Addressing the dangers of unitary government power

If we consider the difference between Federalist governments and other governments we should be able to build protections against those dangers into the picture. For one thing, we are still labouring under the myth of a unitary sovereign entity. The myth of a unitary sovereign entity was created a few hundred years ago as part of the rise of the nation state. It served some purpose no doubt, but it is now long gone.

Instead of the idea of unitary sovereign states, we need to be thinking about 'distributed sovereignty'. Within the distribution of sovereignty through a federation, there are many protections that can be built in. It will take time, much thought, much effort too. In the meantime, we can pursue the incremental steps--the creation of the ICC, the parliamentary oversight of the WTO, eventually major reform of the World Bank and the IMF, and at the same time advocate for a much more effective international judiciary in regard to interstate disputes, and so forth.

Consider India and Pakistan for example: How much better it would be if both agreed to abide by an arbitrated settlement of the Kashmir border dispute! We must create the norms of judicial resolution of dispute, and maintain that by following fundamental principles of justice we will achieve a 'grasp of truth' (satyagraha, as Gandhi called it).

The other point is this: Wherever there are complexly interconnected systems, they express themselves at the 'top' level. So whether we like it or not, as the world interconnects, we will have a global system of some sort. That's part of systems theory. The only question then is to influence the evolution of the global system so that it moves in a good direction. And that means we need to advocate for world federalism as much to create the federal world structure (with emphasis on 'federal') as to create a global system. A global system of one sort or another must emerge (unless global catastrophe occurs); so our effort should be to encourage the federal direction and preserve maximum localization as well as allowing for global resolution of global disputes and global protection of common global resources.

- Leonard Angel