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World Government Brainstorming

Emote Control

Emote Control

Plenty of genius, not enough sense.
A very common trope in science fiction is a world government. This thread is to brainstorm how a world government could actually take hold and what form it might take -- and, just as important, how these can translate into interesting story hooks.
 
One thing that I think would be interesting to see is a parliamentary world government. This seems to be more likely since most democratic nations have parliaments, and to get them to sign on to something they recognize would be easier. In addition, this opens the way to interesting stories based on complicated maneuverings and you can have an election at any time, something useful for an author.
 
Emote Control said:
This thread is to brainstorm how a world government could actually take hold and what form it might take -- and, just as important, how these can translate into interesting story hooks.
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Well...hrm.

The thing is that, often enough, in science fiction a world government is one of three things: they're formed as a result of extraordinary pressure either internal or external that forces everyone to come together either for the sake of survival or "because we fucking said so and we have the guns so shut the fuck up" (your UNSC's). They're formed as a result of extraordinary plenty, like post-scarcity shit and are intended to be more utopia set-ups that you proooobably shouldn't look too closely at because that's not really the point (your Federations). Or they're formed as the result of extraordinary author laziness because they can't be assed to make more than one nation for one planet.

Your Mass Effects, no matter how hard they try to subvert that shit. :V

They're somewhat less intrinsically horrible than regional mega-nations. Y'know what I mean, the kind that are like "Let's put all the brown people together. Okay now all the Asians. Now everyone on an island. Now America on it's own except bigger. Now the other kind of brown people. And the EU I guess". But I think that's generally a product of the fact that you're not supposed to pick them apart too terribly much (unless the narrative exists to pick them apart) because, when you get right down to it, they just don't work. Parliamentary, dictatorial, tbh it doesn't really matter. People have distinct national and regional identities. People generally don't appreciate being funneled into a huge slush.

Like, imagine trying to make a mega-nation that encompassed both Iran and Saudi Arabia and didn't immediately implode into infighting and catered to the needs and beliefs of both. Now Pakistan and India. Now the Koreas. Now imagine trying to do all that shit simultaneously while also unifying South America and all of Africa and here's where we hit the problem.

Just 'cause it's common doesn't necessarily mean it's good yo. And sure there are ways to bring it about with a new-ish twist that prompts discussion (everyone's engineered strains of a planet-wide Hive, everyone's communist cyborgs, the world's turned hypercapitalist and is a monopoly, etc). But it's better to couch them in terms of broader ideas imo rather than try to unpack the sausage.

Because the history and the fine details are going to be kinda stupid and some level of offensive no matter which way you slice it. Unless you're flat out acknowledging that it's more of a One World Order in name only and still rife with pretty deep divisions.
 
Why not go with that, then? Let's brainstorm what an internally divided world government would be like!

The initial development might have been some kind of reorganization of the UN to deal with international problems like global warming, toxic waste disposal, space exploration, and refugees far more effectively than it had managed previously.

Buried deep in the negotiations, however, was a clause that stated that "In the event of a crisis of sufficient severity such that the survival of the human race can only be maintained by unified action" the UN would assume temporary authority over national military and security forces. Only a unanimous vote of the Security Council (which had been modified in the negotiations), and 80 percent of the General Assembly, could activate the clause. This was to ensure that no one abused it. What the authors had in mind was a truly devastating pathogen or crop blight, or a supervolcano eruption, or a second impact equivalent to one that killed the dinosaurs. It never occurred to anyone that aliens might invade.

But after the invasion was defeated, after decades of bloody war, the new government rammed through constitutional changes that made it almost impossible to get rid of legally. It did this with support of the military, security and intelligence communities, as well as public opinion -- people wanted to be protected from the next invasion, after all. The quasi-dictatorship of the war years was replaced by a parliamentary democracy.

How does that sound for a messy enough origin?

Anyway, while the world is somewhat behind the idea of a unified government, it has very strong divisions about what the government policies should be.
 
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A world government pretty much would have to be a federal world government. You would have regions subdivided into states, or the opposite, with parliamentary representation at different levels coming to a top with the world-federal government. It is simply impossible to organize such an enormous region as the entire planet, with all its differences in resources, needs and culture, without subdividing it.

This means that you would have internal conflict mirroring certain aspects of US politics. As with all of history ever, the principal subject of division will be taxes. Some places will be resources-rich, others will be resources-poor, and the government's most important overarching task will be to handle how resources are transferred from one side to the other and to what extent. Poor places will want to get subsidies, rich places will want to get lower taxes, and the balance of inequality will be the main stake of world stage politics.

A few places, inevitably, are going to have a "special" status - there's always a place which for historical reason either managed to secure a more advantageous place, or was forced into a disadvantageous status. Think of city-sized "principalities" which have more lax financial laws and become a haven for people who want to avoid part of the world government's grasp; and on the flip side, places like the last state to have been unified who still isn't fully integrated, and for instance does not have full politial representation.

The interaction between the lower levels and the higher levels of parliamentary representation are going to be a fodder for a lot of tension and conflict. Imagine something like the "local" German Parliament, within the "regional" European Assembly, who sends a few delegates to the World Senate, for instance; people at the lower levels are going to try and manipulate those on the higher levels to get them more favorable terms and the laws they want, while the people on the higher levels are going to have to carefully manage an entire area full of people with competing interests without weakening them against the "other guys" - to take the above example, you need to please or appease every individual member of the European Assembly who want different and contradictory things, without weakening its position against the North-American Assembly's own designs, for instance.

It's going to be a very complex political play operating on a horizontal and vertical level simultaneously. A good source of stories.
 
To increase the tension, mention that there are numerous "neonationalist" terrorist groups that seek to undermine the world government through bombings and even chemical weapons, and restore the old global order. They have significant support in many areas, especially those which were wealthy before the alien invasion or which were conquered by the forces of the world government in order to provide a united front against the extraterrestrial attackers. How will readers, or players if we make this an RPG, going to react if they must battle the Sons of Dixie terrorist group?
 
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I like the idea that each level of government elects officials to be sent to the next-higher level of government, like one of those Russian dolls.
 
The united second-point-fifth world.
Something like a bigger, badder Marshall plan made trade and defense unions among developing countries; these unions merge within less than a decade undisturbed, and now you have a world power focusing on solving its own problems.
 
Can you go into more detail on how that would work? Do you mean pacts like ASEAN and NATO evolving into seperate governmental structures, for example?
 
Emote Control said:
Can you go into more detail on how that would work? Do you mean pacts like ASEAN and NATO evolving into seperate governmental structures, for example?
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I'm thingking of something like NATO combining with EU in the 1970s, with all border patrol between EU abolished, but happening for some different reason and among less advanced countries.
 
I mean, if you want strong national governments to not be a part of this...you need them to weaken them. Drastically. National governments are not big on giving up sovereignty, so they're going to need to suffer some pretty crippling blows to power and prestige before they cave to an international government.
 
I had the same thought. The previous governments would have to be either destroyed or very severely discredited before the either the common people or the elites would give up all that they had known. That's why I specified that it happened in stages -- first a far more efficient and capable UN, second the giving up of power to this UN to deal with some great crisis, and then after the crisis was over (which might take decades) simply refusing to give up the power. Since the old governments had mostly been wrecked by the disaster, the people were willing to accept it mostly, and even later there are protests and resistance groups for many years until they are defeated by social engineering and simple military force, and even after the world government is formed the old nations still survive as legal entities and administrative subdivisions.
 
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