereignty by the member states and then a constitutionally guaranteed functional division of power, such that the states are left with significant responsibilities and the means to fulfill them—a version, then, of the American system, projected internationally...

...Imagine a wide range of civic associations— for mutual aid, human rights advocacy, the protection of minorities, the achievement of gender equality, the defense of the environment, the advancement of labor—organized on a much larger scale than at present...

...For all the states would be incorporated into the same constitutional structure, bound, for example, by the same codes of social and political rights and far less able than they are today to ignore those rights...

...For it is a mistake to imagine Reason in power in a global state—as great a mistake (and a mistake of the same kind) as to imagine the future world order as a millennial kingdom where God is the king...

...Any political realization of difference moves us rightward on the continuum as I am imagining it...

...Within the scope of this essay, I will have to deal summarily with some of the arrangements and some of the criteria...

...The rulers required by regimes of this kind don't exist or, at least, don't manifest themselves politically...

...Now let's take another step in from the right side and try to imagine a coherent form of division...

...Next, we add to these governments a plurality of international political and financial organizations, with a kind of authority that limits but doesn't abolish sovereignty...

...That's not my own aspiration for my country, nor do I really think that it's possible, but I won't pretend to believe that a Pax Americana, however undesirable, is the worst thing that could happen to the world today (it may be the worst thing that could happen to America), and I have been an advocate of a more activist American political/military role in places like Rwanda and Kosovo...

...And I can describe only an imaginary set of balancing forces in an expanded civil society: multinational labor unions, for example, and political parties operating across national frontiers...

...Some combination of the two might work fairly well...

...we have "many miles to go before we sleep...

...For it is a crucial feature of regionalism that there will be many centers...

...Consider instead the same "constitutional" arrangements that we currently have, reinforced by a much stronger international civil society...

...But they would never constitute a single center...

...Their activists are more likely to minister heroically to the victims of a plague than to enforce public health measures in advance...

...Then it requires a World Bank and IMF strong enough to regulate the flow of capital and the forms of international investment and a WTO able to enforce labor GOVERNING THE GLOBE and environmental standards as well as trade agreements--all these, however, must be independently governed, not tightly coordinated with the UN...

...My plan is to present seven possible regimes or constitutions or political arrangements...

...Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent, Seventh Thesis...

...Of course, opportunities for action are no more than that...

...It isn't easy to imagine any other sort of federation, given the current inequalities of wealth and power among states...

...indeed, the combination of (many) weak states with weak global organizations brings disadvantages from both directions: the protection of ethnic and religious difference is inadequate and so is the protection of individual rights and the promotion of equality...

...This article was originally given as the Multatuli Lecture at the University of Leuven in Belgium...

...Obviously, the greater the mediating role of the member states, the more this arrangement moves rightward on the continuum...

...Even if the member states were not democracies to start with, they would become uniformly democratic over time...

...So, the morally maximal form of decentralization would be a global society in which every national or ethnic/ religious group that needed protection actually possessed sovereign power...

...So it may be the case, as the Kosovo war suggests, that modern democracies won't live up to Kant's pacific expectations: they will fight, only not on the ground...

...By contrast, the move toward pluralism suits people like us, all-too-real and no more than intermittently reasonable, for whom politics is a "natural" activity...

...the level of participation in international civil society is much too low...

...here the move would be toward unity or, at least, uniformity...

...So the third degree of global pluralism requires a UN with a military force of its own capable of humanitarian interventions and a strong version of peacekeeping—but still a force that can only be used with the approval of the Security Council or a very large majority of the General Assembly...

...And so the survival of these groups would be at risk...

...But we can generalize from the history of centralized states and suggest that global distributive justice might be better served by a strong government able to establish universal standards of labor and welfare and to shift resources from richer to poorer countries...

...But we are obviously closer to the right than to the left side of the continuum...

...I have to be careful in writing about imperial rule, because I am a citizen of the only state in the contemporary world capable of aspiring to it...

...Despite the hazards of inequality and war, sovereign statehood is a way of protecting distinct historical cultures, sometimes national, sometimes ethnic/religious in character...

