WORLD LEADERS CONVENED at the United Nations Summit of the Future in New York this week. Politicians and delegates from civil society and the private sector attended to discuss and adopt the Pact for the Future.
The organisers of the Summit have claimed it “offers a chance to commit to bold new solutions”. What could such bold new solutions look like? Our research suggests that the international public supports very bold ideas.
In a new study, recently published in the International Studies Quarterly, we found that overwhelming majorities of citizens in 17 countries across the global South, North, East, and West support the creation of a democratic world government to tackle pressing global challenges such as climate change, war and poverty. However, one country stands out as an exception: the United States.
After World War II, public figures like Albert Einstein and Jawaharlal Nehru supported the eternal idea of a world government to foster global peace and security. Today, scholars promote similar ideas – though under different banners such as “cosmopolitan democracy”. However, such proposals are often discarded quickly among scholars, diplomats and other practitioners, claiming that most people would not support them. Also, a glance at social media and websites referring to a “world government” may suggest that there is very little support for such an institution. The idea of “world government” might seem highly unpopular. But is this true?
We implemented an international survey experiment to explore public support for different notions of a world government. Between 2017 and 2021, we surveyed more than 42,000 respondents in 17 countries worldwide, representing 54% of the world population. We find that the idea of a world government finds substantial support around the globe.
Respondents in each country were randomly assigned to either the control or a treatment group. People in the control group were asked to what extent they support or oppose “the establishment of a world government”. In another condition, the proposed world government was specified as democratic; while yet another condition conceptualised the global government as focused on transnational issues – both common specifications among scholars and advocates. Lastly, the full proposal combined the democratic and global issues specifications:
The establishment of a world government which should be democratic in that people worldwide would be represented through free and fair elections or other ways of citizen participation and which should have the right and the power to deal with global issues like climate change, world poverty and international peace; while national governments would maintain control over issues that are not global.
Figure 1 shows that support across countries (weighting each country equally) rose from 48% when unspecified to 68% when it was made clear that the proposed world government would be democratic and 67% when focused on global issues. Moreover, 69% of respondents across countries support a democratic world government focused on transnational issues. During the pandemic, when we specified the focus of a democratic world government as dealing with Covid-19, support rose to 71% across countries.
When weighting countries based on their population sizes (rather than equally), 73% across our survey countries support a democratic world government focused on transnational issues. With population weights, even the unspecified world government proposal was supported by 58% across our survey countries.
Looking at individual surveyed countries, the majority – except for the United States – support the proposal of a fully specified world government. Egypt, India, Kenya, Indonesia, South Korea, Colombia and Hungary have the largest majorities in favour, ranging from 75% to 82% of respondents supporting the idea. The diversity of these countries – among others, in terms of population, development, freedom and power – illustrates the idea’s broad appeal across the world.
The least supportive nations – apart from the United States – were Russia and Argentina, where support was at 56% and 58% respectively – still comfortable absolute majorities.
The outlier is the US, where only 45% support the idea. Hence, US public opinion constitutes a potential obstacle to any efforts for the establishment of a world government. This is also reflected in the by far largest share of “strongly oppose” answers in the US with 24%, followed by a distance of 16% in Argentina and 15% in Russia.
The US is the only surveyed country without majority support. Thus, widespread assumptions about citizens opposing world governments could partly be unjustified generalisations from the American context to the world. One possible reason for scepticism in the United States could be its exceptional status as the world’s primary superpower.
Generally, support for a democratic world government focused on transnational issues is even stronger in more populous, less free, less powerful, or less developed countries. The hope for more international influence (in populous and less powerful countries) and a more democratic say on global issues (in less free countries) could be some of the possible reasons.
On the flip side, fears of global wealth redistribution in such an alternative world order might explain why support in richer countries (66% on average) is six percentage points lower than in poorer countries. Similarly, even though clear majorities in free countries support a democratic world government focused on global challenges (66% on average), support there is substantively lower than in partly/not democratic countries (75% on average), indicating that fears of losing democratic privileges may be a factor in the former group.
Our study reveals a largely overlooked side of present-day world public opinion: majority support for much stronger and more democratic global governance institutions than those that currently exist. These findings are especially relevant at a time when the world faces major transnational challenges such as climate change, wars, pandemics, poverty, mass migration and environmental degradation.
International organisations like the United Nations that have embarked on reform processes and NGOs advocating global governance transformations such as Democracy Without Borders, the World Federalist Movement, and Iswe Foundation may feel encouraged in their efforts. Our study indicates that there are strong popular mandates in countries around the world to pursue visions of stronger and more democratic global governance to tackle the transnational issues we face.
Dr Farsan Ghassim is the Junior Research Fellow in Politics at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. Dr Markus Pauli is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Dublin City University.
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