Towards WorldDemocracy

Pascal Lamy

In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, I am often questioned about the future of Europe.In the past, I would respond with assurance, with the conviction of the observer of a worktaking shape. Although the difficulties are evident, the European project has never been sopertinent - for Europeans ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. What has beencreated over more than 50 years is also what the world needs today: a democratic systemto tackle the enormous challenges that our societies face, and that states alone can nolonger tackle. This European experience, with its successes and its setbacks, must be – Iam convinced - our point of departure in search of a new global governance that combinesthe effectiveness that states have lost with the legitimacy that international organisationshave yet to acquire. This new governance is what I call alternational democracy.

Pascal Lamy is the former EU Commissioner for Trade and President of Notre Europe,a European think tank based in Paris. From September 2005, he becomes the Director General of the World Trade Organisation. He is the author of l’Europe en première ligne, (Paris,Le Seuil, 2002).

Copyright © 2005 Policy Network

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ISBN 1-903805-05-8 Paperback

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PASCAL LAMY

TOWARDS WORLD DEMOCRACY

Translated by David Macey

Published in 2005 by Policy Network

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The English version is based on: Pascal Lamy, La démocratie-monde. Pour une autre

gouvernance globale, Paris, La République des idées, 2004.

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About Policy Network

Policy Network is an international think-tank launched in December 2000with the support of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Giuliano Amato and GöranPersson following the Progressive Governance Summits in New York, Florenceand Berlin. In July 2003, Policy Network organised the London ProgressiveGovernance Conference, which brought together twelve world leaders, andover 400 progressive politicians, thinkers and strategists. In October 2004,Policy Network built on this success by organising the Budapest ProgressiveGovernance Conference, hosted by the Hungarian Prime Minister FerencGyurcsány. Most recently, in July 2005, Policy Network has co-organised inJohannesburg, with the Africa Institute of South Africa and the Presidency ofSouth Africa, the first Regional African Progressive Governance Conference,which will be followed by the Progressive Summit in South Africa.

A Progressive Network

Policy Network’s objective is the promotion and cross fertilisation ofprogressive policy ideas among centre-left modernisers. Acting as thesecretariat to the Progressive Governance Network, Policy Networkfacilitates dialogue between politicians, policy makers and experts acrossEurope and from democratic countries around the world. By providing aforums that promotes debate and shares ideas, Policy Network strengthensthe hand of modernisers and the case for permanent renewal.

Our Common Challenge

Progressive governments and parties in Europe are facing similar problems andlooking for modern social democratic responses. There are increasingly risingfears for security - economic, political and social – combined with thecontradictions of combining the traditional welfare state with employmentpolicies, rapid change in science and technology, and pressing global issues,all of which should be tackled in common, as part of the need for fundamentaldemocratic renewal.

In the past, progressives worked independently to resolve theseproblems. Today, there is a growing consensus that we must engage withprogressives from other countries, and to situate European and nationalresponses within a broader international framework of progressive thinking,rooted in our social democratic values.

For further information, http://www.policy-network.net

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Contents

Foreword vii

Introduction 9

World Powers and their Discontents 15

The European Laboratory 27

Towards an Alternational Democracy:Contributions to the Debate 43

Conclusion - Towards a World Community 63

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Foreword

Pascal Lamy's latest work, Towards World Democracy, is here published forthe first time in English by Policy Network, having first been published backin 2004 in French when he was my predecessor as European Commissionerfor Trade in Brussels.

Although the text is over one year old, he has decided not to update itto take account of recent developments such as the French and Dutchreferenda. Why ? Because although he is writing - unabashedly - from theperspective of a European Commissioner, the lessons he draws have lastingvalue and are still relevant. Clearly we are now in a new European situation.Readers only loosely connected with the workings of the EU will stillrecognise some of the basic fault-lines of modern Europe set out in Pascal'soriginal text. Indeed, if you read Towards World Democracy as a "pre-crisisanalysis", it shows that what happened in the Spring of 2005 with the Frenchand Dutch referenda has been coming for a long time.

But on the other hand, others outside Europe will recognise from theirown systems the need for legitimacy, the need for efficiency, and the needto belong. Indeed the lessons are less about “Europe” per se, and moreabout the nature of modern governance. Lessons about our collective failureto recognise the global nature of our political life. Lessons about howglobalisation is starting to undermine our identities. Lessons about the sheersense of no longer controlling our own destiny.

In short, and not for the first time, Pascal Lamy challenges us, bothcitizens and policy-makers, to re-think fundamental questions about theway we are governed now.

Peter MandelsonEuropean Commissioner for TradeHonorary Chair of Policy Network

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‘The sovereign nations of the past can no longer provide a framework for theresolution of our present problems. And the [European] Community itself isno more than a step towards the organisational forms of tomorrow’s world.’

Jean Monnet, Mémoires (Conclusion).1

1 Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Paris: Fayard, 1976, p. 617

Introduction

The planet is unwell. The construction of Europe has stalled. Ourdemocracies are tired. I think the time has come to think in political termsabout the new reality that suddenly emerged in the twentieth century. It isa single reality that hems in our lives. This reality is the outside world.

The world is no longer something that exists separately from ourdomestic lives. It has burst into our everyday life, introducing new risks,new forms of competition, new challenges and new fears. The social andpolitical arrangements of our societies have been turned upside down. Weare faced with a challenge, and the twenty-first century must take it up: itmust invent a global political life that is at once democratic and capable ofdealing with issues on a planetary scale. I say ‘invent’ because, even today,it seems that only representative and national democracies can legitimisecollective action.

How did this great transformation come about? It came about thanks toa threefold upheaval that was decisive for the whole of humanity and indeedprovided the initial impetus to construct Europe.

The origins of the first upheaval lie in war. Between 1914 and 1945, theworld reeled as it was torn apart by the convulsions of the old Europe andits nationalistic and totalitarian passions. Verdun and then Auschwitz taughtus that our civilisations are mortal, as Paul Valéry put it.2 For the fathers ofthe new Europe, the failure of the League of Nations – which represented afirst attempt to take collective responsibility for the international order –and the ravages of two conflicts in the heart of the continent and the worldwere disasters that had a fundamental importance. They taught a lessonthat struck them with all the force of the obvious: a union of the peoples ofEurope was the only thing that could provide the basis for a lasting peace.

The second upheaval occurred at the end of the twentieth century,when the Berlin Wall came down, when the Soviet Empire collapsed andwhen new geopolitical instabilities emerged. It also made what had been atacit project much more explicit: it meant acquiring the ability to actoutside the boundaries of Europe. In the rest of the world, the sameupheaval emphasised the need to regulate and take on global questionscollectively. Powers like the United States can obviously allow themselves

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2 Paul Valéry,’ La Crise de l’Esprit- première lettre’, La Nouvelle revue française, no. 71, 1 August 1919,pp.321-327. ‘Nous autres, civilisations, nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles’ (‘We civilizationsnow realise that we are mortal’).

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the luxury of pursuing a unilateral logic, by resorting to force if need be. Butthat logic cannot last. It cannot eradicate the major political reality of thecoming century: henceforth, the problems of the world concern us all, andthere are no more sanctuaries.

The global nature of an increasing number of phenomena – the growingshortage of energy resources, the destruction of the biosphere, the spreadof pandemics, the volatility of financial markets, and the migratorymovements provoked by insecurity, poverty or systemic political instability– is a product of a third upheaval: globalization. Globalization – by which Imean the growing interdependence of all the people on the planet as thedistinction between ‘near’ and ‘far’ becomes blurred – now affects everydimension of the life of our societies, and not only their economicdimension. Globalization is already a reality, but it is also an on-goingprocess. Even though forms of proto-globalization did exist in the past, weare now living through an unprecedented historical experiment.3

Globalization must therefore not be seen simply as the rise of themarketplace alone,4 but as the acceleration and deepening of a much moregeneral dynamic originating in the way market capitalism has developedover many hundreds of years. This dynamic has now reached a stage ofexpansion that is unprecedented both in geographical terms and in terms ofits social ramifications. It now extends to all human societies, and the logicof its growth and innovation is developing on a planetary scale, as is thelogic of the social, cultural, environmental and political damage it iscausing. This is the force that, like some historical tidal wave, is shaping andreshaping our world. These global issues are creating a new need forefficiency that cannot be met by nation-states alone. The new issues raisedby global conflicts and crises, by political developments and by the crisesthat appear to be affecting the planet’s democratic governments, make itapparent that we need to contemplate new forms of governance.

Europe is directly concerned. In 1945, its geopolitical model wasexhausted. The destructive violence that had been inflicted upon Europewas a measure of its failure. The new Europe was the result of many long-term processes and numerous visions of the future, some of which wererealised in the course of its history – plans for world governance systems –

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3 See Suzanne Berger, Notre première mondialisation, leçons d’un échec oublié, Paris : Seuil’/La Républiquedes idées, 2003; GEMDEV, La Mondialisation, les mots et les choses, Paris : Khartala, 1999 ; ImmanuelWallerstein, The Modern World-System, New York and London : Academic Press, 3 vols, 1974, 1980 and 1989 ;Fernand Braudel, La Dynamique du capitalisme, Paris : Gallimard, 2001.4 Kark Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Beacon Hill: Beacon Press, 1944.

but it now had to invent something new. It had to invent peace. It had, inother words, to be armed with a new utopia.

According to the fathers of the European project, shared prosperity wasto provide a concrete basis for that ambition. The European Coal and SteelCommunity (ECSC) was Europe’s first incarnation. In their view, the poolingof the two pillars of the European economy of the day, which were alsopowerful elements of national sovereignty, would probably have thestrength to ward off the spectre of the impotence that had destroyed theLeague of Nations. When it established the ECSC, Europe turned its back onthe logics of power. It was taking its first steps to what its founding fathersrealised would be a model for ‘tomorrow’s world’. This is the world in whichwe now live. Because it was conceived as a long-term answer to thedisorders of both the world and history, and because it gambled on thepossibility that interdependence will succeed, Europe acquired the ability toact on the logics of market capitalism and, now, to respond to globalization.We live in a world that Europe’s founders foresaw when they created it.5

Some criticise Europe for its choice of origins. The classic sovereignistdiscourse which defends the survival of the nation-state againstsupranational ‘monsters’ is now overlaid by another discourse which accusesEurope of being no more than a prelude to ‘neo-liberal globalization’. Europeis, in other words, just another of the instruments of alienation. The waythese discourses are currently combined leads me to make two points. First:is the conjunction of the two a historical coincidence, or do they stem fromcommon roots? Is it ultimately a product of a classic sovereignism, even ifmeans contradicting the universalist principles of some anti-globalizationmovements? My second point is that, whilst Jean Monnet’s vision of thefuture is now our reality, the way the world has burst into our societies hastransformed the European project. It therefore seems to me that the reasonwhy current debates are so confused is that we can no longer discuss Europewithout discussing the world, and vice versa. We need to clarify the natureof the European project, and we cannot do that unless we also confront theissues raised by globalization. And if those who would like to turn Europe intoan isolated fortress do not like it, that is their problem.

States are powerless against many aspects of globalization. They can nolonger hope to resolve problems that are now developing on a global scaleby acting alone. At the same time, the indispensable democratic legitimacythat is essential if we are to deal with these questions is not migrating to

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5 See Jean Monnet, Mémoires.

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the international stage: it only operates within nation-states. Thiscontradiction has opened up a twofold fault-line in our political life; on theone hand, the international institutions that are, in theory, responsible forresolving global questions are suspected of being illegitimate; on the otherhand, national democracies do not have the ability to control globalmutations on their own. Basically, the institutions that work well lacklegitimacy, and those that are legitimate do not work well. In Europe, thiscontradiction finds its main expression in the crisis in our democracies,which are affected by the return of various forms of populism and by thetemptations of isolationism. How are we to resolve this contradiction in ademocratic way? How are we to respond to what public opinion increasinglysees as a crisis in democracy?

A democratic government stands upon three pillars. First, elements oflegitimacy based on institutions and procedures. – A constitutional statemust be based upon the separation of powers and the politicalrepresentation of the people that guarantees its citizens the ability tochoose their representatives collectively by voting for them. But it alsorelies on the political capacity of the system to bring forward publicdiscourse and proposals that can produce coherent majorities. In otherwords, the political system must represent society, and allow it to see itselfas a whole because all its members use the same language and experiencethe same feelings. The second pillar of a democratic government lies in itsefficiency, or in other words its ability to identify public problems, to findsolutions, to propose different options for a public debate and, ultimately,to resolve these problems. In that sense, a democratic government is aresponsible government; it must be supported by a majority, but its mustalso be accountable for its actions. The final pillar is a public space forarguments and debates, a space where issues can be discussed and wherepolitical solutions can be outlined. If that space is to be both visible andcomprehensible, it must be the arena for ritualised political battlesbetween competing parties or candidates.

It is the combination of these three aspects that helps to give citizensthe feeling that they belong, that they can influence the choices made bytheir society, that they can recognise themselves in their representatives,and that they live, collectively, in control of their destiny within a spacethat is both clearly delineated and familiar to them. In my view, this liveddimension of democracy is its true and deepest inspiration. And it is byinvestigating this feeling of democracy that we can now diagnose the crisisaffecting all democratic systems. For if citizens are no longer convinced that

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they have a central role to play, institutional democracy’s finest mechanismsand most beautiful formal arrangements are lifeless puppets.

