THE CONCEPT OF WORLD COMMUNITY AND WORLD

GOVERNMENT
WORLD COMMUNITY
According to a section of sociologists, a community results when people live
together and develop a condition of interdependence. Governments and non-
officials around the world are aware of the interdependence 1. They are also
aware of the dangers arising from wars, a general economic depression,
ecological disasters and diseases that spread from continent to continent.
However, decision to meet global problems cannot be taken collectively except
to a very small extent. On most of the problems affecting people all over the
world, decisions have to be taken by governments, independently of each other.
When governments made decisions the factor that weighs most with them is
national interest.
The tendency on the part of governments of states to give their respective
national interests priority over the competing national interests of other states, in
a context in which each has to take decisions to protect its interests, and cannot
look to others for protection, supplies the rationale for the realist approach to the
study of international relations. It makes some deny the existence of a world
community. On the other hand, governments are often willing to take measures
which are of the same kind to safeguard the common interests of all states. To
give some non-controversial examples, all states were equally interested some
time back in eradicating the disease of small pox and all governments
cooperated with the world Health Organization in eradicating it. For centuries
states operated in making the sea safe for navigation by all taking strong action
against pirates. To the extent that the common interests of all people inhabiting
the globe receive recognition and protection by common, collective or parallel,
action of governments, the existence of a world community cannot be denied.
The expression, “world community,” gives us a picture of the mankind as a
whole and conveys more prominently the common interests of all states rather
than their individuals, separate interests.
It is conceded by all that international community has its own law, and state
sovereignty is sovereignty under and not above the law of the international
community. State sovereignty is subject to legal limitations and limitations
arising from the facts of life in the international community. Legal limitations