...The danger of all the decentered and multicentered regimes is that no one will stop the awfulness...

...A global empire, in which one nation ruled over all the others, would also operate from a single center, but insofar as its rulers differentiated between the dominant nation and all the others, and perhaps among the others too, this would represent a qualification on its centralized character...

...This phrase describes what is in fact a highly organized world, but one that is radically decentered...

...Instead, many organizations will seek to mobilize the dispossessed and express their aspirations, sometimes cooperating, sometimes competing with one another...

...But I don't want to dismiss international anarchy without saying something about its advantages...

...I WANT to take another step in from the left side of the continuum, but will first summarize the steps so far...

...The centralization of the global state, by contrast, is unqualified...

...But I want to stress that my own preference for democracy doesn't extend to a belief that this preference should be uniformly enforced on every political community...

...But a role of that sort is still far from imperial hegemony, which, though we might value it for the peace it brought (or just for an end to the massacres), is clearly not one of the preferred regimes...

...under the rules of the global state, they would not be able to sustain and pass on their way of life...

...They protest environmental diasters that are already disastrous...

...their powers of enforcement are difficult to bring to bear and, at best, only partially effective...

...The third possible failure is in the defense of individual liberty...

...A greatly strengthened United Nations, incorporating the World Bank and the World Court, might approximate this model, so long as it had the power to coerce member states that refused to abide by its resolutions and verdicts...

...I am not describing the world as it is in 2000...

...But this kind of power would be dangerous to all the member states, not only to the wealthiest among them...

...What's wrong with anarchy...

...Given this necessity, I don't see how it could accommodate anything like the range of cultural and religious difference that we see around us today...

...To appreciate the beauty of this pluralist arrangement, one must attach a greater value to political possibility, and the activism it breeds, than to the certainty of political success...

...A federal regime would probably redistribute resources, but only within limits set by its oligarchs (once again, the European Community provides examples...

...The passion with which stateless nations pursue statehood and the driven character of national liberation movements reflect the somber realities of the twentieth century, from which it is necessary to draw moral and political conclusions for the twenty-first...

...Even a global state committed to toleration would be limited in its powers of accommodation by its prior commitment to what I will call "globalism," that is, centralized rule over the whole world...

...Conventional warfare would be impossible in a radically centralized global state, for its agents would have disappeared, and none of the motives for going to war would any longer operate: ethnic and religious differences and divergent national interests, indeed, every kind of sectional interest, would lose their political DISSENT / Fall 2000 n 45 GOVERNING THE GLOBE relevance...

...We will strengthen global pluralism only by using it, by seizing the opportunities it offers...

...Constitutional guarantees would serve to DISSENT / Fall 2000 n 49 GOVERNING THE GLOBE protect national and ethnic/religious groups...

...And the hope of a singular citizenship and a singular identity for all human individuals— so that they would be autonomous men and women, and nothing else...

...Now let's move in from the right side of the continuum: one step from anarchy brings us to something like the current arrangement of international society (hence this is the least idealized of my ideal types...

...At the same time, it is qualified today by the willing use of the most advanced military technologies—which don't, indeed, put their users at risk though they impose very high costs on their targets...

...But could a global federation make its peace with political pluralism...

...They arrive in the battle zone only in time to assist the wounded and shelter the refugees...

...Sovereign power is a means of self-protection, and it is very dangerous to be deprived of this means...

...Of course, the will to undertake egalitarian reforms might well be absent in the world republic—just as it is in most sovereign states today...

...the recognition and enforcement of human rights could also be measured along a continuum, as could democratization, welfare provision, pluralism, and so on...

...But the forces that oppose equality will never have to face the massed power of the globally dispossessed, for there won't be one global arena where this power can be massed...

...And after that, we add a plurality of international associations that operate across borders and serve to strengthen the constraints on state action...

...But for reasons we all know, which have to do with the necessary territorial extension of sovereignty, the mix of populations on the ground, and the uneven distribution of natural resources above and below the ground, dividing up the world in this way would be (has been) a bloody business...

