>From Adam Blakester <adam@starfish-associates.org>
-------------------------------------------------------
Thank you Luis for generously opening up your thoughts and work for comment and discussion.
I think it is critical that this exploration clearly unpacks governance from government. All too often I see the two conflated, which brings serious risks. I frequently hear people talk about governance as if it is government! Yet government is merely one part of a broader system of governance. Nor is it sitting atop all of the other parts ~ but for perhaps some very specific areas of responsibility such as taxation and law. I'll come back to this.
Government to date has been overwhelmingly hierarchical, with ridiculous levels of power vested in the political position-holders. This leaves government incredibly vulnerable to elite interests ~ which invariably have ease of access to the handful of people in the top positions.
How might a world, or any other, government be designed without this fundamental flaw? A recent example is the unprecedented government intervention in Australia to buy-back a mining licence. A critical moment in this history making campaign was the Bentley Blockade ~ which was much more like a festival ~ where several thousand people were blocking the coal seam gas company's access to a strategic mining site. The Police and Government authorities demanded to speak with 'those in charge' to negotiate a solution. The blockaders explained that there was no one in charge, nor any command and control system of authority. Instead, if they wanted to negotiate they would need to do so with every free person present! They didn't even try.
The very same destructive and selfish interests which are jeopardising life on earth at this time are ill-equipped to engage and influence free and open groups of people. Rather, they are fit-for-purpose to use the power of the elite, who in turn continue to mine ~ literally and metaphorically ~ the natural, social and spiritual capital of our world for their own toxic and insatiable desires.
The other serious design flaw of governments is the revolving door of Ministers (politicians) who only rarely have demonstrable expertise and experience in the areas of their portfolio responsibilities. Time and time again political decisions are out-of-step with reasonable solutions ~ climate change and the 6th Great Extinction are two obvious examples where political decisions continue to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the causes and severity of the problems.
Lack of competency, together with the influence of the elites, are key causes of such sub-optimal decisions (and perhaps nearly always have been). What kind of lunacy is it to have a system like this? How have we been conned to think that a mere vote every three or four years for a group of political candidates and parties with little ability for their responsibilities is a good option? Perhaps some reading on corporate psychopathy is in order!
All of which is why it is so key to focus instead on governance ~ systems, processes and capabilities which enable the range of actors who do have relevant expertise, experience and stake to collaboratively develop shared priorities and solutions. This is about public rather than political policy! The 'direct' and 'horizontal' democracy movements are pioneering efforts in this direction.
Cautiously, I suggest that one possible shift is for government to become the facilitator of such collaborative governance processes ~ which I admit would be a profound transformation and evolution from the current forms of government ~ much like the 'backbone support organisations' as described in the Collective Impact literature. For such an arrangement to work, there would need to be a similar transformation of taxpayer budget decision-making to something like a participatory budget process where the participants are the various collaborative governance realms (i.e. health, education, infrastructure, conservation, climate change and the like). Better still, such a collaborative budget would ideally leverage resources from the private and public realms in addition to those raised from taxes.
I feel like an ungrounded dreamer to write such things, however in my work I have seen these methods work on a local/regional scale. Perhaps not surprisingly, of all the actors, government is one of the least able to participate effectively in such fora. They keep thinking that the ultimate decisions must surely be theirs and struggle to collaborate as one key stakeholder among many.
Which brings me to my last point, which some of you may recall me raising many years ago. I truly believe we need to transform the concept of nation-state-citizenship as part of this endeavour.
How can we be born on this Earth as anything other than Earthlings? How can natural resources and systems be anything other than part of the global commons shared equally and severally by all life forms ~ human and other? How can a person be legally defined and confined by citizenship, or subjecthood, at birth nearly two decades before they can legally enter any other contract as an adult?
It is my view that the new global governance needs to emerge from a movement of people who withdraw their 'social licence' (i.e. citizenship) from these corrupted and inept forms of government and begin to come together as free and willing co-creators of a truly collaborative governance system for all beings and all living things. Governance without borders!
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." ~ Kris Kristofferson
In respect,
Adam Blakester
**************************************************
On 1/09/2017 4:42 AM, Great Transition Network wrote:
>From Paul Raskin
-----
Dear GTN,
The world confronts grievous global-scale risks with feeble global-scale institutions, or, as I’m fond of putting it, Earthland resembles a failed state (www.greattransition.org/publication/journey-to- ). This dangerous incongruity demands reconsideration of the fraught project of global government, a task Luis Cabrera takes on in his new GTI essay, “Global Government Revisited: From Utopian Vision to Political Imperative.”earthland
Surely any rigorous Great Transition vision must address the need for supranational decision-making, but what are the contours of new institutions appropriate for the task? What intermediate steps can move us down that road? Read Luis’s answers at www.greattransition.org/publication/global-government- .revisited
Please share your reactions and comments by SEPTEMBER 30.
Looking forward,
Paul Raskin
GTI Director
HOW WE WORK
GT Network discussions of new essays occur in odd-numbered months. You receive comments via email, and can review all postings at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-forum . Then, in the following even-numbered month, we publish the essay along with a “Roundtable” (edited commentary drawn from the discussion and the author’s response).
-----
Hit reply to post a message
Or see thread and reply online at
www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/192-global- government-revisited/2428
Need help? Email jcohn@tellus.org
-------------------------------------------------------
Hit reply to post a message
Or see thread and reply online at
http://www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/192- global-government-revisited/ 2434
Need help? Email jcohn@tellus.org