Building a World Community by Baudot Jacques;

Author:Baudot, Jacques;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2017-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Set Clear and Ambitious Objectives

Clarity on objectives to be pursued is a prerequisite for launching new institutions. This means that a great amount of intellectual work is required before political negotiations get underway. This was obviously the case before the creation of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and more recently the WTO or the International Criminal Court. Hopefully, other initiatives will be taken in the academic and research community on the general and specific aspects of institutional development required for a world community. The reaching of political agreement on a new institution always entails reduction in the level of the ambition of the project as elaborated by its proponents. But if such preparatory work has not been done, or was of poor quality, the political process will offer few remedies and the desired institution will be rejected or established on fragile grounds. To have a functional and yet progressive approach is to favour intellectual work and debate on aspects of institutional development that are both at the centre and on the margin of the current international agenda. This sort of intellectual and political imagination is facilitated and, in a universal and democratic perspective, legitimised by a coherent set of moral principles and objectives on the features of a world community. Using the example of the Social Summit, new or strengthened institutions for social development at the international level would require much additional intellectual investment on issues such as the meaning and modalities of international cooperation for social progress on a global scale, or the articulation of the social and human rights perspectives in the promotion of goals such as the reduction of poverty and the promotion of solidarity. Likewise, the establishment of a World Peoples Assembly would also have to be the result of intensive work on its rationale and mode of operation.

It is difficult to imagine that the utilitarian approach to institutional development linked to a careful reformist political ideology would have the boldness to push for the ideas and organisations required to tame global capitalism, orient it to the service of the international community, and promote the common good. On the international scene, what is considered functional tends to correspond to the views of the politically most influential, or with what is imposed by spectacular events. The merits of this approach diminish when the problems at hand are “politically incorrect” or more insidious than highly visible. It is therefore necessary to be demanding of public institutions and international organisations, and of the new corporate and media powers shaping modernity.

Democracy means neither mediocrity nor sceptical acceptance of the limitations of human endeavours and institutions. It represents hope and refusal to yield to complacency. In the modern psyche there is a comfortable cynicism inhibiting political initiatives that might alleviate human misery and suffering. Politics of conviction carries an awareness of the danger of “routinisation” that affects human thinking and action. All institutions, public and private, national and international are inclined to confuse stability and self preservation with conformism and sclerosis.

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