...In fact, however, only those groups that achieved sovereignty before the federation was formed would have a sure place within it...

...We certainly see evidence of that unwillingness in contemporary democracies, though it has not always been as strong as it is today...

...The organizations are individual sovereign states, and there is no effective law binding on all of them...

...Few people are sufficiently interested...

...The greater the power acquired by the central government, the more redistribution there is likely to be...

...The strength of the center, of the federal government, will depend on the rights freely ceded to it by the member states and on the direct or indirect character of its jurisdiction over individual citizens...

...Note first that the right side of the continuum is a realm of pluralism and the left side a realm of unity...

...The solution is to build on the institutional structures that now exist, or are slowly coming into existence, and to strengthen all of them, even if they are competitive with one another...

...It would reduce some of the risks of a global state, but not in a stable way, because imperial power is often arbitrary and capricious...

...A more genuine regime of global toleration would have to make room for cultural and religious autonomy, but that would involve a move rightward on the continuum...

...So we have international anarchy and then two degrees of global pluralism...

...And I don't assume in advance that the best regime lies at the center, only that it doesn't lie at the extremes...

...Sovereign states negotiate with each other on the basis of their "national interests," reach agreements, and sign treaties, but the treaties are GOVERNING THE GLOBE not enforceable by any third party...

...It is necessary to imagine both tighter and looser structures, distributed across the globe, perhaps even with overlapping memberships: differently constituted federal unions in different parts of the world...

...Even when they predict coming troubles, they have 48 n DISSENT / Fall 2000 too little institutional power to act effectively...

...So there would have to be some procedure for recognizing and securing the rights of new groups, as well as a code of rights for individuals without regard to their memberships...

...Contemporary political theorists argue that civil society has often served to strengthen the democratic state...

...But the very success of the politics of difference makes for internal conflicts that sometimes reach to "ethnic cleansing" and even genocidal civil war...

...But difference as a value exists alongside peace, equality, and autonomy...

...But focusing on centralization is the quickest way to reach the key political and moral questions, above all the classical question: what is the best or the best possible regime...

...Citizens who think themselves oppressed would appeal to the federal courts and presumably find quick redress...

...I will do this discursively, without providing a list in advance, but I do want to list the criteria against which the seven arrangements have to be evaluated: these are their capacity to promote peace, distributive justice, cultural pluralism, and individual freedom...

...This hegemony sustains world peace, even if there are intermittent rebellions, and it does this while still permitting some degree of cultural independence—perhaps in a form like that of the Ottoman millet system, under which different religious groups were granted partial legal autonomy...

...As for the underlying, long-term problems of international society—insecurity and inequality above all—civil associations are at best mitigating factors: their activists can do many good things, but they can't make peace in a country torn by civil war or redistribute resources on a significant scale...

...So let me redescribe the global state...

...Consider again the troubling features of the first five, possibly the first six regimes: in some of them it is the decentered world and the selfcentered states inhabiting it (whether the states are strong or weak) that threaten our values...

...their decision mechanisms are uncertain and slow...

...they would always be diversely focused...

...It is far more likely to make its peace with material inequality...

...This is the meaning I would give to Kant's warning that a cosmopoli46 • DISSENT / Fall 2000 tan constitution could lead to "terrifying despotism" (Theory and Practice, Part III)—the danger is less to individuals than to groups...

...It is centralized through the hegemony of a single great power over all the lesser powers of international society...

...To my mind, certainty is always a fantasy, but I don't want to deny that something is lost when one gives up the more unitary versions of globalism...

...Even that assumption needs to be justified...

...There is no global authority or procedure for policy determination and no encompassing legal jurisdiction for either sovereigns or citizens...

...and it poses, at the same 50 n DISSENT / Fall 2000 this: create a set of alternative centers and an increasingly dense web of social ties that cross state boundaries...

...Wars between and among states will be rare in a densely webbed international society...

...they react to crises...

...if the mediation disappears entirely, we are back at the left end, in the global state...

...they are not responsible for the state as a whole, and their warnings are often disregarded precisely because they are seen as irresponsible...