There is no avoiding the conclusion that there is now a crisis. We needto consider three key levels at which power operates: the internationalsystem, Europe, and national democracies in respect of three keyrequirements: the need for legitimacy, the need for efficiency, and the needto belong. That is why the need to find a new and democratic way oforganising power that goes beyond the framework of nation-states is now amatter of urgency. Once, with the exception of a few ‘continentalelephants’ (the United States, China and India), the nation-state isbeginning to fade away, the absence of any democratic internationalgovernance raises a crucial problem for democracy. At this point, we canneither abandon our pursuit of global common goods – which would meansurrendering to the current world order – nor allow our democracies towither away because our fellow citizens increasingly feel that they are nolonger in control of their own destinies.

How are we to react? That is the question I propose to explore in thisbook. Our starting point has to be Europe. Nothing else on the planetprovides such a clear example of how to create what I have described inFrench, as an alternational and non-hegemonic democratic system ofgovernment.6 If we analyse it in the light of the democratic contradictionidentified above, we will be able to pursue our quest for new answers.These reflections draw upon my experience of both Europe and the world. Iwould like to dedicate them to all those who wish to be witnesses to thefuture and active players in the future.

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6 Some authors are following other similar paths, such as David Held, ‘From executive to CosmopolitanMultilateralism’, in David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Taming Globalization. Frontiers of Governance,London: Polity, 2003, pp. 160-86.

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Chapter I

World Powers and their Discontents

The new questions societies have to face today are to an increasing extentposed in global terms. We are very familiar with these questions. They haveentered the sphere of our day to day preoccupations. They fuel new formsof militant mobilisation. They give rise to diplomatic conflicts of a new kind– consider, for example, the transatlantic trade frictions over geneticallymodified organisms (GMOs). These are not simply disputes betweencompeting powers; they are also disputes between different social choicesand collective preferences. They can even lead to open conflict: since11 September 2001, an embattled America has been at war with a newinternational terrorism. In short, they are the basso continuo that runsthrough our collective life and our public debates.

These questions come into two categories. First, there are those thatpose a direct threat, in both the medium and the long term, to the survivalof our planet as an ecological system (soil-erosion and the destruction ofwater resources, the greenhouse effect, threats to biodiversity, atmosphericpollution and so on) and to the well-being of humanity, particularly the rapidspread of pandemics and the continued existence of poverty and insecurity.These issues cannot be ignored as they now affect all territories and allsocieties, and pay no heed to political boundaries. Some States may wellchoose not to share the transnational responsibility for these problems, butone day they will have to explain to their citizens, or to future generationswhy they have not done so. By refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol onclimate change and cutting emissions of greenhouse gases,7 the UnitedStates has chosen to keep going down a road that will lead to a dangeroushyper-consumerism. But how long can the US go on pretending to ignore theimplications of that model, given that it too is affected?

The second category of questions is more directly related to theeconomic and political interdependence brought about by globalization.This interdependence is made particularly obvious by confrontations ofvarious kinds: economic and trade disputes arising out of collective

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7 United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change (UNFACC), adopted by the United Nations at theEarth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in June 1992.

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preferences that are a priori divergent, rivalries over access to energyresources and natural wealth (oil, gas, uranium, minerals etc.) orideologically-motivated armed conflicts. These tensions reflect, however,no more than one of the scenarios made possible by globalization. In the dayto day life of our societies, globalization also takes the form of transnationallinks of a very different kind. Such links, as those established by trade andeconomic interests and underpinned by the geographical ubiquity of giantmultinational companies or by the reorganisation of the internationaldivision of labour. Other and more painful links are those unleashed by newsocial forces grounded in the spectacular inequalities of wealth, forcingdespairing and distressed populations to emigrate. But there are also thelinks established by the multiculturalism of our open societies, and byaccess to other cultures, information and far-away places. The world is nolonger an unknown quantity. Our home is no longer defined solely byreference to one particular region or nation.

States that once defined themselves as the legitimate, althoughessential voice of general interest) have to some extent been dispossessed.Globalization reveals a new sphere of common interests. We are seeing thegradual emergence of a second horizon of general interest that has nopolitical basis because it transcends States, cultures and national histories.8

The appeal to a general interest that has no people or to a common goodthat makes no reference to any established political community: that is ourcontemporary reality.

Societies no longer exist in a vacuum – always assuming that they everdid. Indeed, given that all societies are affected by globalization, anincreasing number of serious questions no longer pertain solely to theinternal sphere of states, to their ability to address them or to their capacityfor decision-making. The private domain of national governments isshrinking as their links with their global environment become closer. Whatwere strictly national questions increasingly tend to become globalquestions. To take only one example: the international context of greaterinstability characteristic of the 1990s gave a new urgency to the debateabout security. In Europe, this took the concrete form of the 1999 Treaty ofAmsterdam, which ratified the de-compartmentalisation of two fields ofaction that were traditionally distinct: internal and external security. Theimpact of September 11 and its aftermath simply confirmed this political

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8 Thierry Pech and Marc-Olivier Padis, Les Multinationales du coeur. Les ONG, la politique et le marché, Paris:La République des idées/Seuil, 2004, p. 53.

choice: the legal competence that was once the sole preserve of thesovereign states must now be shared on a European level.

The conclusion seems obvious: for better and for worse, globalization ofthe issues increases, on a daily basis, the need to organise democratic, globalforms of governance that are both legitimate and efficient. In other words:democratic. And yet, even though it means flying in the face of the evidenceand ignoring the urgent issues of the day, many people reject this argument,even refuse to discuss it seriously. There is a whole strain liberal thought, forexample, sings the praises of competition between norms, between differentlevels of governance, and powers and denounces the project for globalgovernance on the grounds that it will force us to lower our ambitions andinvolve us in a sort of political ‘Dutch auction’. It is true that competitionbetween States and their citizens is now so profitable that preserving thestatus quo is in the interests of its beneficiaries. Another school of thought,which can be described as ‘sovereignist’ associates all global governancewith a dangerous loss of state autonomy, or in other words a loss ofsovereignty. Rather than asking how the competence of states can becomplemented – and at the same time reinforced – by a global policy thatwould allow them to make a collective response to the main challenges ofour times, ‘sovereignists’ believe this world only weaken states and look athistory through a rear-view mirror. They would rather have states that werepowerless but fully sovereign than see competences being shared by stateson the one hand and supranational powers on the other.

To take stock of what is now expected of governments, and of what thisimplies – the need to construct governance that can operate on a globalscale – is therefore a political choice. I have made that choice. If humanityfails to realise that its only salvation lies in an international approach toproblems that make a mockery of our frontiers, it is doomed in the longterm. And in the medium term it will be faced with an increasing number ofconflicts, inequalities and ‘imperial’ security solutions that will lead toendless armed interventions in every theatre that is deemed to pose athreat to the internal order of the state.

Although there are those who reject the notion, there is a growingawareness of the problem. Paradoxically, every conflict heightens it. The warin Iraq in 2003 is the most recent example. The same awareness is heightenedby globalization itself. National identities are being undermined by migration,access to cultures, the rapid circulation of information by transnational actors(NGOs, multinational companies), and by the growing politicalinterdependence of states and the emergence of supranational powers, the

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European Union being the most successful example to date. Of course thesephenomena also lead us to fall back on national identities: they become thefocus of fears and they fuel nationalism. But they still have a considerableability to break down barriers – between value-systems and loyalties.

The implications of this awareness have yet to be translated into clearand coherent political terms. This is also a linguistic issue: we have yet tofind a way of describing in political terms the way the world has burst in uponour hitherto private, national lives. The global questions and problems thatare transforming our daily lives have come up against a form of democraticaphasia. Our societies no longer live inside one-dimensional spaces but wehave no common way of talking about this, unless, perhaps, we use thelanguage of Kofi Annan, who is a UN Secretary-General of unrivalled stature.The explanation is that the only grammar available to us at the moment isthat of nation-states. To that extent, the existing nation-state model thatstructures the system of international relations has become a trap. It isobvious to citizens that maintaining the fiction that state powers provide anadequate basis for the discussion of world issues has become a lie. It is notso much the lie itself that is the problem as the gap between the promise ofpower and the regular admissions of failure. This discrediting of politics andthe consequent dramatic decline in democratic participation in so manycountries are a direct cause of this feeling of remoteness and dispossession.

The failings of inter-national governance

Is inter-national governance or, in other words, the current system capableof responding to these difficulties? The system is cacophonous. Theinternational institutions that structure it are profoundly flawed, not leastbecause of their lack of coordination and coherence. They in fact constitutea sort of political archipelago that functions like a set of ministries with nogovernment to organise them, or like a group of soloists with neither aconductor nor even a common set of music to play from. As a result, it is allbut impossible to put forward common policies and what has been built withsuch difficulty in one place is regularly torn down in another.

Specialists in international law have a simple explanation for thisconstitutional failing. They say that the international (inter-national) systemis based upon Westphalian logic, and that is enough to give it bothlegitimacy and coherence. Basically, this means that there is no need for anygovernmental function at the international level because international

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institutions and organisations are made up of States which ‘naturally’, orthanks to some sort of transitivity, give them their own internal coherence.Because France, for example, is in legal terms, a unified and sovereignstate, the positions France adopts in any international institution,organisation or assembly are, of necessity, internally consistent: they are somany declensions of the same noun. And as the same is, in legal terms, trueof every sovereign state, it is obvious that that the positions adopted by allstate in any international assembly will eventually produce a faithful,indeed symphonic, representation of the state of the world.

The argument may be valid in theory, but this beautiful music is rarelyheard in the real world. Bringing together a variety of sovereign nations, ornational sovereignties, within an assembly of nations has never produced acoordinated policy. It tends, rather, to produce a plastic monster that takeson a new shape in every organisation or institution to which it is admitted.Ultimately, the attempt to find a world political motor that can coordinatethe actions of international institutions never provides an answer that issatisfactory in legal terms. Indeed, the way it distributes institutionallegitimacy on an international basis is an obstacle to the emergence of anyform of world governance that is both coherent and legitimate.

For some thirty years, a second mode of governance, which might bedescribed as ‘declamatory’, has been attempting to remedy this lack ofoverall vision in international summits. It has indeed allowed civil society toput a number of systemic questions on the agenda at internationalconferences: the environment, population, development, core labourstandards and the rights of women. To what effect? What results have beenachieved after all the decades of meetings, statements of good intentionsand all the declarations that are made at the end of summits? Thedeclarations are stirring but they do not usually translate into anythingconcrete. They are gestures made for the benefit of public opinion ratherthan signs of any commitment to taking global responsibility.

And yet, the declamatory approach may prove useful in the long term,as we can see from past declarations: the 1948 Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights now has a legal value. ‘Declamatory governance’ haspromoted certain conceptions of how the world should be organised, eventhough many states regularly flout its principles. It now looks like aprogramme: witness the United Nations’ ‘millennium objectives’.9 This is

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9 These are concrete objectives (such as increasing the amount of development aid supplied by the richestcountries to 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2015), designed to put the question of development at the centre of thedebate. The basic assumption is that the pressure of public opinion can force countries to make a combined effort.

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why the declamatory approach does have a certain legitimacy: it helps us toexpress collective expectations on a world scale. At the same time, it comesup against its own limitations because it is disconnected from theorganisations that implement policies, it is difficult for it to produceconcrete results.

These modes of governance lead nowhere. Either the institutionsconcerned simply preach the good word and lose credibility because theyhave no power, or they take decisions and act independently of one another,and therefore expose themselves to the accusation that they have nolegitimacy.

As a result, the NGOs, the various lobbies, the political alliances, thetrade-unions are beginning to occupy what was once an empty space. Theyrepresent an emerging and fragmented world public opinion that is notproperly in the full sense of the word, representatives but which can havecertain indirect effects. This third mode of governance is, therefore,developing within the private sphere, thanks mainly to the emergence ofinformation campaigns and pressure groups designed to influence thechoices of states or other private actors – primarily multinational companiesbut also consumers or shareholders. British and American-inspired ‘nameand shame’ campaigns give NGOs or independent agencies the task ofevaluating and making public the social and environmental performance ofmultinational companies, or the degree to which states are corrupt. Thesame privatisation of action and the establishment of codes of good conduct(companies’ ‘social responsibility’) can also be observed in the way thatmany multinational firms guarantee their customers that products aremanufactured in accordance with certain standards (‘social labelling’,‘green labels’). Other associations are trying to strike a new balance byinvesting in ‘fair trade’ and by guaranteeing the producer a decent incomein exchange for higher than average prices. Some spheres of activity, if istrue, are regulated in ways that are totally independent of nationalstructures. This is especially true of the Internet. It is managed by privatebodies and is one of the most effective ways of disseminating informationwithin the new global public space. In the same way, internationalaccounting norms evade the sphere of public regulation.10 Finally, differentforms of public action, albeit distinct from that of the state, deservemention here: notably, one come to mind: cooperation between local and

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10 Philippe Crouzet and Nicolas Veron, La mondialisation en partie double. La bataille des normes comptables,Paris, En temps réel, Notes, n.3.

urban communities (such as transnational associations of twinned towns inborder areas).

