Creating a World Parliamentary Assembly

By Joseph E. Schwartzberg

Introduction:

Many world federalists and other advocates of reformed global governance are convinced of the desirability of establishing a world parliamentary assembly (WPA). Whether such a body should be popularly elected or chosen by members of existing parliaments (as was done with the European Parliament in the early period of its existence) is, however, a matter for debate. So too is the degree of power that the assembly would be given. Some would accord it no more than an advisory role (again following the model of the European Parliament in its early phase), while others would confer on the WPA power to legislate on specified issues. Among the many published and unpublished essays calling for some form of global parliament, none make the case more eloquently and persuasively than a series of articles authored, individually or jointly, by Richard Falk and Andrew Strauss, eminent legal scholars at Princeton University and Widener University respectively.

Falk and Straus demonstrate the desirability and legitimacy of what they call a “global peoples assembly.” They also indicate legal precedents for its establishment, and discuss what it might be empowered to do. But they say virtually nothing about mechanisms by which such an assembly might be brought into being. Nor do they deal with the practical details of how such an assembly might be constituted to ensure that it is truly, or at least reasonably, representative. Nor, finally, do they discuss viable and fair electoral procedures for choosing representatives. These same shortcomings also characterize the writing of all other advocates of a global assembly with which I am familiar. The common assumption seems to be that once enough activists are persuaded of the need for an assembly, the details will somehow be worked out to the satisfaction of enough of the global community to ensure the project’s fruition.

I disagree. I would argue, rather, that the practical difficulties to be overcome in creating a global parliament are so formidable that many activists who are sympathetic to the idea in principle will withhold their support for it because of a conviction that the goal is incapable of achievement in their lifetime. Consequently, there is a need to demonstrate that a viable means of establishing the desired parliament does, in fact, exist. In what follows, I shall attempt to demonstrate one way by which that task might be accomplished. I do not suggest that this is the only way; rather, I put forward my ideas in the hope that they will stimulate critical thought and suggestions for improvements on or alternatives to them.

Assumptions:

In setting forth my recommendations I have been guided by the following assumptions:

Areas to Be Represented: All inhabited areas of the world would be eligible for representation in the WPA, provided they agree to and meet pre-established standards of fairness (see below) in electing their representatives. Dependent territories would be eligible to participate in elections on the same terms as independent states.

Number of Chambers: The WPA would be unicameral. Although, based on the model of the United States and many other countries, some would argue for establishing a bicameral assembly, with one house representing people and the other representing nation states, the disparities in populations among members of the UN are so much greater than those of units represented in any national legislature as to make this an impractical recommendation. To illustrate this point, California, the most populous state in the United States, has sixty-nine times the population of Wyoming the least populous state, whereas China, the most populous member of the UN, has more than 100,000 times the population of Nauru or Tuvalu, the least populous members (each with barely more than 10,000 inhabitants). While California has 52 seats in the House of Representatives, compared to Wyoming’s one, both have two seats in the Senate.  But who would venture to argue that Nauru should have as much power in one chamber of a bicameral assembly as China? And what voting ratio would fairly represent the difference between the two in the second chamber? Another argument against a bicameral legislature, assuming, as I do, the continued existence of the UN General Assembly and Security Council (ideally in an improved form), is that four decision-making bodies would make for an excessively complicated and cumbersome global governance structure.

Population Size and Territorial Extent of Constituencies: Parliamentary constituencies would all be of similar population size, except, within limits deemed to be practicable, for political entities toward the low end of the population spectrum. Additionally, to facilitate the electoral process, territorial constituencies (with rare exceptions to be noted below) would not cross international boundaries.

Size of Assembly and Population per Representative: To function effectively, any parliamentary assembly must be of a manageable size. The House of Commons, perhaps the largest of all such bodies, presently has a membership of 659, more than half again as many as the 435 in the US House of Representatives. But in both the Commons and in Congress all representatives speak the same language. This condition could not be met in a global parliament and simultaneous translation would go only so far in alleviating the problem. Somewhat arbitrarily, I shall assume that the maximum size of a global parliamentary assembly would be set at 1,000. Given the world’s present population total of roughly 6.1 billion persons, this means that, on average, one representative would have some 6.1 million constituents if an assembly with universal membership were already in existence. (By the year 2050 the figure might be more like 10 million.) This is far greater than in any existing or past parliament. (In India’s Lok Sabha, one legislator represents, on average, about 2 million constituents, probably the world record for a democratic polity.) This poses a problem in that 94 of the191 members of the UN had fewer than 6 million inhabitants (as of the year 2000). Of these, 39 had populations below one million, while more than a third of those had populations ranging from 10,000 to100, 000. From these figures it follows that, for purposes of representation, if one adheres to the one person – one vote principle, two or more political entities (whether independent states or dependencies), would sometimes have to be clubbed together in a single constituency

Role of an Election Commission:

To ensure that assembly elections are carried out, to the maximum possible extent, on a level playing field, it will be necessary for the UN to establish an impartial, internationally recruited, professional Election Commission (EC). The EC would have several functions:
a) It would determine the number of seats per country or per country group (including dependencies) according to objective, uniformly applied population criteria.
b) It would establish rules of fairness (see below) in respect to who may run for office, electoral practices and funding, eligibility for voting, etc.
c) It would receive reports from all countries participating in parliamentary elections indicating their measures to ensure that an election was being fairly conducted.
d) It would have the authority to determine in advance whether fairness criteria were being met and foreclose polling where those criteria were not met.
e) It would determine, subsequent to polling, whether elections were fairly conducted
      and could nullify or reschedule fraudulent elections.

