Efforts to establish an institution, a global Pnyx,23 where the governments of participating countries would discuss and peacefully resolve their differences, have not proven fruitful. According to Lamb (2001), two small groups of pioneers, one from the United Kingdom and another from the USA, greatly contributed to laying out the ideas and the required actions for such an undertaking. Unfortunately, the agreement reached in 1919 by the countries that took part in the Treaty of Versailles, which obliged them to cooperate in the framework of an organisation called ‘League of Nations’, failed, because the agreement was rejected by the USA’s Congress. Thus, the countries continued to pursue their interests unilaterally.
In the USA, the rapid economic growth in the early 1920s and the economic crisis that struck in 1929 led to the disappointing attitudes of Congress on the issue of the ‘League of Nations’ to be forgotten. In Russia, the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and the related communist ideology began to attract the attention in intellectuals and politicians in Western countries. In Europe, the rise of Hitler in Germany unleashed a great arms race, as well as a sense of dread that a new world war was in the making. Therefore, when Germany attacked Poland in 1939 and Japan attacked the USA at Pearl Harbour in 1941, the only issues of surprise in the matter were the location and the timing of the attacks that started the Second World War.
23The Pnyx was a place at the foot of the Acropolis in ancient Athens where theEcclesia of Demos met to take decisions after public consultation on matters within its competence. Such matters were the establishment of laws, the declaration of war, the prosecution of major crimes that leaders and citizens committed and in general issues of utmost importance for the citizens and the city–state of Athens.
The war helped change the views previously held by Western democracies. The USA departed from the isolationist policies previously championed, in part, because the effects of its domestic policies spread abroad. Countries became highly interdependent as a result of technological developments in telecommunications, transport and international trade. The notion of a body that would intervene to help resolve political, economic and other differences, especially between countries that fought against Germany and Japan, had begun to solidify. The result was the establishment of the ‘United Nations’ in 1945. This time around, the USA took the lead in its formation and has since offered the lion’s share in the financing of its operations. In the years since then, the number of international organisations and the number of countries participating in them have grown significantly.
When the UN was first created, there were 50 member states. Today, that number has increased to over 200. Research by Mansfield and Pevenhouse (2008) found that by participating in international organisations governments affirm their commitment to democratic principles. This could explain why the number of member states in the United Nations and other international organisations has increased dramatically. Even in instances where governments join international organisations to appear democratic, democracy gains because these countries are gradually forced to behave democratically in order to maintain their international credibility.
The United Nations, by statute, is mandated to help maintain international peace and security and to contribute towards international economic and social coopera- tion. The responsibility for achieving the first two objectives was assigned initially to the Security Council, whereas the responsibility for pursuing the remaining two goals was assigned to the Council of Economic and Social Affairs. Later, these two councils evolved into two full-fledged international organisations with expertise in matters within the purview of their competence. The Security Council created the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor, among others tasks, the behaviour of countries that agreed to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, while the Council of Economic and Social Affairs established the numerous international organisations that are listed in the right-hand column in the bottom half of Table6.2.
In all cases, the creation of new international institutions should be justified by the needs they are set to meet, otherwise they could increase bureaucracy, give rise to lobbies of special interests and raise the financial burden on the participating countries to cover the costs of their operation.
While the development of institutions tasked with global governance is still evolving, organisations that operate in the fields of politics, justice, economy and culture serve the basic needs of the international community relatively well.24For example, the International Trade Organization regulates competition in the field of
24This finding does not mean that the criticisms for inefficiency that accompany the operation of the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other international organisations lack seriousness. Rather on the contrary, we agree with many of those which have seen the light of publicity. What we mean is that if these organisations did not exist, others would have to be created in order to meet the vital needs that spring from the interdependence among nations.
international trade, the International Air Transport Association regulates competi- tion in the international air transport industry and the International Labour Organi- zation monitors the implementation of international treaties regarding work conditions. Alliances have also formed between individual countries and interna- tional organisations to achieve regional or other targets. There are numerous such alliances. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in 1949 to provide security and defence services to countries mainly in Western Europe, from threats emanating from the countries that participated in the Warsaw Pact during the cold war. The agreements that led to the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, and the North American Free trade Association (NAFTA) in 1994, aim to enhance economic development through closer coopera- tion. The European Economic Community, which was established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957, aspired to the eventual unification of the European countries through a gradual adjustment of their economies and political institutions.
The ideology behind global governance has many philosophical bases. The initiators and leaders of the ‘League of Nations’ were adherents of the theories of Hobbes (1651) that justified the need for a world government, while the ‘United Nations’ was founded on the spirit of the Athenian democracy and the ideas of Locke (1690). Comparing the two models of cooperation, the latter has far greater flexibility to balance the interests of participating countries and maintain world peace. In our view, a system of global governance based on this model is likely to acquire valuable properties of dynamic stability as more world powers like the United States of Europe, China, India, Russia and Brazil emerge.
Democracy, Free Market Economy and European Unification