The legitimacy of such approaches may seem dubious when measured bythe standards of the model of national representative democracy. It is easyto criticise them on the grounds that they represent no one and have anarrow social base. But, in the world of our ‘second modernity’11 andcosmopolitanism, and given that coordinated action is impossible becausethere is no basic political language to discuss issues that concern us, the ruleof private actors in some aspects of globalization can be regarded as a wayof ‘redistributing national sovereignty’12 towards the market and civilsociety, and as an embryonic world public space.

Elements of governance on an international scale do, then, exist but, atthis embryonic stage, they do not possess the attributes of true democracy.Two criteria are enough to reveal the inadequacy of the presentinternational system: legitimacy on the one hand, and efficiency on theother. In that respect, today’s international governance seems to beprofoundly paradoxical. On the one hand, we have institutions andorganisations that are legitimate but inefficient; on the other, we haveinstitutions and organisations that are efficient but illegitimate. If the ironywere not so cruel, we could formulate a law with a basic axiom: if asupranational institution is effective, it is not legitimate, and if it islegitimate it is not effective! And, to exaggerate a little, we could use thetwin criteria of legitimacy and efficacy to paint a strange picture ofcontemporary international governance.

To begin with the UN. The General Assembly lies at the heart of the UNsystem, and it looks like a monument to legitimacy. All, or almost all, thestates on the planet sit around the same table. At first sight, it seems thatwe could not hope for anything better. The principle is similar to the oneNoah used to organise his ark: all states appear to be guaranteedrepresentation. Whether or not the Assembly is effective is another matter.I have already said that ‘declamatory governance’ may have its virtues inthe long term. But it is pointless to maintain the fiction that this Assemblyof Peoples has any influence when it comes to the concrete issue of solvingthe world’s greatest problems. Its resolutions are at best ignored, and atworst openly flouted. The real power of the UN lies in the Security Counciland, more specifically, in the right of veto. That is the exclusive privilege of

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11 See Ulrich Beck, Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitaller, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002.12 Zaki Laïdi, La Grande Perturbation, Paris: Flammarion, 2004, pp. 29-48.

PASCAL LAMY

its five permanent members, whose legitimacy (based on who won the lastworld war) is, to say the least, 50 years out of date.

The fate of the UN’s many agencies varies. When their action isrestricted to the visible domains of the social and political sphere, the HighCommission for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF or the World Health Organisationare recognised as legitimate. Their stated objectives give them a certainlegitimacy, but they have neither the resources nor the coherence they needto be effective. Similarly, the legitimacy of the International LabourOrganization is well established. The organisation was founded just after theFirst World War, and it brings together the representatives of thegovernments, employers’ associations and trade unions of every memberstate. Its charter and numerous conventions have allowed it to construct areal system of reference in terms of labour protection and workers’ rights.Yet it has no way of implementing its decisions or making them binding. Thelack of adequate links with the legislation introduced by other organisationsand institutions mean that it is rather like a general without any army.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is, for its part, a Janus-facedentity. It plays an effective role when, in the form of Dispute SettlementBody, it acts as the supreme arbiter of world trade. When, however, itfunctions as a negotiating forum, its legitimacy is challenged by sections ofworld public opinion – in whose name and in the name of what does it laydown rules and jurisprudence? – even though its voting system is the sameas that of the UN (one State = one vote). When it functions as a court, it isa uniquely effective player on the stage of contemporary governance andplaces the WTO in a position to oversee other international institutions andorganisations. The DSB can therefore resolve trade issues which sometimesaffect different juridical realms (the environment, labour law, food safetyand so on) Being the only effective court in the current system, the WTOstands out like an island that is cut off from the machinery of internationalregulation. It is therefore often suspected or accused – in symbolic terms –of dealing with global problems of all kinds because the tools internationalgovernance really needs are not available.

The so-called ‘Bretton Woods’ international financial institutions (theInternational Monetary Fund and the World Bank) are effective in the sensethat they do have policies and can implement them. But as they areregularly criticised by antiglobalization movements and are poorlysupported by public opinion, they obviously lack legitimacy. Almost allcountries are indeed represented in their general assemblies, but theiractual policies are decided by executive boards made up of members

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nominated or elected by the General Assembly on the basis of how muchthey contribute to the finances of these institutions. Five of the seats on theIMF’s Board are held by the United States, Japan, France, the UnitedKingdom and Germany; the other one hundred and seventy-nine membersshare the remaining nineteen seats.

To complete this rapid survey, we should be looking at the dozens of‘technical’ international organisations within the UN system. Most of themremain completely unknown. Many of them are old, having been founded atthe end of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth. Theirmain purpose is to improve intergovernmental cooperation so as to ensurethe continuity of the infrastructures and services they manage in a worldwhere borders are being opened up and where flows of all kinds areincreasing. Their objectives, however, do not appear to tackle issues thatare vital to the whole of humanity or political questions about collectivepreferences or social choices. This is true of the Universal Postal Union, theWorld Meteorological Organisation and the International Civil AviationOrganisation. All these organisations are effective, but citizens seeabsolutely nothing of what they do. They look after the ‘technical side’ ofglobalization and act, so to speak, as its ‘back office.’ When they do ventureinto the arena of active regulation, their effectiveness is much less obvious;witness, for example, the last general meeting of the International MaritimeOrganisation, which resolved to eradicate ‘dustbin ships’. Some technicalorganisations are, finally, effective at managing collective preferences thatconcern citizens directly. They are, on the other hand, alarmingly shadowy.One example is the UN’s Geneva-based Codex Alimentarius, which isresponsible for food safety and consumer protection.

Is Democracy Impossible?

Observing the archipelago of contemporary world governance raises a starkquestion: are legitimacy and efficiency incompatible? Will we ever be ableto devise a system of democratic governance that can combine the twodimensions, or do we have to resign ourselves to the following alternative:a governance that is declamatory but incapable of assuming itsresponsibilities towards its citizens, or a form of more or less enlighteneddespotism which, in the name of efficiency, expertise and competence,would address world issues without the support of citizens? Is governancewithout power the only alternative to governance without a heart?

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PASCAL LAMY

In contemporary international relations, and in the institutions thatstructure them, power can be legitimised only at the level of the state.Once its legitimacy has been established and validated within the nation-state, we then make the hypothetical assumption that it can beautomatically transferred to a higher level. We reproduce the fiction of atransitivity which, as I have already said, assumes that political coherencecan automatically migrate from one level to another. If we make thatassumption, we ignore the real underlying meaning of legitimacy, the feelingof citizens that they can debate the issues; the sense that their role indetermining collective goals is not restricted to voting in elections. When,in other words, it comes to international governance, the only possibilitiesopen to them are the unfamiliar and very indirect processes whereby thegeneral will can be delegated. But in a democracy, a legitimacy simply basedon procedures is not enough.

The second element in the democratic validation of power is efficiency.Citizens expect governments to be able to identify the problems that haveto be solved, and to be capable of solving them. Citizens expect results frominstitutions with political responsibilities. The ability to transform the realworld and to influence the course of events is the raison d’être of a publicpower. It is the presence or absence of results that convinces its citizensthat they should support it or reject it. But quantifying efficiency inconcrete terms is not easy. Doing so becomes even more complicated as wemove away from the seat of power. It is easier to hold the mayor of a townor village accountable for his actions than a national government. Whenpower is remote and when there are multiple levels of government, as is thecase with Europe or complex political systems, the task becomes even morecomplicated. In that respect, evaluating the effectiveness of politicalmeasures in terms of international governance may look like an impossibletask. How, given the complexity of different levels of government, how canwe devise an effective way of evaluating efficiency? In a democracy, this isa crucial issue.

The picture becomes even gloomier when we observe that the principlethat gives structure to contemporary international relations takes littleheed of truly democratic demands. The principle in question assumes thatthe UN’s model of democracy gives States equal representation: one State =one vote. Now that principle is a long-standing fiction dating back to adistant period when democracies did not exist. It was a useful fiction in itsday, but it is completely out of step with contemporary geopoliticalrealities. It can represent neither the diversity of the world nor the variety

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of its actors. What is, perhaps, still more important is that it does not allowus to take collective responsibility for global issues. All it allows us to do isjuxtapose national forms of legitimacy. There is therefore a danger that itwill,at least de facto, abandon the pursuit of a common interest that is bothbroadly defined and of crucial importance to all. For good measure, wemight add that, in many cases, this national legitimacy itself is onlydistantly related to democracy…

Although the overall picture is gloomy, there are still some rays of hope,such as the elements of what we might call ‘communitarisation’ that we seeat work in international law.13 The UN Charter is obviously a step in the rightdirection, as are the International Criminal Tribunals for the formerYugoslavia and Rwanda, or, very recently, the International Criminal Court.They are designed to deal with forms of international criminality and non-respect for the new provisions of international law. Jus cogens is a furtherstep in the right direction. It removes a number of international legal normsfrom the domain of state sovereignty; these are now norms that statescannot ignore in the name of sovereignty. The seeds of an embryoniccommunity have been planted in the international system, and they willhelp us to build a platform of collective preferences that can be shared byall actors. But given the urgency of certain contemporary issues, they aregrowing too slowly.

Do we therefore have to conclude that democracy and internationalgovernance are almost incompatible? No, because all democratic systemsare confronted with the same crisis: national democracies must respond totheir citizens’ need for signposts, for road maps to help them find their wayaround this new world. The navigational aids provided by domesticsovereignty are no longer adequate. The emergent supranational powers arecaught in a dilemma: do we have to turn our backs on the nationaldemocratic sphere which provides the basis to the legitimacy of agovernment in order to resolve global questions? Is it possible todemocratise the upper storeys without destroying the foundations ofrepresentative democracy? This contradiction is contemporary internationalgovernance’s blind spot. It is also Europe’s blind spot. This blind spot is, tosome extent, the reason why democracies are ‘in crisis’.

As the reader will have guessed, I support the view that the constructionof an ‘alternational’ democratic system is an unavoidable political necessity.

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13 See Alain Pellet, ‘Mondialisation du droit international?’ in Serge Cordellier, ed., La Mondialisation au-delàles mythes, Paris : La Découverte/Poche, 2000, pp. 93-100.

PASCAL LAMY

An “alternational power, via revitalised institutional procedures, givesstates effective means of wielding power, and clearly identifies commonobjectives and the means to construct a worldwide democratic stage. In myview, world governance and democracy are inseparable. The existence ofone is a precondition for the success of the other. Without democracy, worldgovernance cannot exist. That is not just an empty slogan. But the dangerthat we will simply maintain the fiction that currently prevails ininternational relations is not just a theoretical possibility. It is a veryconcrete and immediate danger. If we imitate the way nation-states interactat a supranational level, as we did in the past, there is a danger that we willdeny democracy the means to establish itself. There is a danger that we will‘de-democratise’ democracy.14

In our Western democracies, we can see what is at stake in a veryimmediate way. They stand by helplessly while extremists get more votesand as all kinds of populism grow stronger. The threat to democracy is thata growing number of citizens will turn away from politics. The threat is alsofrom the increasing influence of critics whose denunciations may bejustified to some extent, but who offer no real alternative means of tacklingthe crisis in the system. We have to respond in political terms.

Thinking about how we construct a democratic system of power brokingis therefore a matter of urgency. Now that the forms of nationalrepresentative democracy have become a trap, we now have to invent analternational democracy.

But in any case, it is not true to say that we have no models and noexperience. We have been constructing Europe for fifty years now. Thefounding fathers of Europe knew that what was going on in one corner of theplanet would have global implications.

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14 See Ulrich Beck, Macht und Gegenmacht.

CHAPTER II

THE EUROPEAN LABORATORY

To create a supranational democratic system is what we have been trying todo in the European laboratory, since the middle of the last century. If I amto believe the evidence of the endless questions I am always faced with inLatin America, Africa and Asia, the whole world knows all about thisexperiment. I sometimes feel that these questions are an expression ofhope. But in any event, they are always the expression of curiosity.

For many years, I answered in positive terms. I shared the convictionsof the EU builders, who were inspired by the future implications of whatthey were constructing.

For some time now, I have been less confident. The weather haschanged. I can see clouds gathering, and they may be a sign that a storm isbrewing. And I see the barometer – what we call the ‘Eurobarometer’; ahigh-quality poll that regularly monitors the opinion of citizens of all themember states of Europe15 – is falling ominously. In late 2003, only 41 percent stated that they had any faith in the European Union.16 There isanother bad sign: only one on two citizens thinks that his or her country’smembership of the European Union is a good thing.17 When compared withearlier surveys, these figures indicate that we have hit a pocket ofturbulence: they tell us that in the 25 countries of Europe, over 20 millionpeople probably changed their opinion from positive to negative in thesecond half of 2003.

If we compare these figures with those recorded during the lastEuropean elections (in both 1999 and 2004), when there was a high rate ofabstention and when various populist forces performed well – we have toface the obvious: a democratic crisis is looming.

Why? Why is public opinion no longer supporting an unprecedented andunique enterprise which has changed the face of our continent by banishingthe spectre of war, by allowing democracy to take root and by building up

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15 It can be consulted at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm.public_opinion/16 This represents a fall of three points since the first semester of 2003. The rate of distrust had risen to 42 percent according to Eurobarometer 60, Second semester 2003.17 This represents a fall of six points since the first semester of 2003.

PASCAL LAMY

societies which, in comparison with the rest of the world, are free, open,prosperous and mutually supportive. Has the construction of Europe been hitby the same illness as the international system – which it was trying totranscend – and our national democracies – which it was designed to supportand complement? Let us try to answer the question without lapsing intocomplacency, by taking a lucid look at the successes and failures, thepromises and results of this attempt to invent a new form of governance.