Rules of Fairness

The following rules are suggested and should be universally applied:
a) The franchise would be universal and could not be abridged on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, age (eighteen years and over), property qualifications, wealth, literacy or education, previous condition of servitude, race, language, religion, place of birth, ideology, or political affiliation.
b) The same criteria for voting would apply to eligibility to run for political office, subject only to the limitation indicated by point c) below.
c) To be eligible to run for office one would have to obtain a certain minimum number of signatures to establish that one is a seriously regarded candidate. A reasonable figure might be one percent of the electorate (roughly 35,000-45,000 in an electoral constituency with a population of about 6 million inhabitants).
d) For an election to be deemed fair, it would have to be contested. (It is virtually unthinkable that a constituency of roughly 6 million persons would be without a diversity of political views.)
e) In countries or groups of countries with only one seat in the assembly, the winning candidate would have to receive an absolute majority of all votes. In elections contested by more than two candidates, this implies the use of ranked preference ballots and the instant run-off method of determining a winner.
f) In countries allotted more than a single seat in the assembly, elections would be held on the basis of proportional representation (see below).
g) To ensure that an election cannot be determined by a small group from among the politically empowered elite, no election would be regarded as valid if fewer than a specified percentage of the electorate cast ballots. This percentage might initially be set as low as 20% and could be increased over the course of time.
h) A reasonable and uniform period of time for campaigning would be required between the selection of candidates and the date of elections.
i) Balloting by mail and electronic methods would be permissible.
j) Elections would, as nearly as possible, be held within the same narrow time frame, throughout the world. Results would not be declared until all ballots have been counted.
k) Elections would be publicly and impartially financed. 
l) To ensure that candidates and elected parliamentarians could act without fear of political reprisal for expressing views unfavorable to particular regimes or political factions, countries holding parliamentary elections would first pledge to grant all such individuals immunity from punishment for whatever they may say in seeking or in holding the office of a member of parliament. Additionally, since such immunity could not be guaranteed in the event of a change of regime, all such individuals would be guaranteed the right of political asylum should the need arise.

Allocation of Seats (see accompanying map):

In this section of the paper we shall assume that all independent nations of the world are democratically ruled and willing to adopt the ideal system just described and that the handful of countries that still have dependent territories, would be willing to extend the system to their territories. In a later section we shall consider a more realistic scenario based on present political conditions within the global community.

As noted, the average population per seat in an assembly of 1,000 seats would today be approximately 6.1 million (0.1% of the world’s total). Also noted was the fact that nearly half the world’s nations (as well as all the world’s dependencies) have populations below that figure. Further, it was argued, given the enormous population disparities among nations, that it was impractical to assign one assembly seat to every small nation and that certain territories would, therefore, have to be grouped for purposes of representation. But what should the minimum population for representation be? I would suggest at least half the average, i.e., 0.05% (roughly 3.04 million in the year 2000) and that all nations and dependent territories exceeding this minimum have at least one assembly seat. The upper population limit for nations with one seat would, then, logically be 0.15% of the world’s total (or 9.12 million). These figures would apply both to individual nations and to regional groups whose members individually failed to meet the minimum threshold. The accompanying map indicates 62 individual nations or territorial groups that would thus be represented by a single seat in the assembly. Collectively, they would account for a total of 317 million people, with an average per seat of slightly more than 5.1 million. In the case of the twelve groups of nations and dependencies, composed entirely of political entities with populations lower than 3.05 million, the average population per seat would be only 3.4 million.

It follows that, since the average population per seat for nations at the lowest end of the representation spectrum is somewhat lower than in the system as a whole, the average for the remaining states will be slightly higher, but in no case would it be more than 6.305 million. (A similar situation exists in the U.S. House of Representatives and many other democratically elected legislatures.) The key point, however, is that the differences must not be so great as to seem unconscionable. In rough terms, countries with from 0.15% to 0.25% of the world’s population would have two seats in the WFA; those with from 0.25% to 0.35% would have three seats, and so forth. 

Proportional Representation

Although many of the world’s countries would have only one seat in the WPA or would even share a seat with others, a majority would have anywhere from two seats to as many as 213 in the case of China. In such countries, elections should be held using some version of the proportional representation method of balloting in that such a system maximizes the probability that minority views and interests will be fairly represented. It does not matter whether the minority be ideological, racial, religious, linguistic, or other. The essential point is that democratic governance should seek to ensure that all views have a reasonably good chance of being heard.

