Is Global Governance Achievable?

Is Global Governance Achievable?

        To the members of the United Nations: you gather together over and over for the betterment of the world. You work on disarmament, human rights, environmental rights, territorial disputes, and other issues in the global community. And I’m positive that the United Nations and its members do its best to help maximize the efforts in helping the world. The question of democracy is a huge gaping hole in our future. Whether it is achievable by the year 2025 will remain an unanswered question until then. However, in the mean time we can hypothesize and make educated guesses about the possibility of achieving global democracy by the year 2025. Through my limited knowledge, alongside with my research, I conjecture that global democracy cannot be reached in the next 11 years.  This is mainly due to time constraints and political alliances.

        The benefits of democracy are clearly visible. “Democratic peace is the proposition that democracies are more peaceful in their foreign relations. This idea dates back centuries, at least to Immanuel Kant and other 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers. On the empirical side, some propose that democracies are more peaceful in their relations with all other states in the system; some propose that democracies are more peaceful only in their relations with other democracies; others argue that the more democracies there are in a region or the international system, the more peaceful the region or international system will be” (Reiter).  With the democratic peace theory proving that democracies don’t go into war each other, democracies are more likely to enter into trade agreements and blocs within each other. “Nations begin to take the interests of their partner nations into consideration when drafting laws and regulations, something known as a global democracy begins to take shape.” Nations are abandoning anti-democratic ideologies and embracing the globalization of democracy. It would make more sense for nations to become democratic, not only to give the people freedom of choice, but because for the economic and political advancement of it.

However, with the full force blow of global democracy, isolationism and nationalism is struggling to be reinforced by governments trying to cling on to whatever legitimacy they have left within their people. A prime example of this lies in the revolutions and riots that have been happening. We have witnessed how the start of this decade has marked the beginning to revolutions that have spurred all over the world. Ranging from the Arab Springs, to the Ukraine, and all the way to South America in Venezuela. Many of the demands included democracy, alongside basic freedoms and rights to make a living and a life. Although some may have had success in overthrowing their governments, it has been limited.

Tunisia with its “Jasmine Revolution,” symbolizes the best example of a somewhat successful revolution in the Middle East. A Tunisian educated man gave his life away in order to protest the crimes of the oppressive Ben-Ali regime. Since then, a transitional government has been created, a constitution is being written up, and reforms are being created. However, the Jasmine Revolution is not all nice as its name. The revolution also allowed Ennahda Islamist party to rise into power and capture 41% of its seats. Since then, they have been protested and taken out of the newly created congress. However, this comes to show that continuous reform is needed in order for a fully functional, fair, democratic government to be formed. Another example is Egypt. After spending months with countless people being killed and multiple protests, Egypt was successful in removing President Husni Mubarak from his seat. However, when the elections were started, the Egyptians were left looking at two different nominees: Ahmad Shafiq, an old member of the Mubarak regime, and Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Islamic Brotherhood. No one knew how the two ended up being the runner-ups, and more than half the population did not show up at the elections. Barely into his term, elected Morsi was overthrown by a coup-de-tat. This is further proof that democracies require multiple trial-and-errors and a lot of effort in order to be established. This is time consuming and hinders the goal of 2025.

If we take a look at other revolutions that have attempted to overthrow autocratic governments, we have to see how time-consuming change has taken. The French Revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established a representative democracy took 10 years and the American took 18. Thee countries are now full functioning democracies for the most part, but in order for them to have established themselves as so, it has taken time. Not to mention, the revolutions in the Middle East especially, have turned into sectarian wars. Syria itself started out as a plight for democracy, but along the way outside militia intervened and now the conflict has escalated into a peak of violence that sees no end. A very similar civil war in the neighboring country of Lebanon in the 1970s took more than 15 years to fix. It is infeasible and unreasonable to expect that all countries around the world can reach democracies in the span of 11 years.