Europe: towards governance

After the Second World War, having learned from the failures of theinternational system over the previous one hundred years, Europe’s foundingfathers made a ‘technological’ jump towards governance by developinginnovative tools that we have been perfecting over a period of fifty years.It was not so much the stated objective of the European project – ‘to lay thefoundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’18 – as themeans of achieving it that allowed us to leave behind the only formulaavailable at the time: namely, states have an exclusive monopoly onsovereignty. From the very start, we had things that, even today, cannot befound anywhere else in combination: effective tools and democraticprocedures. We gradually learned how to use these innovations, and wehave learned to make better use of them, though not without debates,clashes, quarrels and crises. But the transition was successful andcompletely new principles of governance did take root. These newprinciples have made it possible to move from an international (or‘intergovernmental’, as we say in Europe) system to a ‘Community’ system(based upon autonomous institutions and common policies). They aregenerically described as the ‘Community method.’ They are: the pre-eminence of European law, subsidiarity, a re-worked principle of majorityrule, and by granting of a monopoly of legislative initiative to theCommission.

The fact that European law takes precedence over national laws is thefirst building block. It was gradually established through jurisprudence. Thissupranationality is guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, whoserulings are binding on national legal systems. To a large extent, thistransgresses the principle of classical international law.

The principle of subsidiarity, which has always figured in federalism’s

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18 Preamble to the Treaty of Rome (1957).

tables of stone, divides legal competence between the level of the Unionand the level of Member States. It is intended to ensure that thecompetence of the Union remains ‘subsidiary’ to that of its Member Statesor constituent parts, such as regions, and that it applies only whenefficiency requires it to apply. Europe has, for example, a high degree ofcompetence at the economic level: control over competition, rulesgoverning the market, internal common negotiating position in internationaltrade. Education and social security policies, in contrast, are within theremit of national competence.

The third characteristic, namely, a renewed principle of majority rulehas gradually been applied within both two institutional sources oflegitimacy: the Council, made up of EU Member States and the EuropeanParliament. In the Council, where States have relinquished their sovereigntyin favour of a population-weighted voting system, decisions are usuallytaken on a ‘qualified majority’ basis (about two thirds of all votes) ratherthe ‘simple majority’ system used in the European Parliament (half of allvotes plus one). The upper house or Council has gradually come to sharelegislative power, budgetary power and political control with the lowerhouse, or the European Parliament, which has been elected by universalsuffrage since 1979.

Giving the European Commission a monopoly of initiative was perhapsthe most innovatory principle of all and yet, even today, few people knowabout it or still find it very obscure. Contrary to the idea that still prevailseven in distinguished academic circles, it has nothing to do with theexecutive nature of the College of European Commissioners, though it istrue that the creation of a supranational executive did give birth to a newspecies: the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community(ECSC), then the so-called ‘executive’ commission of the EuropeanEconomic Community (EEC), which was the daughter of the ECSC and finallythe modern EU’s European Commission, which is the ECSC’s granddaughter.In fact, the monopoly of initiative stems from a recognition of the need togive an exclusive monopoly on policy initiatives or on ways of implementingpolicies, to a ‘third party’ independent of the States, which trust it (in a waythat they do not trust each other) to draft the policies required by thegeneral interest of the Union. This is the technology described as a‘monopoly of initiative’, though the term is as off-putting as it is ugly. Inconcrete terms, it means that a proposal can only be made by the EuropeanCommission (for example, a legislative proposal) cannot be amended

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PASCAL LAMY

without the unanimous agreement of the Member States. They can refuse toagree to it. But without unanimity, they cannot amend it unless theCommission agrees. The Commission has the power to act as a force forintegration and to act as an honest broker: it takes initiatives thatencourage integration and amends them in such a way as to make themacceptable to a majority. This, as I know from personal experience, wasprobably the EU founding fathers’ greatest stroke of inspiration. After twofratricidal wars, curbing the logic of nation states required a great deal ofimagination. Trust is the cement that gives all forms of integration thesolidity they require. It is that trust that made possible major advances inthe construction of Europe: the market, which represented a compromisebetween liberalisation and the drawing up of common rules; the Euro, whichis a compromise between the different monetary ideas held by differentMember States, and; the common European policy on external trade – oneof the most integrated within the Union – which is a compromise betweenliberal and protectionist views on trade. The key to all this lies in a systemthat can capitalise on trust. In Europe, that function has been granted to theCommission. Its role is to guarantee the European project and its dynamic,to understand the various parties involved, to turn their expectations intopossibilities, and to make them concrete in ways that promote the interestsof all. Its role is, in a word, to construct a general European interest. Thismakes it a ‘trust catalyst’, and it is indispensable if we are to move aheadwith the construction of Europe.

Because it is driven by this completely novel set of institutional drivers,the European Union possesses, a priori, the attributes of efficiency andlegitimacy which, as I have shown, the international system lacks.Montesquieu would have been delighted: separation of powers (legislative,judiciary and executive); a “parliament” with two chambers, Council andEuropean Parliament, that are legitimate because they are made up ofrepresentatives elected by those who gave them their mandate; and finally,an executive that can be censored by the second chamber of the people.And as we discovered in 1999,19 that possibility is not longer just based onacademic theory.

Then why is public opinion so negative? Have we once more, and not forthe first time in history, fallen victim to a fiction that makes us take dreamsfor realities? Have we been given ten out of ten for the theory, and zero outof ten for the practicalities?

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19 The date of the resignation of the Commission chaired by Jacques Santer.

Bringing the machinery to life

I think that the basic answer lies in the truism that today’s Europe lackspolitical excitement. The machinery is there, but it has not been broughtto life.

That machinery is full of positive elements. There is, for example, apublic debating chamber and it exists at the European level. It is astructured, sophisticated space and many of its actors can readily identifywith it. All forms of representation – whether of states, national,parliamentary, trade-unions, associations (such as charities) and business –coexist within it and help to bring it to life. Yet this space remainsstubbornly invisible to the citizens of Europe.

Ever since it was first elected by universal suffrage, the European Parliamenthas been given more and more powers, and the draft Constitutional Treaty wouldgive it an even greater role. And yet even that would not give it the magic thatmight be expected of an institution representing the peoples of Europe.

There are also places where civil society, and specific interests – such asbusiness interests – can be brought together. Lobbies, NGOs, Europeanfederations representing various branches of activity and society (such asEuropean trade-union federations) are all represented in Brussels. They areactive, put forward proposals, take part in formal and informal consultativeprocesses which continue throughout the drafting of policies, and theycooperate closely with European institutions. And yet there is still a feelingthat decisions are taken ‘in Brussels’ without any consultation, and thatthey do not relate to the active, living forces in European society.

One thousand journalists are accredited to the European Commission’spress room, which gives a daily ‘Midday Express’ press conference thatallows journalists to review the latest EU developments and to put questionsto those responsible in the Commission. European institutions have importedthe rigorous transparency rules of the Nordic democracies, despite a fewclashes with more ‘Latin’ concepts. Brochures designed for both specialistand non-specialist readers are published. The web sites of Europeaninstitutions explain what they are doing. There are many regional sources ofinformation in Member States. There are associations committed toimproving our understanding of Europe. There are countless departments ofEuropean studies in the universities. Every year, doctoral theses aresubmitted on European subjects, and in every conceivable Europeanlanguage. The list goes on and on, and yet the citizens of Europe still feelthat this political system is both invisible and incomprehensible.

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PASCAL LAMY

We have, then, good machinery but it has yet to come to life. Why? Ifwe are to find the right answer, and draw the right conclusions from it, wemust, I think, begin by sorting the wheat from the chaff.

On the wrong track

Arguments about the famous ‘democratic deficit’ at the institutionallevel will get us nowhere. That is the first mistake. As I have already said,even though it can (and must) be improved, the European institutionalsystem offers all the guarantees one could wish for to ensure that itspowers are, in procedural terms, independent, separate and subject tochecks and balances. What is more, the Union’s self-imposedtransparency criteria are stricter than those of many European States.20

And given, finally, that the European Union is neither a nation state nor afederation, criticising it on the basis of criteria elaborated with thosesystems in mind is simply bad faith. The Union’s citizens are, as ithappens, under no illusion about this: a significantly greater number (46per cent) have more faith in the European Commission than in theirnational governments (31 per cent).21

When it comes to political debates about Europe, the supporters oftwo conflicting conceptions – the sovereignist or Eurosceptic discourse, andthe federalist discourse – clash over the institutional issue. According to thesovereignists, who are opposed to the building of a supranational system onthe grounds that some elements of sovereignty will be transferred andshared with other states, the nation is the only framework that canguarantee democratic legitimacy. In their view, the debate is closed, oralmost closed: the construction of Europe cannot be other than illegitimateand anti-democratic. According to their opponents, who support federalism,the idea that marginal institutional adjustments can improve things is justan illusion. The only thing that can remedy the deficit is a leap in thedirection of federalism, or in other words an executive that is accountableto a parliament with greater and more extensive powers. And if thegovernments of Member States that still have constitutional powers do notlike it, that is their problem. All that is needed to establish a constituentassembly of the peoples of Europe is an ‘international coup d’etat’. Theyare therefore denouncing a ‘federal’ deficit rather than a ‘democratic’

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20 See especially, A. Moravcsik, ‘Le Mythe du déficit européen’, Raisons politiques, 10, May 2003, pp. 87-105.21 Eurobarometer, n.60.

deficit,22 but they also have democratic ambitions as they want equalrepresentation for both peoples and states, whereas the present systemgives states the advantage,

So there is, ironically, one common theme between both sides, namelythat there is a ‘crisis in Europe’, a theme throughout this on-going ideologicalwarfare.But this theme displaces the question of legitimacy on the one hand,to the point that we cannot really discuss it. Yet even if we reject both thesovereignist hypothesis and the ‘come the federal revolution’ hypothesis onthe other – because one is suicidal and because the other threatens to sacrificethe Europe of today for the sake of an ideal and unreal Europe of the future –the feeling that there is a democratic deficit still persists. If the institutionalsolution cannot provide the right answer, we have to look elsewhere.

The second mistake is to bury our heads in the sand and deny that thereis a real problem. To argue that Europe is, by definition, a long way awayand that we can never change that de facto situation borders on thetautological. Yes, European institutions are far removed from Europe’scitizens, or at least further removed than local or national governments.Yes, their remoteness is structural: a supranational government cannot betransformed into a local government. That is a fact. But this fact does littleto promote the feeling that we are living in a democracy.

This argument jumps to the wrong conclusions: it claims that the crisisin Europe is no more than a long shadow cast by the problems encounteredby national democracies. In fact, it is quite obvious that the crisis indemocracy is affecting all political actors and political interests, includingthe press and the political parties. There is, in our democracies, a wideninggulf between the apparatus of power and society. Society feels that is nolonger adequately represented and no longer believes that a politicalresponse can resolve its difficulties. It is equally obvious that distance,which makes Europe look less familiar to its citizens, also acts like amagnifying glass. But the fact that the crisis has becomes generalised doesnot mean that we have to abandon the attempt to resolve it. If my analysisis correct, and if the crisis does in part result from citizens’ feeling thatpolitics cannot solve the new problems confronting our societies and thatthey themselves are therefore powerless to influence our future choices,part of the solution lies in our ability to put together a European and worldsystem of governance that is legitimate, effective, and recognised as such.

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22 See Alexi Dalem, Les Discours de légitimation de l’Union européenne, Mémoire de DEA, Institut d’EtudesPolitiques de Paris, 2001.

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The third mistake is to take the view that, given that there is no suchthing as the ”European people”, it is not possible to create a ‘Europe’. Thishas always been a recurrent theme throughout the history of theconstruction of Europe. Any fool knows that the impossibility of finding the‘European people’ is a cliché in discussions about both the Europe of todayand the Europe of tomorrow. To summarise it briefly: the opponents ofEuropean integration claim that, because the diversity of its nations, thepeople of Europe is nowhere to be found, hence the subject is closed: if thepeople does not exist, democracy cannot exist and, if there can be nodemocracy, then Europe is a mirage, a blind alley and an impossibility. Thatis all there is to it!

This argument overlooks the fact that we have, sometimes withunprecedented success, been constructing Europe day by day for the last 50years and finding ways to unite its various peoples. For those who recogniseonly one possible form of democracy – a perfect match between one nationand one state – there can be no democracy outside the framework of thenation state. Democracy’s ability to invent truly alternational forms, or inother words to allow democracies to participate in international politicallife, is not even a legitimate hypothesis.

The fourth mistake is the assertion that there is no desire for Europe,or that public opinion is hostile to Europe. The fact is that modern Europehas synchronised political, social, economic and demographic cycles. MostEuropeans see the future in broadly similar terms. These ‘expectations’ ofEurope definitely have an unrealised potential to lend democracy a newmagic.