...OW LET'S MOVE one step in from the left side of the continuum, which — brings us to a global regime that has the form of a Pax Romana...

...In principle, at least, the global state would be constituted solely and entirely by autonomous individuals, free, within the limits of the criminal law, to choose their own life plans...

...Imperial hegemony is a form of political inequality that commonly makes for further inequalities in the economy and in social life generally...

...MICHAEL WALZER is a co-editor of Dissent...

...their ability to anticipate, plan, and prevent lags far behind that of the state...

...Democracy has to be reached through a political process that, in its nature, can also produce different results...

...Can a regime open to such failures possibly be the most just regime...

...On the other hand, the global organizations are weak...

...And the hope of achieving perpetual peace, the end of conflict and violence, everywhere and forever...

...This is not an account of our own situation...

...demands for the public expression of cultural divergence would be rejected...

...Here too, the third degree of pluralism provides many opportunities for egalitarian reform, and there will surely be many experiments in different societies or at different levels of government (like the Israeli kibbutz or the Scandanavian welfare state or the EC's redistributive efforts or the proposed "Tobin tax" on international financial transactions...

...But if this is so, it is in part because they have had common enemies and have established multilateral forms of cooperation and coordination, alliances for mutual security, that mitigate the anarchy of their relations...

...And once the wars start, the divisions that result are unlikely to be either just or stable...

...If it were to sustain itself over time, it too would have to command the loyalty of its citizens and give expression to a political culture distinctly its own...

...Of course, in a global state or a world empire, multinational corporations would be instantly domesticated, since there would be no place for their multiplication, no borders for them to cross...

...On one side, let's say the left side (though I will raise some doubts about that designation later on), there is a unified global state, something like Immanuel Kant's "world republic," with a single set of citizens, identical with the set of adult human beings, all of them possessed of the same rights and obligations...

...But that isn't an automatic solution to the problems they create...

...But these associations of volunteers co-exist in international civil society with multinational corporations that command armies of well-paid professional and managerial employees and threaten to overwhelm all other global actors...

...Political values have to be defended in different places so that failure here can be a spur to action there, and success there a model for imitation here...

...presumably that would be one of the central issues in the internal politics of the federation (but there wouldn't be any other politics since, by definition, nothing lies outside the federation...

...The viciousness of the circle is continually reinforced by inequalities of wealth and power among the involved states and by the shifting character of these inequalities (which depend on trade patterns, technological development, military alliances, and so on...

...and conflicts are sure to arise among men and women pursuing these different values...

...I am not happy with that description of right and left...

...But at least the capacity would exist...

...I must hurry to deny what the argument so far may suggest to many readers: I don't mean to sacrifice all these hopes solely for the sake of "communitarianism"—that is, for the sake of cultural and religious difference...

...Would they also strengthen the semi-governmental international organizations that now exist...

...And all of them would be engaged in activities of the sort that governments also ought to be engaged in—and where governmental engagement is more effective when it is seconded (or even initiated) by citizen-volunteers...

...We can (and should) defend some minimal understanding of human rights and seek its universal enforcement, but enforcement in the third degree of pluralism would necessarily involve many agents, hence many arguments and decisions, and the results are bound to be uneven...

...Starting from the right, then, I have marked off three arrangements, moving in the direction of greater centralization but doing this, paradoxically, by adding to the pluralism of agents...

...in others it is the tyrannical potential of the newly constituted center that poses the danger...

...The kinds of governmental agencies that are needed in an age of globalization haven't yet been developed...

...particularistic interests would be overridden...

...And the solution that I want to defend, the third degree of global pluralism, goes roughly like THE CONTINUUM From the left side: UNITY Global state/Multinational empire/Federation From the right side: DIVISION 3rd degree\2nd degree\lst degree of global pluralism\Anarchy options that would not be available to the citizens of a global union: they can carry their appeal to the UN or the World Court or they can move to another country...

...It requires a World Court with power to make arrests on its own, but needing to seek UN support in the face of opposition from any of the (semi-sovereign) states of international society...

