Sunday, December 17, 2006

A Confederacy of Democracies

Here's further discussion of an interesting idea from Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay. The basic idea is the development of a "Concert of Democracies" as an eventual replacement, or at least side organization, to the UN and the UN's problem of universalism over effectiveness. By their count, the authors estimate that this would entail about 60 countries working together on trade, security issues, and so on.

No analysis here for now, but I'll raise what I think are two large problems:

First, as the authors point out, deciding who counts as a democracy and who doesn't would be a complex debate in itself. The authors suggest a few criteria for counting as one of the select few, based on free and fair elections, political and civil rights, and so on. But at a time when some countries and many scholars are rethinking the very notion of democracy, especially given its aggregative form's problems in hallmark countries such as the US itself, defining democracy from the standard Western norm is an act of perhaps unwarranted exclusion.

Second, how would the consortium function internally? The authors have little to say about this, except that it would be an alternative model to the UN in that it would contain a smaller number of countries. But this question matters. If, for instance, the US would have more power or votes or whatever than other members (which could very well be a condition of its entry into such an organization), would the Concert itself be a democracy? One would, I hope, seek an equitable deliberative democratic framework and deliberative processes internal to the organization in making policy decisions. This could lead to more reasonable and reflective global policies. And this could boost the organization's legitimacy. There are at least two corollary problems here however:

On one hand, the products of a set of processes and functions based on deliberation could look very different than the objectives citizens of the individual democratic countries may want the Concert to achieve. In other words, the individual representatives of member nations may not be representative of their own citizens' concerns. Of course, we could always say that the citizens are wrong. But then we return to the alleged paternalism of the UN system.

On the other hand, many of the large democracies are democratic at home but not when it comes to international affairs. The US often functions in this way. Daalder and Lindsay suggest that the Concert would temper powerful member states' tendencies to go it alone. But how? After all, is it really the case that non-democratic nations of the UN wield such power that they can determine the policy directions the UN takes? Isn't it, rather, that the powerful nations do so, including and perhaps especially the US? Then why would the US seek to enter into a Concert in which it no longer wields such power? After all, with the current president international law and international organizations have represented obstacles to American foreign policy objectives, and even, as Michael Cherthoff said recently, a "threat."


MT said...

Your nation's representative in an international parliament has a different job than your ambassador to any particular country. As I recall the U.S. Constitution does not anticipate such a position and the U.S. Supremes have never examined the constitutionality of the current convention under which the President chooses our one and only representative to the UN under the "advice and consent" of the Senate if the President feels like it (as with John Bolton). A better and equally constitutional scheme might be to decide our UN rep or reps by plebiscite--perhaps from among candidates nominated by the two branches or the two parties. That would eliminate one democratic weakness of a confederacy. A citizen gets to vote for chief executive and parliamentary representative for his or her city, state and nation. Why not for the international government to whose rule he or she is to be subject? Along those lines, which we see mirrored in every modern nation we call a democracy, being denied such a right seems undemocratic. Our representative to the confederacy would feel obliged to cooperate with Congress and the President for the same reasons they cooperate with each other, and why cities cooperate with the state and the states with the Feds. The cooperation may be no better than we're use to, but we're used to it and still we call our system a democracy.

Anonymous said...

On the face of it such an entity sounds more effective. But the best feature to me would be the elimination of dictaorships and single party states from the mix.

The internal tension between right and left would keep it from going to far overboard in any particular direction. Less efficient and effictive but do you REALLY want the trains to run on time to the labor camps?

helmut said...

I think that's right, MT. I worry about the John Bolton approach.

Anon - while it would be easy enough to keep dictators outside of the group, it could be different with one-party systems. Sometimes a party can become so powerful that the system is only a nominal multi-party system. Any democracy risks turning into a one-party system, theoretically. So, it seems to me that it couldn't be a matter of looking at the number of parties (whether one or dozens), but a matter of the institutions. What if, for instance, a particular one-party government also happened to be a strong proponent of individual and civil rights and policies widely accepted by the citizens (thus, the strong one party)?

Rodger A. Payne said...

Over a decade ago, Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky proposed a somewhat similar UN Democratic Caucus.

helmut said...

Thanks, Rodger.

Anonymous said...


"...a particular one-party government also happened to be a strong proponent of individual and civil rights and policies widely accepted by the citizens"

I'm not certain if a de jure one party state even if widely accepted, can be a government that is strong proponent of individual rights. I'm not certain even a two-party system can do that.

Clearly we would have to work on criteia for membership. Perhaps we could start by harmonizing bodies of tort law and our including any additional country's individual bill of rights. I'm certain the death penality would have to go. Barring the development of forcible court-ordered mind-reading, there's no way of prevent a false conviction without documentary and video evidence of the crime itself.

Now all those live criminals will have to live somewhere. I wonder what a penitentiary would look like and how it would operate under such a system.

Would there be mutual security agreement to protect against those who didn't get inited to the party? Would it ever be used?

Or will this just be the League of Nations Part III?