All our political societies are now faced with the same evil, namely therise of extremism. Sovereignism and nationalistic isolationism, oftencombined with xenophobia and a rejection of others, are its most obvioussigns, as is the rising rate of abstention in elections from the 1990s onwards.This crisis in European democracies reflects the long demographic cyclescharacterised by the structural convergence of European societies: theageing of the population, and the falling birth rate are two examples.Throughout Europe, these developments are producing, in various forms,the same questions, the same worries and sometimes the same plans forreform: how are we to guarantee that the young will support the elderly,that we can pay for pensions and go on providing adequate social welfare?European societies are all caught up in the same economic and social cycle:growth, the jobs market and the ‘offshoring’ of industry are no longersimply matters for domestic policy at the state level. Similarly, the quality

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of the environment and of the products we consume has become atransnational issue. Civic activism over common issues at a European levelis a recent phenomenon, but it was startlingly obvious in the demonstrationsagainst the war in Iraq in 2003. The war and, in more general terms, thepresent American government’s policies, have given Europeans a moreexplicit awareness of the cultural specificity of Europe, even though it stillremains somewhat vague. The citizens of Europe are well aware that theyare Europeans. We now find the same sequences, the same cycles and thesame preoccupations throughout Europe. And that is precisely whendemocracy begins: when people are all talking about the same thing.

If we were trying to create a huge new state, the question of a Europeansociety would obviously be an issue from the outset. The federal project alsocomes up against the same difficulty. But it all depends on our vision of Europe.We should we see it as something quite new, but also as something that has itsroots in the history of its people and that can transcend them so as to enablea new democratic and political framework that can strengthen governance atevery level of public action.23 At that point, respect for, and celebration of,multiple loyalties could be a powerful foundation belief because it has deeproots in the reality of the diversity of the peoples of Europe. The problemcannot, however, be avoided: if there is no such thing as European society, doesthat mean that we have no common identity? I think not. So what is this feelingthat we belong, and there can be no viable democracy?

The European identity we have been constructing over the last 50 yearsis a day to day identity: European policies now have a direct impact on ourlives. This European identity does not contradict the logic of belonging. Itcomplements that logic: half of all Europeans state that they belong to botha nation and Europe.24 It is because this identity is grounded in day to daylife that it is a powerful cohesive force. For the younger generations, it isself-evident that the future is European. Europe is an integral part of howthey view their own lives. Freedom of movement across Europe, educationalexchanges, transeuropean educational programmes, European financialbacking for innovatory projects – including research and regionaldevelopment – and, of course, the Euro are all examples of the policies thatare making membership of Europe an important part of everyday life.

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23 From the local level to the national level, and then the supranational level.24 47 per cent of Europeans state that they feel themselves to be both nationals and Europeans; 7 per cent feelthemselves to be purely European, and 40 per cent feel themselves to be just ‘nationals’. Half of all Frenchpeople feel themselves to be French and European; 9 per cent feel that they are European and French. Ony 3per cent feel that they are purely French.

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Debates between Europeans obviously reveal a European identity too.When disagreements do arise, all the parties involved are aware of theshared destiny that binds them together. Conflict is obviously not the bestway to bind a community together, but a political community never speakswith only one voice and the fact that debates occur demonstrates that ourdestinies are now linked, for better or for worse. And we should not beafraid of debates: there have been many crises in the course of Europeanconstruction. But we also have to find ways of finding common ground, or,in other words, sharing our convictions and listening to those of others. Thatrequires a political will that the European policy of Member States has alltoo often failed to display in recent years.

Thanks to the upheavals of the 1990s and globalization, Europeans arediscovering that they have a lot in common. Our common identity isrevealed by the great moments of the history we share. Ten new MemberStates have now joined the European Union. We watched with emotion asmost of them freed themselves from the Soviet yoke at the end of the 1980s.In some Member States, a majority is in favour of the enlargement ofEurope.25 In others, fear is the dominant emotion, mainly because theauthorities have failed to explain the meaning and historical reality of theprocess.26 Whilst they are worrying, these divergent positions also tell us –in negative terms – that Europe is a reality. These differences of opinion willno doubt fade, and the historians of the future will speak of the‘reunification’ of Europe rather than of its ‘enlargement’.

Our European identity is also, finally, a product of the way others seeus. The construction of Europe was not a reaction against ‘the barbarians.’It took place at the height of the Cold War, but its membership of the‘Western bloc’ was not seen as a preliminary to a confrontation with theCommunist bloc. Europe does not need to construct an ‘other’ in order tounderstand itself. It is, on the other hand, influenced by the way others seeit. Others give Europe a role and capabilities of which it is often unaware.From the outside, it looks more united than it does to those who live insideit. Its colours are also more clearly perceptible: a particular sensitivity tothe questions of development and sustainable development, the desire forbetter collective control over globalization, a willingness to establish

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25 Denmark is the great champion of expansion, with 63 per cent in favour, followed by Spain, Italy, Ireland,Sweden, Finland, Portugal and The Netherlands. Source: Eurobarometer 60.26 France, with 55 per cent of the population opposed, leads the opposition to expansion, followed by Belgium.In Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom, 40 per cent of the populations is opposed to expansion. Source:Eurobarometer 60.

partnerships in the pursuit of common goals, the prioritising of peace ratherthan war. All this has recently been theorised by certain conservativeintellectuals in America. Europe, they tell us, is the world of Venus and notMars. It is the world of Kant and not that of Hobbes.27

These elements indicate that the construction of a new andunprecedented identity is under way. It is an identity that takes differentforms, and it is based upon universal values and mature political choices.The fact that this identity is still under construction must not be allowed tobecome a problem: the feeling of belonging, without which no democracycan be constructed, is already there, even if it is still a matter for debate.This debate helps to reveal what its citizens are beginning to expect ofEurope. And Europeans’ doubts about the real Europe are, in my view, asymptom of ‘European breakdowns.’

On the right track

The first real reason why Europeans have fallen out of love with Europelies in what I would call its failure to produce results. In recent years,Europe has put the emphasis on certain types of mechanisms and hasconcentrated on procedures rather than on getting concrete results. Thecitizens of Europe are well aware that a change of emphasis has takenplace. They are not holding forth about Europe. They are asking animportant question: what is Europe doing for me, and what can it do?

A distinction has to be made here between Europe as a means, andEurope as an end in itself. If we look at it in its historical context, thelegitimacy of the process of European reunification stems not from someattachment to the European or to federal integration, but from what has beenachieved. Common policies (the ‘actual solidarity’ and ‘concreteachievements’ of the 1950s) were developed in response to common concreteproblems. The outcome, or in other words the criterion of efficiency, is anessential element in the legitimation of what Europe is about. If it is to belegitimate, three conditions have to be met: Europe must be a way ofresolving or dealing with the pressing questions and major contradictions ofthe moment; those problems and contradictions cannot be dealt withappropriately and efficiently within a national framework; they must becommon to all Member States and the ‘European response’ must be linked to

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27 See Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America versus Europe on the New World Order, New York:Knopf, 2003.

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concrete proposals that can be implemented. The European Coal and SteelCommunity (ECSC) was seen as a first step towards the economic integrationof France and Germany. In a similar way, consider the example of JacquesDelors’s proposal to do away with external frontiers and to create the Euro.

The signs that the expectations of Europeans and what the EuropeanUnion is doing are out of step are now increasingly obvious. Europeans are,for example, in favour of greater European integration in terms of foreignpolicy and defence, but governments are as reluctant as ever to share theirsovereignty in these areas.28 The same question arises when we turn toeconomic policy. Although we have both a flat rate of economic growth anda powerful instrument that could promote growth – our single currency – werefuse to exploit all these possibilities to the full for fear that we mightactually succeed in coordinating our economic and budgetary policies. Thishas serious implications: if we go on ‘looking after number one’, we willsacrifice growth and therefore the ability to reduce the level ofunemployment or to ensure, in budgetary terms, that we will make choicesthat safeguard our welfare systems.

Ultimately, Europeans have identified Europe’s second failure: thefailure of the project. It was the future that gave Europe its originallegitimacy. In that sense, Europe was a progressive development. And thenthe price of the future suddenly fell in the 1990s. The economic crisis,globalization, the end of upward social mobility – it was at this point thatparents stopped believing that their children would have a better life thanthe one they had had – and the end of communism, which put a sudden endto the notion of progress. All of these factors had an impact on Europe. Theprice of Europe was – and, I think, still – is indexed to the price of the future.Because it relates to the future, the European project has still not recoveredfrom this blow. From this point onwards, institutional and procedurallegitimation became a substitute for the European project. It was, at firstsight, easier to reach agreement over procedures than over policies:procedural neuroses became, so to speak, a substitute for policy neuroses.

From where does this blockage come, this breakdown? Let us recall ourcommon history, starting from one clear point: the process of Europeanintegration has, at least to some extent, unfolded in a non-explicit fashion,in a way that was not visible to Europeans. The pooling of certain elementsof sovereignty has gone ahead without a real and strong commitment by

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28 64 per cent of the citizens of Europe are in favour of a common foreign policy, and 22 per cent are againstit. 70 per cent of the citizens of Europe are in favour of a European defence and security policy, and 19 percent are opposed to it. Source: Eurobarometer 60.

either national or European policy-makers. In other words, Europe has rarelybeen the central focus of public debate.

What began as the economic integration of Europe became a politicalissue, but the nature of debate now began to change. What had been anopen debate became more closed. The introduction of the Euro as a singlecurrency was preceded by 30 years of open debate. The technical debateabout the single currency began in the late 1960s, and was transformed intoa political debate in the 1970s and the 1980s as a result of the upheavalscaused by the economic crisis. It was the need to regain a certain autonomyat the level of economic policy as well as to control inflation that began toconfuse different views as to the role the single currency could play inshaping a European identity. The symbolic relationship with monetarysovereignty thus gave way to a more material relationship. Having long beendominated by ‘being’, the currency gradually came to be dominated by‘having’. ‘The Euro in your pocket’ proved more important than big wordsabout monetary sovereignty.

The debate became still less open when the Single Act of 1986 extendedEuropean policy and allowed the establishment of the internal Europeanmarket in which we have been living since 1993. Designed as a space inwhich people, goods, capital and services could circulate feely, it not onlyencourages trade but affects whole new areas of policy relating to theenvironment or social policy, for example. Europe has gradually moved intonew territory. It now affects our social choices and our choice of identity, orin other words our collective preferences.

From that point onwards, the debate about European policy graduallybecame less open, and more secretive. This happened almost without aword being said, not that it has proved to be an obstacle to furtherintegration, but it has had a great impact on our shared values. The exampleof the recent introduction of a European arrest warrant is testimony to that.By doing away with procedures for extradition between European states, theEuropean Union has acquired the legal means it needs to be able to actwithin its own sphere. As a result, the ability of states to say, within theirown territories, what is right and what is wrong in legal terms, is now sharedat a European level. Similarly, the fact that the European Commission hasbeen given legal powers to regulate competition is not without an impact onour collective values and choices when it comes to regulating certain serviceactivities that are in the common interest.

The delicate balance of European construction has been upset as aresult: there are fewer debates and more gradual progress, fewer great

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political ambitions and more technical norms, and less autonomy of actionand more procedures. A ‘governance’ based essentially upon norms hastaken over from a ‘government’ based upon more discretionary choices.29 Ina number of cases we have, without always realising it, crossed the symbolicfrontier that divides what we have – experience, the sharing of what can beexchanged and what can be touched – from what we are: identities, valuesand symbols. But when it acts in normative fashion, ‘power’ does notacquire the visible signs, the explicits criteria that citizens expect in seeingpolitical power exercised.

In my view, this explains why Europe is finding it so difficult to crossmore symbolic barriers by committing itself to new policies. Europe has comeup against a stumbling block. It is a symbolic stumbling block: power. Statesrefuse to share power because doing so might, they believe, cost them theiridentity. The citizens of Europe are, I believe, ready to cross this frontier.This is the case when it comes to, for example, foreign policy and defence.30

In both these policy areas, where there is a strong element of ‘being’, thereis still a very high threshold of political and symbolic resistance: it is thepolitical strong room that is at stake. States are putting up resistance andtrying to avoid the political choice involved by evoking norms andprocedures. The best illustration of this is the decision taken at Maastricht in1992, which saw a unanimous decision to eventually reach majority decisionson a common foreign and security policy. The same resistance is slowingdown all attempts to coordinate economic and budgetary policies, and yet ithas already been agreed that we cannot fight inflation unless we haveeconomic growth and unless the Euro is fully taken up.

We therefore have to go back to an open debate if we are to find asatisfactory balance between governance and government. Of course theestablishment of norms allows a degree of arbitration between collectivepreferences. But if we are to return to the path that leads to democracy inEurope, we have to give collective political choices a new role and anew meaning.

We must, then, relaunch the stalled project. Within the nation state, thequestion of the project is not posed in the same terms: having developedover a period of centuries, the will to live together is in a sense taken for

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29 The same distinction is made by Jean-Paul Fitoussi, in La Règle et le choix. De la souverainté économique enEurope, Paris : Le Seuil/La République des idées, 2002.30 64 per cent of Europeans are in favour of a CFSP (22 per cent are opposed to it) 70 per cent are in favour ofa Common Foreign and Security Policy (19 per cent are against it). Source: Eurobarometer 60.

granted. But when we are dealing with a group of states that have decidedtheir policies and frontiers on a voluntary basis, the question of the projectis crucial. That is why, when we raise the issues of legitimacy and efficiency,further questions arise: what is the goal we want to give to the institutionswe have established? What society are we building together, and what societydo we want? In Europe, we stopped debating these questions a long time ago.For far too long, we have just been talking politics amongst ourselves.