...In terms of intellectual strategy, we would do better to reach arrangements of that kind from the other side...

...It isn't clear how to strike the balance...

...Anarchy leads regularly to war—and war to conquest, conquest to empire, empire to oppression, oppression to rebellion and secession, and secession leads back to anarchy and war again...

...This is the form that maximum centralization would take: each individual, every per44 n DISSENT / Fall 2000 son in the world, would be connected directly to the center...

...It isn't plausible that the citizens of a global state would be, except for the free choices they make, exactly like one another, all the collective and inherited differences that make for rivalry and distrust today having disappeared in the course of the state's formation...

...Surely different understandings of how we ought to live would persist...

...Defenders of what Americans call "states' rights" will argue for a mediated jurisdiction, with fewer rights ceded to the center...

...I am inclined to think that they already do this in modest ways and could do so much more extensively...

...Once the volunteers were numerous enough, they would bring pressure to bear on particular states to cooperate with each other and with global agencies...

...they have to fit an imaginable reality...

...As a democrat I ought to find this outcome more attractive than I do...

...A rather different argument has been made by some contemporary political scientists: at least in modern times, democratic republics don't fight with one another...

...By contrast, unity is certainly affected by any racial, religious, or ethnic divisions, whether these are hierarchical in nature, as in the imperial case, establishing significant inequalities among the groups, or merely functional or regional...

...And even if a particular empire did protect communal autonomy, it would be of no use to individuals trapped in oppressive communities...

...Groups of many different sorts would continue to shape the lives of their members in significant ways, but their existence would be largely ignored by the central authorities...

...Because this next one, and the one after that, will bring us to what seem to me the most attractive possibilities, I need to characterize, perhaps try to name, the less attractive ones already canvassed...

...The rulers of the empire recognize the value (at least, the prudential value) of group autonomy, and this recognition has worked very effectively for GOVERNING THE GLOBE group survival...

...Once again, the pluralism of states, cultures, and religions—even if full sovereignty no longer exists anywhere— means that individuals in different settings will be differently entitled and protected...

...BUT THERE will be failures as well as successes, and before concluding, I need to worry about three possible failures—so as to stress that all the arrangements, including the one I prefer, have their dangers and disadvantages...

...nor will it necessarily take the form most desired by a particular group...

...My argument is that all these are best pursued politically in circumstances where there are many avenues of pursuit, many agents in pursuit...

...The first is the global state, the least divided of imaginable regimes, whose memGOVERNING THE GLOBE bers are individual men and women...

...This would bring many of the advantages of a global federation but with greatly reduced risks of tyranny from the center...

...What is lost is the hope of creating a more egalitarian world with a stroke of the pen—a single legislative act enforced from a single center...

...THE PROBLEMS at the other end of the continuum are of a different kind...

...the problem is that it's more likely to be reached by pressure from the center than by democratic activism at (to shift my metaphor) the grassroots...

...So the problem is to overcome the radical decentralization of sovereign states without creating a single all-powerful central regime...

...The second of these is the easier, because it is closer to our own experience...

...The next step doesn't bring us to, say, a United Nations with its own army and police force or a World Bank with a single currency...

...We are not there yet...

...What constitutional goals should we set ourselves in an age of globalization...

...It would have to look legitimate to everyone in the world...

...so I had better turn immediately to the twin questions: What's wrong with radical centralization...

...They have moved, so to speak, to the left along the continuum...

...they bring no guarantees...

...The different regimes or arrangements are ideal types, not historical examples...

...All these groups would have centers distinct from the centers of particular states...

...Now add a new layer of governmental organization— the regional federation, of which the EC is only one possible model...

...and these would continue to be embodied in ways of life, historical cultures, and religions, commanding strong loyalties and seeking public expression...

...Nonetheless, arrangements of this sort represent the most stable regime of toleration known in world history...

...I only want to argue that it is the political arrangement that most facilitates the everyday pursuit of justice under conditions least dangerous to the overall cause of justice...

...And oligarchy here represents division...

...At the same time, however, the strength of the single center carries with it the threat of tyranny...