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Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, Community
indeed follow from the facts of life. There cannot be any community life
without some law.
In the international community there are around 199 states, and they are the
most important groups in the community. They are sovereign, independent of
each other and equal, in legal theory. They are unequal in fact, just as the richest
individual and the poorest, and the most powerful politician and an ordinary
citizen, are unequal in fact. The order of importance among the different
members of the international community is: states, international governmental
organizations, international non-governmental organizations, and individuals.
This is so in law as well as in fact.
The international community has no organization which can be called in any
sense “government”. There is no legislature, and the law in the international
community is derived from the agreements or treaties which are entered into by
the states, by the practices or customs arising from the conduct of states, and the
general principles of law followed within states.
The international community has no body comparable to the state’s executive.
There is no policeman. States are the most important entities called upon to
observe the law; and they are left themselves to find out violations of the law
and take measures.
The international community has no judiciary comparable to the state’s
judiciary. The International Court of Justice has jurisdiction which can arise
only from the consent given by the parties to the dispute. Arbitration and
judicial settlement of disputes are exceptional in the international community.
The most common method of settlement is negotiation. Sometimes, mediation
and conciliation are also employed. No states can be compelled to accept any
particular method of settlement of a dispute which it has with another.
Thus we see the international community standing in the marked contrast with
the state. It is however, misleading to compare the international community
with a primitive community. Culturally, technologically, communication-wise
and economically, the international community is far more advanced than any
primitive community.
In the international community, at the beginning of this century, it was not
possible to make any meaningful distinction between lawful uses of violence ad
unlawful use, as states regarded themselves to be free to declare war on others
at their choice. Gradually, the Covenant of League of Nations and later the
United Nations Charter established the distinction between lawful use of force
and unlawful use, though the distinction is not quite precise.
The absence of a governmental machinery and effective means to control
violence notwithstanding, the international community is far from a community
of conflict and violence. There is much collaborative activity among the actors,
principle states, and many conflicts that arise are resolved peaceful.
Governments take decisions with full awareness that each state’s sovereignty
must co-exist with the sovereignty of other states. If there is recourse to
violence it is with the hope that the violent conflict is temporary and will
achieve the intended purpose, even if it be only partial.
On a close observation we find in the interactions among the members of the
world community the participants engage themselves in two most significant
processes – the social process and the regulatory process. A process may be
understood as a sequence of events which usually happen to produce a
consequence, or are required to happen to produce such consequence. There is a
process, for example, for two states to enter into an agreement. The interactions
in the social process may give rise to some loss of values to a participant or a
threat of loss. The participant may than claim before an appropriate authority
that the causing of such loss must be regarded as impermissible and illegal. The
authority to which such a claim is presented may accept the claim and prescribe
a regulation prohibiting certain actions; it may reject the claim and take no
action; or it may take some other action. The decision which the authority takes
is a part of the regulatory process.
The peculiarity of the world community is that the two processes taking place
within the community, social and regulatory, get intermixed, ad the participants
in the two processes are usually the same. This peculiar feature results from the
absence of a centralized authority in the community.
WORLD GOVERNMENT
World government’ refers to the idea of all humankind united under one
common political authority. Arguably, it has not existed so far in human history,
yet proposals for a unified global political authority have existed since ancient
times—in the ambition of kings, popes and emperors, and the dreams of poets
and philosophers. The suggestion that a more integrated world order than the
present inter-state or international order should be promoted has comes at least
from the 18th century. Of course, the world which was perceived in that project
was only Europe, and the plan went no further than providing something
resembling the League of Nations. There was no question of surrender of any
part of state sovereignty. In the 19th century, Krause prophesied the emergence
of a world federation.
There are many arguments that may be advanced in favor of a world
government. No nation lives now under conditions of security from violence.
Nations spend a good portion of their resources on armaments, withdrawing
them from programs of welfare. Poor nations also spend as much proportion of
their GNP on defense as rich nations. When poor states cannot satisfy the
demands for welfare from people and unrest results, the state may have to resort
to repressive measures to the detriment of human rights.
In recent years, the world bio-sphere also has attracted attention.
Industrialization has the side effect of causing discharges of wastes, in the form
of gas, particles and dirty fluids, which contaminate the world environment.
Over a period of time, it is feared, severe, irreversible damage will occur to the
world ecological system, and changes in climate, flooding of coastal areas due
to the melting of polar ice caps etc. will follow. It is argued persuasively by
some that environmental problems can be dealt with only on a global basis as
pollution processes do not stop at state boundaries. The present inter-state is
not; it is pointed out, capable enough to deal with these global environmental
problems
Proponents of world government offer distinct reasons for why it is an ideal of
political organization. Some are motivated negatively and see world
government as the definitive solution to old and new human problems such as
war and the development of weapons of mass destruction, global poverty and
inequality, and environmental degradation. More positively, some have
advocated world government as a proper reflection of the unity of the cosmos,
under reason or God. Proponents have also differed historically in their views of
the form that a world government should take. While medieval thinkers
advocated world government under a single monarch or emperor who would
possess supreme authority over all other lesser rulers, modern proponents
generally do not advocate a wholesale dismantling of the sovereign states
system but incremental innovations in global institutional design to move
humanity toward world federalism or cosmopolitan democracy.
Critics of world government have offered three main kinds of objections—to do
with the feasibility, desirability and necessity of establishing a common global
political authority.
First, a realist argument, advanced by contemporary international ‘realist’
theorists, holds that world government is infeasible; ideas of world government
constitute exercises in utopian thinking, and are utterly impractical as a goal for
human political organization. Assuming that world government would lead to
desirable outcomes such as perpetual peace, realists are skeptical that world
government will ever materialize as an institutional reality, given the problems
of egoistic or corrupted human nature, or the logic of international anarchy that
characterizes a world of states, all jealously guarding their own sovereignty or
claims to supreme authority. World government is thus infeasible as a solution
to global problems because of the unsurpassable difficulties of establishing
“authoritative hierarchies” at the global or international level (Krasner 1999,
42). A related consequentialist argument speculates that even if world
government were desirable, the process of creating a world government may
produce more harm than good; the necessary evils committed on the road to
establishing a world government would outweigh whatever benefits might result
from its achievement (Rousseau 1756/1917).
Second, even if world government were shown to be a feasible political project,
it may be an undesirable one. One set of reasons for its undesirability
emphasizes the potential power and oppressiveness of a global political
authority. In one version of this objection—the tyranny argument—world
government would descend into a global tyranny, hindering rather than
enhancing the ideal of human autonomy (Kant 1991). Instead of delivering
impartial global justice and peace, a world government may form an
inescapable tyranny that would have the power to make humanity serve its own
interests, and opposition against which might engender incessant and intractable
civil wars (Waltz 1979). In another version of this objection—
the homogeneity argument—world government may be so strong and pervasive
as to create a homogenizing effect, obliterating distinct cultures and
communities that are intrinsically valuable. The institution of a world
government would thus destroy the rich social pluralism that animates human
life (Walzer 2004). While the preceding two arguments stem from fear of the
potential power of a world government, another set of concerns that make world
government undesirable focuses on its potential weakness as a form of political
organization. The objections on this account are that the inevitable remoteness
of a global political authority would dilute the laws, making them ineffectual
and meaningless. The posited weakness of world government thus leads to
objections based on its potential inefficiency and soullessness (Kant 1991).
Third, contemporary liberal theorists argue mainly that world government, in
the form of a global leviathan with supreme legislative, executive, adjudicative
and enforcement powers, is largely unnecessary to solve problems such as war,
global poverty, and environmental catastrophe. World government so conceived
is neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve the aims of a liberal agenda. Even
cosmopolitan liberals do not argue that moral cosmopolitanism necessarily
entails political cosmopolitanism in the form of a world government. The liberal
rejection of world government, however, does not amount to an endorsement of
the conventional system of sovereign states or the contemporary international
order, “with its extreme injustices, crippling poverty, and inequalities” (Rawls
1999, 117). Instead, most liberal theorists envision the need for authoritative
international and global institutions that modify significantly the powers and
prerogatives traditionally attributed to the sovereign state.

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However, many difficult problems appear to stand in the way of a world
government coming into existence. First, one might ask questions such as what
is the constitution of such a world state, how democratic it is, how can one be
sure that it does not fall under a dictator, to what extent will such a state be able
to protect the human rights which people in well – administered states are now
enjoying, and so on. Further more; is it conceivable that governments currently
in existence will one fine morning surrender the sovereign authority and
military power which they have? A big power finds it difficult to surrender the
enormous power it has to an external body; the govt. of a small power is likely
to say that a world government implies surrender of a freedom it has in dealing
with the resources and people of the other state under its sovereignty.
Sovereignty is for a small power a means of protecting itself from interference
by more powerful outside agencies.
Many scholars have prepared blue prints for a future world order. Some have
even world out a set of transitions measures. But a world govt. may have to
remain for a long time an aspiration people deeply concerned about the welfare
of the mankind as a whole.