Unless we have a clear project, we will find it all the more difficult torecover from a third breakdown. It concerns Europe’s public debatingchamber and representation. The legitimacy of any government is basedlargely upon the fact that its citizens recognise themselves in the way itsignals its own existence, in the way it stages its policies so as to make themintelligible and in the light it throws on the issues it raises. It is becomingapparent that the European stage is dark, that we do not have the means toproject our collective preferences, or to identify a political space. It is asthough we were just beginning to realise that Europe is a political project,and that we have yet to invent the language it needs.

Political violence is not ritualised on the European stage, as it is withinthe national spaces. Political battles are not fought by clearly identifiedchampions supported by distinct political sides. The conflict is, at best andfor a few feverish moments, restricted to a clash of national interests. Andthe reason why it is so difficult to ritualise political issues is that they arenot yet associated with clearly identified political forces.

European political forces have not (yet) emerged. Why not? Firstlybecause the European parties (the European Socialist Party and theEuropean People’s Party are the most important) are, as yet, no more thanremote outposts of national parties, and have been slow to establishthemselves as autonomous trans-European political forces. The secondreason is that political labels do not travel well – and partisan loyaltiescannot be accurately reproduced on all European chess boards. The finalreason is that Europe has for a long time been the product of a consensusbetween social democratic forces and Christian Democratic forces. It hasmade no attempt to dramatise the issues that are at stake. The audience isa long way from the stage, and it needs better lighting.

What is more, the way democracy functions varies greatly from onecountry to another does nothing to facilitate or encourage the ability toproject and identify with the European debates that take place in theEuropean Parliament (the ‘Chamber’, so to speak) and the Council ofMember States (the ‘Senate’, so to speak). What is more, not all Europeans

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structure the way they debate or represent political issues in the same way.Europe is dominated by two great structures: the coalition-based model onthe one hand, and the binary-opposition model on the other. Democraticdebates in, for instance, Britain and Germany do not use the same codes.The British have traditionally had head-on clashes between two clearly-identified sides, whilst the Germans sing the praises of their coalitionculture because it promotes compromise. A parliamentary system thatinevitably has to borrow from both models therefore looks very unfamiliarto the citizens of Europe.

These very different functional logics, systems of representation andpolitical languages mean that the citizens of Europe cannot identifyEuropean political issues. The absence of any script that can be read by allEuropeans makes it difficult to identify and understand the signals Europeanpowers are sending out.

The lessons of Europe

In Europe, an innovative ‘technology of government’ has now gone farbeyond the nation-state paradigm by introducing elements of atransnational government and by building a shared living space – andtherefore a shared destiny – for the hitherto divided people of Europe. Themodel we are looking for is indeed democratic. Yet, despite the undeniableinstitutional progress that has been made, the citizens of Europe neither seeit as democratic nor feel that it is democratic.

We can learn two great lessons from the experiments that have beencarried out in the European laboratory. The first is that there is an urgentneed for Europe to produce tangible, quantifiable and concrete results thatmeet its citizens’ expectations; the second is that we need to make thepolitical issues comprehensible to all. Both these great lessons teach us onething: the European stage must be lit up by debates, compromises, andforms of arbitration that embody choices that have been made collectivelyand that facilitate a European project. The same lessons also apply to worldgovernance.

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CHAPTER III

TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIONAL DEMOCRACY:CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEBATE

The European experiment is therefore not a perfect model that can simplybe exported to other continents in order to build the global political life weneed so badly. Far from it. But it is the most successful attempt to-date totranscend national democracy. Both its successes and its failures cantherefore guide us in our search for an ‘alternational’ democracy, or in otherwords for ways that allow democracies to exercise a different type oftransnational power that can, democratically, visibly and transparently,address questions that concern the whole of humanity.

Why have global questions become issues for democracy? In practice,the question of democracy arises only when the decisions taken byinternational actors oblige countries to act in ways that go against theirnational collective preferences. It arises in a much more acute form when,for example, the internationalisation of the economy means that we have toarbitrate between interests and values within the same country. Yes, wewant cheap t-shirts, but not if they are made with forced labour; yes, wewant smart, practical garden furniture, but not if it is made teak taken froma primal forest. The consumer and the moralist who lie dormant within uscome into conflict. This is even more so when the values of one countrycome into conflict with the interests of another, as it can lead to potentialtrade disputes. This was, for example, the case when developing countriesstrongly opposed the inclusion of social norms in trade negotiations andargued that the developed countries wanted to use those norms to denyaccess to the producers of poor countries’ to their markets.

In my own view, the objective is clear: when globalization in all itsaspects makes arbitration between interests and values necessary,democracy has to be the arbitrator. The challenge is to identify commonvalues that can prevail over conflicting identities. The emergence of afragmentary and evolving ‘community’ based upon the idea of a commongood and brought into existence by collective actions with respect to globalpublic goods we have identified together is a way of giving democracy morepower and a new meaning.

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I do not propose to discuss institutional mechanisms. I am as tired oflistening to the same old discussions of technical improvements andmarginal changes to the present system as I am of listening to thespeculative talk that would have us build a Frankenstein’s monster byborrowing from every existing system without bothering too much about itsdeformities. I am just as tired of listening to the same old discussions ofutopia. I am therefore not going to outline yet another version of theuniversal polis, which is a sort of world democratic chimera. We are notstarting from scratch. On the contrary, we have raw materials we can use.We can also capitalise on both the present archipelago of world governance– fragmentary as it may be – and 50 years of European construction.

In my view, five elements provide the foundations for a democraticworld governance. First, values. Values allow our feeling of belonging to aworld community, embryonic as it may be, to coexist alongside nationalspecificities. Second, we need actors who have sufficient legitimacy to getpublic opinion interested in the debate and who are capable of takingresponsibility for its outcome. We need to define areas in which power canbe exercised. We need mechanisms of governance that are truly effective.And, finally, we have to rely on the principles of transparency and solidarity.

I offer a series of contributions to a debate that will allow us toconstruct each of these elements. Whilst they are mutually consistent,these suggestions do not constitute an “off the peg” system. Each of themis worth debating, and they do not necessarily all have to be implementedat the same time. I am not proposing an institutional revolution but, rather,a combination of global ambition and pragmatic suggestions. If we take thispath we will be able not only to address the urgent questions facing theworld, but also, perhaps, to breathe new life into our national democracies.To paraphrase Ferdinand Buisson, who was writing at the end of thenineteenth century, as we are all in the same boat, we cannot save ourselvesindividually.

Values

We now live in a global arena in which there are no shared values, exceptperhaps, ‘human rights.’ And the geometry of their interpretation is sovariable that even they are surrounded by uncertainty. Now if we wish toconstruct a collective dimension, we have to want to live together. If wewish to build the ‘community’ we talk about so much, but which we find it

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so hard to construct, the lesson of the European experiment is that the wayto forge permanent links between nations – with different visions, culturesand social realities – is to project ourselves into a common future. It was thedefinition of such a project that has sustained Europeans up to now. How arewe to create such a vision within a global arena? Can, in other words,diversity be transcended in such a way as to allow the ‘community ofnations’ to become, thanks to a series of political measures, an‘alternational’ community?

I: Global collective preferences

Globalization brings into contact peoples who have not always taken thesame social choices. And when states state what they expect from theworld-governance system, they have different priorities. There are manyreasons for this: their history, their country’s level of development, theincompatible political and social projects they have drawn up, and so on.The only way to construct goods common to the whole of humanity and togive a meaning and a future to our policies and societies is to debate a‘common’ project – even though anything that is ‘common’ on a global scalecan only be ‘common’ in a limited sense.

The controversies surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs)are a good illustration of these debates over different collectivepreferences. Some believe that they will improve the quality of the produceand the productivity of agriculture. Others insist that the spread of GM seedsposes a threat to the environment. So long as different countries imaginedifferent risks, there will be contradictions between them. The GM questionis therefore not so much a question of trade as a debate about riskmanagement at both the national and the international levels. This debatecannot be avoided or evaded by technical measures. Debate must take placein public and must result in the expression of political choices. In this area,social concerns are intense and we must find a way of meeting them. Is thisan illegitimate debate? I think not. Asking a state or people to abandon itscollective preferences means its de facto exclusion from the internationalsystem. Assuming that they have been formulated in democratic terms, apreliminary recognition that such demands are legitimate is a preconditionfor any debate.

And in the absence of any functional world government, we have to findother ways of identifying shared values. In the framework of a national

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democracy, citizens take an interest in the issues at stake because of theway the relationships between different sources of political power arebrought to life on the stage. As we have seen, this does not happen at theinternational level: there is no equivalent debate. A debate about collectivepreferences is the only possible substitute. It will allow us to identifycommon goods in the strongest of senses.

How are we to promote this debate? The vast majority of humanity hasadopted values such as the right to health and education, and core labourstandards. It is beginning to agree on how to identify common goods relatingto concerns that cannot be addressed within the framework of nationalfrontiers. This is true of environmental goods or, to take anothercontemporary issue, the question of migration and the global impact this isbeginning to have: purely national responses are no longer consideredadequate.

A whole range of procedural devices could be used to stimulate thedebate about our collective preferences – and I will mention some of them.But procedures alone are not enough. We have to decide which preferencesare most important to us, where they sit in a hierarchy. And the hierarchyitself has to be a topic for debate; it too pertains to our choice of values.

II: Minimal norms

Given that we cannot achieve harmonisation in many domains – alwaysassuming that harmonisation is needed in all domains, (and I am notconvinced that it is) – we must first translate our common preferences intonorms which, although their ambitions may be limited, are applicable to all.We then have to gradually raise the normative ceiling as our collectiveawareness of what is at stake becomes more heightened. The method usedin Europe – to regulate working hours, for example – does not lead to alevelling down. It is a first step that makes it possible for collectivepreferences to live in peaceful coexistence as the threshold of expectationsgradually rises. The ratchet effect of such norms guarantees that there canbe no going back on the choices that have already been made by this or thatsociety. The risk of backsliding can thereby be averted. The possibility ofmaking further progress can thereby be maintained.

Whether or not these different norms can be reconciled in the event ofconflict remains to be seen. Reconciling them requires strict politicalarbitration, and not just technical competence on the part of some

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international institution. In doing so, we cross the boundary between thenorm-based governance that is now common practice at the internationallevel, to choice-based government. Deciding how to reconcile two normstakes us to the very heart of political choice: arbitrating between differentvalues. Let me give an example to illustrate my point: giving developingcountries access to patent-protected drugs. How can we reconcile a medicalemergency and the need to protect intellectual property rights, when weneed them to finance future research? More to the point, how can wereconcile the two, given that in 1994, an agreement was reached onintellectual property that defined the exceptions too narrowly?

In this case, the hierarchy of norms which prioritised intellectualproperty had to give way to a hierarchy of values which prioritised humanlife. As a result of the pressure brought to bear by the developing countries,with the support of the European Union, members of the World TradeOrganisation (WTO) adopted a more supple interpretation of the intellectualproperty agreement in the summer of 2003: developing countries that donot manufacture drugs but have to deal with major pandemics (AIDS,malaria and tuberculosis) are now allowed to set aside pharmaceuticalpatents and to import generics. It did, however, take two years of bitter andtechnically obscure debates before that agreement could be reached.Pessimists will see that as proof that it is impossible to make significantprogress towards a better regulation of globalization. I do not share theirview: the discussions were certainly difficult, but the outcomedemonstrates that is possible to make collective choices at the global level,provided that we have the will power and the means to do so.

III: Collective world goods

Globalization can no longer be controlled by national institutions, andcompensating for the failings of markets and states is therefore lessimportant than it was. The goods that we choose to promote and defendcollectively must therefore be defined in fine by a debate about sharedvalues. These collective world goods provide the basis for world governance.Their systemic nature means that they are very different to the otherobjects of international cooperation: we have to appeal to the enlightenedself-interest of all rather than to individual altruism. Collective global goodsare defined by two criteria: the absence of consumer rivalry (whereby theamount I consume does not reduce the amount consumed by my neighbour)

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and the non-exclusion of potential consumers (whereby once the good hasbeen produced, I cannot be prevented from consuming it).

If, however, a collective good is to be ‘produced’ on a global scale, theneed to produce it on that scale must first be demonstrated to be bothuseful and desirable; in short, the collectivity must express the appropriatecollective preference. A collective good such as defence may, for examplebe pertinent at the national level, but it is much less pertinent at the worldlevel because it does not meet both the above-mentioned criteria: we donot actually need to defend ourselves against extra-terrestrials (or perhapsI should say ‘not yet’). The capacity to produce the good in question mustexist, preferably within existing institutions. This obviously raises thequestion of how to build collective trust. We then have to decide whichcollective goods are to be prioritised, and whether or not they have to begiven greater priority than other goods.

In environmental terms, protecting the ozone layer is one suchcollective good. In 1987 an international agreement was reached to ban CFCgases within 15 years;31 15 years after that agreement was reached, it washaving discernible effects. The reduction of global warming is anotherexample with the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol – an internationalagreement on ways of reducing global warming. I take the view that wemust, however, gradually identify other goods. Examples include: thereduction of acid rain, atmospheric pollution, desertification, and soilerosion in the environmental domain; access to water and to global fishstocks in the domain of access to resources; access to navigable waterwaysand maritime transport networks in the domain of shared transportinfrastructures; preventing financial crises and halting the rise in organisedcrime in the financial sphere, and in health, the fight to stop the spread ofinfectious diseases (AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis).

