The Independent reports that a group of international politicians, academics and business leaders have launched a campaign to democratise the UN by adding an elected assembly. This is a fundamentally good idea - one of the biggest problems with the UN is its "democracy deficit". Those who speak at the UN represent governments and the interests of governments (or the people who buy them) - not of their people. As a result, the global governance structure which is gradually emerging through multilateral treaties is systematically biased towards the powerful, and we see inaction on important global issues such as climate change, genocide, and poverty. Only by adding a fully elected and democratically accountable assembly can this deficit be overcome.
It won't be easy. Democratisation faces institutional opposition, including from the very people you'd expect to support it - the Americans. And not all countries are properly democratic and able to fully participate. The Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly is therefore proposing a gradual process, similar to that used in the formation of the European Parliament. The first step would be the establishment of an assembly drawn from national legislatures as a consultative body to the UN. This would move gradually towards direct election, at the same time being given greater participation in and control over the UN system. The ultimate goal would be a fully elected world Parliament, exercising control and oversight over and providing greater legitimacy to the UN system.
This is an interesting project, and one that deserves our support. It recognises both the need for some form of global government, and the fundamental truth that power derives from the consent of the governed, that there is no authority without democracy. At the same time, it also recognises that democracy has to grow from the bottom up, that it evolves rather than being handed down US-style on stone tablets. In the case of the UK (and hence New Zealand), that process took 500 years, two revolutions and a regicide. Hopefully in the case of the UN it will be both quicker and more peaceful.