The argument against geographically delimited single-member constituencies may best be made with reference to the hypothetical case of India, in which roughly 16% of the population are members of “scheduled castes” (politically marginalized ex-untouchables), 8% “scheduled tribes” (indigenes), 11% Muslims, and 5% other religious minorities. Although there is some overlap among these groups their combined population comes to about 400 million. With single-member constituencies, it is conceivable that not a single member of these groups would be elected. With proportional representation, however, they should collectively be able to elect dozens of representatives to a global parliament. While comparable opportunities for election would not be available to the indigenous population of small countries such as Bolivia or Laos, one could be reasonably certain that indigenous parliamentarians from larger countries, such as Mexico or India, would be sympathetic to their concerns in parliamentary debates. Similar reasoning would be applicable for religious and other types of minorities.

In countries with up to ten seats or so in the WPA a single nation-wide slate of candidates might be presented to the voters, But in the sixteen more populous countries, those with
eleven seats or more, a single slate of candidates would probably confront the voters with an excessively complex set of choices. In such cases, the country should be divided into two or more broad regions in each of which a single slate of candidates would be presented. For example, in the United States, which would have a total of forty-four seats, there might be five electoral regions, four with nine seats each and one with eight.

Launching a Global Parliamentary Assembly

Regrettably, great many nations in the contemporary world are far from democratic and would not soon countenance truly free elections to a WPA. Nevertheless, participation by certain minimum thresholds of willing nations and of their citizenry should be required if the deliberations of any such assembly are to be considered as representative of the will of the politically empowered global community. The cohort of participating nations, moreover, should be widely distributed rather than, let us say, coming only from the democracies of the North Atlantic community. The Atlantic democracies have already created institutions, most notably the European Union, to give expression to their collective political agenda. To launch a “global” assembly, then, certain minima of representativeness must be met. I would suggest the following:

a) At least twenty nations must agree to the conditions established for the WPA and provide credible evidence of their ability to fulfill those conditions.
b) Nations from at least four (or, arguably, five) continents must be included.
c) The participating nations must account for at least 15% of the world’s population.
d) The participating nations must account for at least 15% of the UN budget.

One may anticipate that, once the WPA is in place and once its utility is demonstrated popular movements in many initially reluctant, but democratic, nations will pressure more governments to participate. One may further anticipate that in countries in which democratic institutions are still weak, the example of the more established democracies will exercise a powerful force for meaningful democratic reform. If so, the period from the initial establishment of the WPA to one in which it approaches universality may prove to be much shorter than most political analysts might anticipate. But, however long or short that period may be, the benefits of a WPA would be substantial.

Representation of Future Federal Unions

In various parts of the world movements are afoot to create federal unions among groups of neighboring nation states. This is a welcome political development. Nowhere is the prospect of such a union more promising than in Europe, where the existing European Union – while still far from becoming a federation -- is steadily taking on new functions, expanding its territorial scope, and gradually winning ever-greater popular acceptance. Other regions where federal unions are contemplated include Central America, the area of the Arab League, and Africa. Depending on whether such unions are consummated before or after the establishment of the proposed WPA, the rules relating to the minimum thresholds for launching the Assembly might have to be slightly modified. Additionally, the regional division of the unions for purposes of electing representatives through a system of proportional representation would become a matter for the new union itself to determine after the specification by the Election Commission of the number of seats that the union would be given.

What Powers Would the Assembly Have?

Opinions vary widely on what powers a WPA should have. Whether it should merely be a forum for the expression of popular sentiment on a variety of issues which other organs of the United Nations system would then have to consider or whether it should have meaningful legislative authority is an open question. As in the case of the European Parliament, it might be in order to begin by assigning the WPA no more than an advisory role, with the understanding that such a role would be gradually expanded as the WPA broadens its membership and gains in experience. There may even be a phase in which simple majority votes would be taken as advisory, while super-majorities, say of two-thirds or three fourths of the members present and voting, would result in binding legislation. But these complex issues are essentially beyond the scope of this paper.

Conclusion

In this paper I seek to demonstrate that creating a World Parliamentary Assembly would be a feasible and worthwhile, even if difficult, undertaking. I have gone into considerable detail to indicate what should be done to create such an assembly and how. While I harbor no illusions that my own formulations are the only ones that would work, they do make evident the many significant factors that will have to be considered in whatever plan may eventually be adopted. Too many advocates of a global assembly, in my opinion, naively suppose that, once the logic of popular representation at the global level is widely accepted, everything else will fall easily into place. Hence, they cavalierly ignore the practical problems that creating such an institution would entail. If the proposals set forth here stimulate further thought on the subject and result in more promising recommendations for moving the WPA project forward, I shall consider my efforts amply rewarded. 
  
Minneapolis, MN, September 2002