Places

If we are to organise these debates on a democratic basis, we must alsocreate and have places where power can be exercised and asserted.

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31 For an extended discussion, see Laurence Tubiana and Jean-Michel Sévérino, ‘Biens public globaux,gouvernance mondiale et aide publique au développement’, in P. Jacquet, J. Pisani-Ferry and L. Tubiana,Gouvernance mondiale, Rapport de synthèse, Rapport du CAE, 37, Paris : La Documentation française, 2002.

IV: On regionalism

Regional structures that bring together a number of nation states are a firststep towards alternational democracy. And yet there is nothing naturalabout regionalism: history is not a product of geography. Geography cannottranscend the long history of conflict between countries. But it does allowus to identify a collective living space, and it is probably easier to do so atthe regional level than at the global level. ‘Actual solidarities’ are easier toidentify and construct at the regional level. As I have already said so often,there was nothing obvious about the European project immediately afterthe Second World War. It required great will power to make the leap of faithinvolved. Europe had to devise mechanisms to promote a rapprochementand mutual trust based upon tangible elements such as common policiesthat could define concrete common interests and a new body – the EuropeanCommission – that could define and defend a European general interest.

Many countries are, like the Europe of the ‘common market’ establishedby the Treaty of Rome, using trade as a vector for regional integration. Itwas the desire for a commercial union that brought the countries of South-East Asia together in ASEAN. The fight against terrorism has heightened thefeeling that they share a common regional identity, as has the newomnipresence of China.

Africa took a different path long ago. As it emerged from the ruins ofcolonialism, West Africa found itself in the novel situation of establishing amonetary union in the absence of any economic or commercial union. TheCFA franc was a single currency that circulated in many countries longbefore Europeans succeeded in giving birth to the Euro. Attempts to createthe corresponding economic or political structures have so far ended infailure, partly because France, as the former colonial power, acts as theultimate guarantor of regional stability. The recent establishment of an‘African Union’ and the clear assertion of its economic and commercial goalsmark the beginning of a major project. And a new energy is being investedin the establishment of regional African sub-structures that are authenticintermediary stages.

Outside Europe, Mercosur has been the most successful experiment todate. It was a product of the fall of the region’s dictatorships, and its statedambition is to prevent war between nations that have all experienced theexcesses of nationalism. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay are nowtrying to get beyond trade agreements by achieving a real political andeconomic convergence. The fact that Mercosur has had discussions with the

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European Union about an ambitious partnership agreement is sign of itsambition. Successful negotiations between the two regional structureswould represent a major step forward, and would demonstrate thatregionalism is an essential component of global governance.

In the same way that Jean Monnet began to build the Europe oftomorrow’s world, the future projects of these embryonic regionalstructures already transcend their actual frontiers. They are a response tothe new order created by globalization. Any structure that wishes to play arole on this stage must achieve a certain critical mass; states such as theUnited States, China and India, which already have a continental dimension,are the exception. Sharing sovereignty is a way of meeting the challengetogether.

It is obviously easier for states of the same region to effectrapprochements – even though that truism does not have the validity of ageneral rule: we have only to think of the extraordinary popularity of thepolitical slogan of ‘pan-Arabism’, and of the complete shipwreck of theproject. We have only to think of the difficulties faced by Canada orAustralia as they attempt to regulate relations with their immediateneighbours. We have only to think of the bloody wars that are tearingapart central Africa. But, because states in the same region share a spacethat has determined their history and because they share some elementsof a political culture and, in some cases, economic features, demographictrends and linguistic similarities, they can be expected to make easierprogress towards a rapprochement, common policies and jointsovereignty. Assuming, of course, that they are willing to do so. It iseasier and quicker to build such structures when they are based upon acommon culture: the Chinese diaspora of South-East Asia has, forexample, established a closely-knit mesh of economic, human andcultural networks that takes no notice of the notion of frontier betweenthe region’s states.

Regional structures also provide raw materials that can be recycled at aworld level. As they converge, their members begin to adopt a commonstance, and that is a helpful first step in the direction of a global debate.These regional groupings allow the work of synthesis to begin. They arelaboratories in which collective preferences can begin to be compared,where collective choices can be put to the test, where compromises can bereached and where suspicions can be overcome. Their position will becomeclearer and better defined when the time comes to discuss global issues atthe international level.

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Regional structures therefore make it possible to begin the political taskof effecting a rapprochement between societies and their choices (whichclarify the collective preferences of their peoples). When transposed to theinternational stage, it will allow them to clarify and strengthen theirpositions. The positions adopted by the European Union with respect toexternal trade policy – a policy adopted when the Treaty of Rome was signed– are the products of 50 years of debates and internal convergence; that iswhy the EU is now united and, in this domain at least, capable of adoptingclear international positions that all its partners can understand.

V: Subsidiarity

The debate about values must also look into the pertinence of levels ofpolitical intervention in a world where power exists at so many levels. Thesigning of the Maastricht Treaty made the principle of subsidiarity fashionableagain. Europe was facing a growth crisis and had to demonstrate that it wasnot trying to abrogate all the competence of its Member States. But, ashistorians know, subsidiarity is a common-sense principle with a longgenealogy: policies are implemented at the level where they are needed andwhere they can be effective. The principle of subsidiarity is based upon acompromise between democratic proximity to citizens and politicalefficiency. The same applies at the world level. A world regulatory systemwith a strong centralising element would be alien to the spirit of democracy.The adoption of the subsidiarity principle makes it possible both to resist thetemptation to concentrate power at the level of the State, and to meet theexpectations we have of legitimate and effective political action. In a systembased upon subsidiarity, power is wielded at the appropriate level, andinterventions are therefore more likely to be effective. What is theappropriate criterion for subsidiarity? Action taken at the international levelis legitimised by the emergence of questions to resolve at that level. Itslegitimacy is then obvious because action has to be taken and because theneed for action is then obvious to all. The example of European environmentallaw is a good example of this principle of emergence. It came into beingthanks to Europe. Faced with environmental questions on a global andcontinental scale, the European Union began, from the 1970s onwards, to takeresponsibility for them at a time when environmental policy was not a centralissue for national governments. Isolated and often powerless to influencetheir own governments, the ministers for the environment met in Brussels in

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order to devise the appropriate tools and define a field for legislative action.A policy was worked out and laws were devised at the appropriate level ofgovernance, or in other words at a level where it was possible to identifyproblems that were not visible at lower levels. The legitimacy of action takenat the European level was therefore based upon the emergence, at that level,of questions that were not part of any national grammar, but which, whenraised at the appropriate level, trickled down to the national level. No onewould now challenge the importance of the political position ministers of theenvironment have within national governments. But it was action at asupranational level that gave them that position.

VI: Sites of coherence

Having more authoritative rules is not enough if the institutions thatproduce them and instil respect them for remain fragmented and if citizenscannot understand the “architecture” of such rules. There is no place withintoday’s system of global governance that has the coherence we need or thatcan facilitate the arbitration we need.

Institutions remain isolated from one another, and do not have theability to act together in the pursuit of common objectives. If we assumethat the coherence of a national government can simply be transposed toother levels, we fail to realise that the positions of the ILO are notconsistent with those of the WTO. Hence our collective inability to reach asatisfactory compromise between trade and social norms.

The ‘horizontal’ question of relations between institutions goes hand inhand with that of achieving a more satisfactory ‘vertical’ consistencybetween the global level, the level of regional unions and the level ofstates. This is not a matter of turning international institutions into super-ministries that can intervene at every level – global, regional and national –but of finding a satisfactory way to articulate these levels so as to ensurethat government-approved European and international rules are taken intoaccount, are adopted inside national political systems.

We also have to fill in the strange gaps that exist within the globalsystem. The most obvious need is for a World Environmental Organisationand for an International Migration Agency.

As Jacques Delors has suggested on so many occasions, we also have toestablish an Economic Security Council, or what I would prefer to call a‘World Council on Sustainable Development’. That Council’s mission would

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be to resolve disputes that arise between ‘sectoral’ internationalinstitutions, to launch global initiatives and to ensure that they areimplemented if and when agreed. There would be no permanent memberswith a right of veto; but such a Council should be made up ofrepresentatives from all continents (ideally, they would be designated bystructured regional bodies). The heads of ‘sectoral’ internationalinstitutions would have observer status.

Actors

Once we have drawn up the project, identified the need for norms andapplied the principle of subsidiarity, one essential decision remains to bemade: do we want world governance to be the prerogative of diplomacy orthe prerogative of politics? In my view, the answer is obvious: we need acommon and representative debating chamber because there can be nocollective appropriation of political will without it. We will not succeed increating a real international ‘community’ unless we make a determinedeffort to create such an arena.

VII: Global actors

Big international meetings – the famous summits – are not places for politicalaction. They are a theatre for delicate negotiations, for the ambiguousamendment of texts prepared months in advance, for advances that can bemeasured in millimetres and for stealthy retreats dressed up in formulaethat are supposed to let everyone go home feeling victorious. The heads ofstate and government, and the ministers or ambassadors who address themare defending the legitimate interests of those who mandated them. Theyare not actors who deal with global issues.

The traditional political countervailing powers – parliaments orrepresentatives of civil society – are not represented at summits, except ininformal fashion by groups of delegates or observers. Even when they doattempt to structure themselves at this level – as the trade unions did whenthey formed the European Confederation of Trade Unions or the InternationalConfederation of Free Trade Unions – these actors are not adequatelyrepresented in either the debates or the decision-making process.

The first, and relatively simple, steps that we have to take towards amore balanced representation of the world would be to encourage the

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establishment of parliamentary structures at the international level in orderto bring together representatives from various national parliaments, and toadmit representatives of civil society to an economic and social councilcapable of functioning as an effective UNECSOC.32 Various formulae havebeen suggested. In the framework of negotiations towards agreementsbetween Europe and the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific(ACP), a joint parliamentary assembly was established; and debates withrepresentatives of parliaments and civil society have been organised at WTOministerial conferences. These experiments have all proved positive. Theyshould be extended to other institutions,

We also have to go further than this by helping to build a stage onwhich both the terms of the debate, and the issues can be seen by all. Asin Europe, the absence of any clear and deliberate way of staging thedebates that have to take place, or the failure to dramatise the collectivechoices that have to be made, is detrimental to international life. Thereare no well known actors on the stage, and no clearly identifiable symbolicfigures who can present the political issues to the citizens of the world. Theissues need faces. They need to be identified with men and women who,thanks to the way they look, their language, their personal credibility ortheir speaking ability, can represent interests that are so general as toverge, at times, on the abstract. I think Kofi Annan succeeds in this respect.Gro Harlem Brundtland did so during her term as the WHO’s DirectorGeneral. The ILO’s Juan Somavia, Sadaki Ogata and Alpha Konar, whochaired the Commission of the African Union were able to do the same.World democracy needs more faces like these.

VIII: Results

We judge trees by their fruit, not by their leaves. The information societyin which we live overrates the short-term and likes to see the emergence ofgreen shoots, even though there is a danger that they will quickly turn intodead leaves. It took over 10 years before we could evaluate the first effectsof the measures taken to preserve the ozone layer, and the effect of tradepolicies has to be judged on the same time-scale. The effects of themeasures that must be taken against global warning will be quantifiable in100 years. And the issues surrounding storage and reprocessing of some of

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33 UN Economic and Social Council.

the waste products from our nuclear power stations will take us well beyondthe next millennium.

We therefore have to find ways to demonstrate that some interimresults have been achieved, and to draw up scenarios that will allow publicopinion to judge the effectiveness of the measures taken. This type ofapproach was successfully used when Europe established a single marketand introduced the single currency: an objective based upon a commoninterest was clearly identified, a calendar was drawn up from the start, anda system of incentives and sanctions was introduced to guarantee thecollective dynamic. Tools were gradually designed, and developed toembody the objectives, to evaluate the achievements and to transformstatements of intent into planned concrete interventions. This is what KofiAnan is gambling on with his ‘Millenium objectives’, and what Africanleaders are gambling on with the NEPAD benchmarks (New Partnership forAfrica’s Development).33

Mechanisms of real governance

Distance reduces legitimacy. A mathematician would say that legitimacy isinversely – and probably exponentially – proportional to the distancebetween a government and its citizens. We must therefore compensate forthis distance by proportionately increasing its political recognition factorand visibility. This is what our day to day experience teaches us: the closerwe are to power, the more easily we can identify it. The general perceptionis that power is in the hands of local politicians and those who wear theinsignia of national unity and state power. When we move up the scale, asin the case of Europe, the need for legitimacy increases as we move furtheraway from its source. In the context of the present discussion, this “law”tells us what we need to do: to find ways of making alternational power allthe more legitimate because it is, by its very nature, so far away. If we wantdemocracy to be the organisational principle behind world governance, wewill have to build it.

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33 Jean François Rischard, Vice-President of the World Bank for Europe, has also drawn up a convincing batteryof indicators in his most recent book. See his High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, NewYork: Basic Books, 2003.

