for a world pàrliament (monbiot):
Those of us who want a world parliament are often accused of trying to invent a system of global governance. But there is already a system of global governance. The UN security council, the World Bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization make decisions that affect us all. They do so without our consent. The best that can be said for any of them is that they operate by means of photocopy democracy. We vote for an MP, and this vote is then deemed to communicate our support for his party. That is then presumed to legitimize the government, which in turn assumes the right to appoint a prime minister. He then delegates ambassadors and bureaucrats to represent us globally, and their decisions are deemed to express our wishes. With every presumed transfer of democratic consent, the imprint of our cross on the ballot paper becomes fainter. Though the international bodies operate in our name, we have no more influence over them than the people of Burma have over the military junta. Global governance is a tyranny speaking the language of democracy.
(...) The purpose of a world parliament is to hold international bodies to account. It is not a panacea. It will not turn the IMF or the UN security council into democratic bodies - as they are controlled by the veto powers of their major shareholder and permanent members, nothing but abolition and reconstruction could do so.
(...) Those who claim, like the British Eurosceptics, that regional or global decision-making is unnecessary are living in a world of make-believe. No political issue now stops at the national border. All the most important forces - climate change, terrorism, state aggression, trade, flows of money, demographic pressures, the depletion of resources - can be addressed only at the global level. The question is not whether global decisions need to be made. The question is how to ensure that they are made democratically. Is there any valid answer other than direct representation?
(...) Global democracy has a special problem - the scale on which it must operate. The bigger the electorate, the less democratic a parliamentary body will be. True democracy could exist only in the village, where representatives are subject to constant oversight by their electorate. But an imperfect system is better than no system at all. Even the most pig-headed Eurosceptics would have trouble arguing that the European Union would be better off without a parliament.
(...) The recent fiasco surrounding the European constitution is a useful demonstration of how not to do it. First the people of Europe were presented with a meaningless question which makes a mockery of democracy. “Here is a document containing hundreds of proposals. Some of them will be good for you, others will be bad for you. You must agree to all of them or none of them. If you agree (and we will keep asking until you do), we will deem that you have consented to every measure it contains.” When this pantomime of managed consent fails, the managers announce – as Tony Blair did last week(3) – that a referendum is, after all, unnecessary: we will have a new constitution whether we want one or not, and it will be written and approved on our behalf.
(...) What jumps out as you read the list of signatories is the number of African names: there is a growing recognition in Africa that a world parliament offers the best chance – perhaps the only chance – that the unmediated concerns of the poor will reach the ears of the rich. A global parliament ensures that the voices of the poor world can no longer be ventriloquised by Bob Geldof and Bono and the leaders of the G8: the people will be able to speak for themselves.