PASCAL LAMY

IX: Majorities

The basic majority principle is ‘one citizen, one vote’, ‘one State, onevote’. The representativeness guaranteed by this principle has establishedthe least unsatisfactory of all the systems that coexist within theinternational sphere. It is this principle that gives the WTO, for example, acertain comparative advantage. But this does not necessarily means that thesystem is democratic, or that it works well. If democracy presupposes theability both to produce a majority that is in favour of a given policy and toensure that voters accept that majority decision, it is clear that we have yetto solve the problem of democracy in this context. We therefore have toagree to the following premise: if we are to avoid the danger – and it isconsiderable – of vacuity, we have to take a new look at formal democracy.We have to consider this if we are to improve the inefficiency of worldgovernance at a time when social and social demands are rising, and whenthese institutions look less and less legitimate to a public that is quiteentitled to demand results.

Steps are being taken to ensure that the representation of actors isweighted more effectively. I am thinking of, for example, the currentdiscussions about admitting India or Brazil to the UN Security Council. If,however, we wish to get out of the usual rut and ensure that voters actuallyagree to abide by majority decisions, we have to envisage making aqualitative leap: if the simple majority principle is inadequate, we have tolook at it again and devise other types of majority. When it was faced withthat question, Europe, at its start, did make such a leap. And with theconstitutional treaty drawn up by the Convention, it is proposing to followthrough this logic: decisions will be taken by a majority of statesrepresenting at least 60 per cent of the EU population. Revised votingsystems that abandon the principle that all States are mathematically equal,or which combine it with demographic or geographical weighting, are two ofthe ways in which we may be able to persuade all actors to take a newinterest in the international sphere.

Taking the initiative

Setting the system in motion and reducing the level of suspicion meansmaking the ability to take initiatives central to the international system.Until now, the principle governing the way sovereign states act on the

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international stage has been the principle of suspicion. Internationaldiplomacy could take as its slogan the phrase ‘your country has no friendsfor ever, and no enemies for ever’. Elements of collective trust have ofcourse developed within the international relations system. Internationallaw has, in some cases, been able to police the brutality of state-to-staterelations. Yet we cannot avoid the conclusion that suspicion is still astructuring factor in international relations. If we want to live together, wehave to reduce the level of suspicion.

What could be done on a regional scale in Europe when the Commissionwas established would, as things stand, be difficult to achieve on a worldscale. For the foreseeable future, the world unlikely to become as fullyintegrated as the European Union. We have to advance one step at a timeand ensure there is a basic level of trust in every international organisationthat can put forward initiatives, reach compromises and propose solutions.The UN Secretary-General can play that role, assuming that the permanentmembers of the Security Council allow him to do so. Similarly, the Directorsof the World Bank have the power to kick start their institutions. So, to alesser extent, do the Directors General of the ILO and the WHO. TheDirector-General of the WTO, on the other hand, does not have that powerbecause the consensus principle – however important in terms of the ethosof the WTO – makes it formally difficult for him to take real initiatives.

XI: Mechanisms for the arbitration of disputes

These could also be described as mechanisms that guarantee that the rulesare respected, or as a form of international justice. Debates about thehumanitarian right to intervene and about the repression of war crimes andcrimes against humanity in the 1990s led to the establishment ofInternational Criminal Tribunals (ICT) for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.The International Criminal Court will make this a permanent development.In the area of trade, we now have several years of experience. It was in factonly the establishment of the WTO in 1994 that gave states a mechanism tomake the settlement of disputes binding. This mechanism is an essentialpart of the trade system’s credibility. It gives all members a guarantee thattheir rights will be protected against abuses and infractions of the commonrules. Any state can have the United States or the European Union, forexample, condemned for breaking those rules. In 2003, Europe forced theUnited States to withdraw the measures it had introduced to protect its

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steel industry because they were detrimental to companies and workers inother countries. Peru has forced the European Union to revise what wasruled to be a protectionist definition of sardines. These mechanisms areessential if we wish to improve the system’s efficiency.

They do, on the other hand, raise some delicate questions aboutlegitimacy. What legitimacy does an expert sitting on an arbitration panelhave, when compared with an elected representative of a sovereign state?Why should an ICT be in a better position to judge a war criminal than anational court? How can national authorities be made to accept thedecisions of an International Criminal Court?

There is one simple answer to these questions: it all depends upon thelegitimacy of the rules that are being applied. And if they are to belegitimate, three preconditions must, I think, be met: the mechanismswhereby the rules are adopted must be democratic; the rules must beobserved at the national level; they must pertain only to the areas in whichthe international organisation concerned is competent. If thesepreconditions are met, we can ward off the spectre of ‘government’ byinternational judges and, at the same time, retain the ability to compelnation states to respect accepted norms.

On PrinciplesXII: Transparency

I am not one of transparency’s ayatollahs. Globalization, which is basedupon the increasingly rapid dissemination of information, creates theillusion of transparency. All too often, the prevailing impression is that amere knowledge of the facts is enough to create checks and balances and toensure that democracy will function properly. Let us be quite clear aboutthis. The spread of information, transparency of action and the ability ofchecks and balances to play their role are a sine qua non of democratic life.Without them, there is too great a danger that the executive will becometoo powerful, too autonomous and will lose touch with reality. We cannot,however, leave matters there. To do so would be tantamount to endorsing apurely liberal view of public action. As long ago as the nineteenth century,Guizot was arguing that the main reform that was needed was to make thestate ‘more public’. In today’s climate, transparency must be associatedwith the bigger role given to checks and balances. This is not to say thatthey should take the place of the executive: democracy means that

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responsibilities have to be identified and shouldered, and that the executivemust not merge into the legislature or civil society, as that would undo allthe good work that has been done. Transparency must therefore exist atevery level of the decision-making process, and the counter opinions mustbe taken into account at every stage. Before mandates are given and beforepositions are adopted within the international arena, national parliamentsand civil society must be consulted on a systematic basis. Detailedinformation must be made available during the main stages of thenegotiating and decision-making process. And finally, the relevantwatchdogs must voice their opinion or, in the case of parliaments, ratify theoutcome. This permanent link with representatives of states or society isessential, if we are to convince our fellow citizens that they should havegreater faith in the international system. At any given moment we have tomake choices in the full knowledge of the facts, and be answerable to publicopinion. Clearly defined choices, without any a priori judgement, willgradually reduce its legitimate suspicions of ill-defined powers.

XIII: Solidarity

Democracy cannot exist in the absence of solidarity. A system based uponuniversal suffrage implies universal involvement in the outcome ofcollective actions.

Unlike some, I do not regard globalization as a machine that is designedto destroy all solidarity. Globalization is not destiny; it is a force to be madeto serve the common good. From that point of view, the governments of theday reacted to the ‘first globalization’ that emerged at the end of thenineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth by reconciling tradewith solidarity. They abandoned protectionism so as to encourage growth. Butthey also used every means at their disposal to ensure that growth promotedthe redistribution of wealth. Progressive taxes on income were introduced,together with an inheritance tax. Similarly, the first social legislation emergedwhen Germany passed a law on industrial accidents in 1884, and when Franceadopted laws on the 10-hour day in 1900 and on pensions in 1910. Critics werealready complaining loudly that these laws jeopardised the stability of thecurrency and the competitiveness of the economy. Their objections wereoverruled – rightly so, as we now know from experience.

We now have to go back to that philosophy. We must also have anelement of redistribution on a world scale and mechanisms to promote

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solidarity at a national level, as they are still of vital importance. Theprinciple of subsidiarity obviously means that we do not have to developmechanisms for education, pensions or housing at the supra-national level,but we do have a responsibility to see that the management of global publicgoods is based on solidarity.

Taxation is not the answer to everything. In terms of the environment,it would be more appropriate to establish a link between liabilities andcapacities. Given their wealth and technological capabilities, the developedcountries have a special responsibility for cutting emissions of greenhousegases, mainly by changing the way they consume energy. That would allowpoorer countries to develop without upsetting the global environmentalbalance.

When, however, we turn to the fight against poverty and disease, formsof financial solidarity are needed. Some already exist. The fight against AIDSis funded globally. At every summit, heads of state proclaim the need tomake more public funds available for development. Every natural disastergives rise to humanitarian relief operations that are widely publicised in themedia. Whilst they are positive, we should have no illusions about theimportance of such initiatives. They are sometimes influenced by thecolonial past. State development aid is also sometimes used for political anddiplomatic purposes, though that practice is beginning to die out thanks tothe European Union’s attempts to change some of its member states’political habits. More serious still, such actions follow the logic of charity,rather than that of a truly resolute solidarity involving all countries.

We will have to go beyond this logic in the future. And it is well knownthat democracy has the means to do so: taxation. Taxation has always beenclosely associated with the democratic idea and with solidarity. Taxationprovides the basis for a self-defined collectivity which wishes to act as acommunity. Thinking about the question of world taxation has made greatprogress in recent years, thanks largely to the debate about the Tobin tax.Attractive as it seems in theoretical terms, it seems to me that such a taxwill get us nowhere as a low level of taxation will have no impact on themovement of so-called speculative capital so long as hopes of making aprofit remain high. That is why I would rather see a tax on capital gains – inthe form of a levy34 – than on foreign currency transactions. The EuropeanUnion could lend such a tax greater credibility by introducing a Europeancompany tax; it could replace national company taxes and put an end to the

34 Jacquet, Pisani-Ferry and Tubiana, in Gouvernance mondiale, speak of levying a company tax.

way European companies use ‘fiscal tourism’ as a form of competition.Taxes could also be raised from other sources, and perhaps more easily.There have been proposals to tax the arms trade, or income from mineralsand raw materials extracted from regions that belong to no one.35 Thesuggestion box is full. All we have to do know is to make use of it.

Getting rid of structures that undermine solidarity from within would bea first step. Over a long period of time we have, consciously or otherwise,allowed black holes to develop. They pose a financial threat to solidarity atthe national level. I think in particular of the tax havens that promise taxexemption to savers or companies who are concerned only with profit, andof the tax immunity guaranteed by the banks’ code of confidentiality. Thecapital they attract avoid national systems of taxation, reduce the resourcesof states and transfer the burden of financing public services to labour. Inrecent years the Financial Task Force (FATF) has helped to improve thesituation by publishing a list of ‘non-cooperative’ states and territories, andit now plays an important role the fight against the laundering of dirtymoney. The FATF, which was established by world economic summits,demonstrates that the present system is, slowly and painfully, beginning togenerate some elements of governance. There is still a long way to go.Removing the secrecy surrounding some banks would be a good way tobegin. If that cannot be done, a levy on capital gains could be introduced.It could either be paid to the state from which the capitals originated, orused to finance a development fund managed by the World Bank.

If we can make the redistribution of wealth amongst peoples – on evena minor scale – a central aspect of international action, we can get back tothe sources of what anthropologists call the economy of the gift. Thedeveloped countries have received a lot in the past and have accumulatedmany financial, technological and human assets; they should now takeresponsibility for financing development in a real sense. At the moment,there is a soft consensus, punctuated with a few statements of good intent.We have to break that taboo.

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35 See the suggestions made by, for example, President Lula, Michel Camdessus, Jean-Louis Bianco and Jean-Michel Sévérino.

CONCLUSION

TOWARDS A WORLD COMMUNITY

These suggestions do not constitute a global plan. But they certainly docontain an overall vision: that of the common good and of community. Thebuilding of a community is, in my view, the fruit of democracy.

Democracy is probably the most precious of all human achievements.Democracy is a freedom that we can experience together. As we know, it isa precondition for reducing poverty, ending armed conflicts and fightinginjustice. But it will not survive unless we can completely rework the formshistory has given it. I believe that we must devise new forms and give thema concrete meaning as a matter of urgency if we are to stop a haemorrhagethat, in the age of globalization, poses a threat to the very existence ofdemocracy.

Some will object that this is a frighteningly difficult task. I agree, and Iam well aware of the dangers, the complexity and even the incongruity ofthis undertaking for both our European societies and other forms of society,and for the very different political, cultural and religious visions that haveto be mobilised.

We must, however, try, in the full knowledge that building the completeedifice will be no more than an ambitious dream for a long time to come.

If we are to advance, we have to accept that we can advance only onestep at a time, that we must enter the debate and be prepared tocompromise. We have the raw materials. They cannot be overlooked andmust be invested. The most important is the UN system of governance. Overhalf a century after the Second World War, the UN and the family of nationsit brings together is the only available agora on the planet. Although it isincomplete, imperfect, open to criticism and shaken by regular crises, the‘UN system’ is our starting point. We now have to take a new look at itsfoundations and structures and, most important of all, involve the greatestpossible number in making it the capital of world democracy. I offer thesesuggestions. I leave it to others to make others. But we cannot ignore thisbuilding site: it belongs to our generation of men and women, both inEurope and throughout the world. And it is a matter of great urgency.

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Towards WorldDemocracy

Pascal Lamy

In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, I am often questioned about the future of Europe.In the past, I would respond with assurance, with the conviction of the observer of a worktaking shape. Although the difficulties are evident, the European project has never been sopertinent - for Europeans ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. What has beencreated over more than 50 years is also what the world needs today: a democratic systemto tackle the enormous challenges that our societies face, and that states alone can nolonger tackle. This European experience, with its successes and its setbacks, must be – Iam convinced - our point of departure in search of a new global governance that combinesthe effectiveness that states have lost with the legitimacy that international organisationshave yet to acquire. This new governance is what I call alternational democracy.

Pascal Lamy is the former EU Commissioner for Trade and President of Notre Europe,a European think tank based in Paris. From September 2005, he becomes the Director General of the World Trade Organisation. He is the author of l’Europe en première ligne, (Paris,Le Seuil, 2002).

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