REIMAGINING GLOBAL COOPERATION
How does global cooperation need to evolve to reflect the realities of the 21st century?
On this page we outline shared challenges in an interdependent world, explain the dilemmas of international cooperation and sketch a new global vision.
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1. Introduction
Governments at the center
Governments use international cooperation to pursue what they consider to be their national interest. This can be informed by many factors and does not necessarily coincide with advancing the wellbeing of their people. Many actors exert influence, in particular corporations and their owners. Relations between governments combine different degrees of cooperation and power competition.
- The global order is not working. It is not delivering in areas of critical importance.
- Mia Amor Mottley — Prime Minister of Barbados
- Photo: T. Sullivan, UNCTAD. CC BY-SA 2.0
A spaghetti bowl
To facilitate cooperation and pursue common goals, governments set up joint institutions. There are hundreds of intergovernmental organizations and bodies with different memberships and purposes. Together, they make up a tangled web across the world’s regions and at the global level. Global governance in particular has been compared to a spaghetti bowl because of its fragmentation and complexity.
The term “governance” indicates that there is no central authority and few, if any, provisions for binding decision-making or enforcement capabilities. The United Nations, which is supposed to play a key role, is not a government, and its General Assembly, where all member states are represented, is not a parliament.
Flags of member states lined up in front of the UN in New York.
Global interdependence
There is a strong need for effective international cooperation. The world’s countries, societies and people are closely interdependent. This includes trade, finance, services, manufacturing, research, technology, communication and information, as well as areas such as food, water, health, resources, security, migration, crime and development. International cooperation needs to manage and coordinate activities and rules in these and other fields.
Action or inaction in one place affects others across countries and continents. Local events become a global concern. Violence, oppression, poverty and destitution persist. A shift towards sustainability is necessary. All of this raises the question whether international cooperation is up to the challenge. How does it need to evolve to reflect the realities of the 21st century and to guarantee the human dignity and wellbeing of all? What is the role of the world’s citizens?
- The key problem today may be described as a failed world instead of so-called failed states. In the age of globalization, no country is really safe and immune from global disorder and dangers in a failed world.
- Zhao Tingyang—Chinese political philosopher
- Photo: © Gilles Sabrié
2. A brief history
World Wars and world organization
The state centric international system has emerged over centuries. After the First World War, the League of Nations was created in 1919 to institutionalize worldwide peace and cooperation. It was a forum for dialogue and collective security but it relied on voluntary cooperation and consensus and had no means to stop aggression. The United States never joined despite being its key architect. Others ignored its decisions or withdrew from membership. The League was not able to prevent the Second World War.
During the Second World War, the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom took the lead in designing the United Nations and its Charter. It was signed in June 1945 two months before the US detonated atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. State sovereignty remained the key paradigm. The UN Security Council was charged with the responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. But the UN was shaped in the interest of the major powers. The USA, the Soviet Union, the UK as well as China and France became the Council’s five permanent members each endowed with a veto right.
- I have no doubt in my mind that World Government must and will come, for there is no other remedy for the world's sickness.
- Jawaharlal Nehru—Indian independence fighter and first Prime Minister, in 1948
- Photo: Nationaal Archief, 1957
A functional approach
The UN was to pursue peace and security, development and human rights. Nonetheless, states set up an increasing number of separate organisations and bodies to address specific tasks, for instance in areas such as health, development, food security and children’s rights. The World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Food Programme and UNICEF are well known examples.
These organisations have delivered important results. They have provided vaccines, food assistance, education and basic services to millions and have helped save lives in crises. At the same time, each new organisation added to a growing landscape of sector specific institutions, each with its own membership, mandate, governing bodies, budgets and rules. No overarching framework was created that can guarantee effective coordination and harmonise policies and priorities.
- There can be a world government where diversity can exist and this would lessen many tensions that we face today. We are clothed in a single garment of destiny, and whatever affects one nation directly in the world, indirectly affects all.
- Martin Luther King Jr.— American civil rights activist
The promise of "never again"
The founding of the UN was accompanied by a strong response to the crimes committed during the Second World War, in particular the Nazi Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews and of other groups. The Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials established that individuals, including political and military leaders, can be held accountable under international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention expressed a shared determination that the international community had a responsibility to ensure that such atrocities are never again committed.
But mass violence did not end. There have been many cases of war, occupation, genocide and mass atrocities, including states turning with lethal violence against their own populations. Tibet, Biafra, Cambodia, East Timor, Guatemala, Colombia, Afghanistan, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sudan, Congo, Syria, Myanmar, Iran, as well as Gaza and Israel, are examples of places where large numbers of people have endured extreme violence, persecution or displacement. There have been too many places and cases to name them all.
Construction of the UN building in New York in 1951.
The Cold War
Unfulfilled hopes
- That is the paradox of our era: at a time when we need international cooperation the most, we seem to be the least inclined to use it.
- António Guterres—UN Secretary-General (2017 to 2026)
- Photo: UN/Pierre Albouy
3. Shared global challenges
Our interdependent world is characterized by shared risks, responsibilities and challenges. Some of them are noted in the following. Managing them properly means providing global public goods that benefit everyone, such as securing peace or protection from pandemics. Not providing them, on the other hand, means that global fragility and risks increase and accumulate. There are a multitude of interconnected risks that threaten the livelihoods of large parts of the world’s population and even endanger global civilisation as a whole.
Peace and security
Thousands of nuclear weapons are on standby, nuclear armed states are modernising their arsenals and others seek to build up their own. A nuclear war would be devastating. Even a limited use of nuclear weapons could kill millions, contaminate land and water, disrupt the climate and food supply and trigger long lasting social and economic collapse. The commitment to nuclear disarmament in the non proliferation treaty has not been realised even after more than five decades.
Geopolitical tensions among and with nuclear armed states are rising and global military spending is at a record high. Dozens of armed conflicts are ongoing, involving governments, militias, terrorist groups and external sponsors. The failure to stop Russia’s aggression against Ukraine represents a breakdown of fundamental international norms supposed to be outlawing war. Preventing and stopping war, mass atrocities and large scale humanitarian crises is a global responsibility.
Melting polar ice signals a warming planet and growing climate instability
Planetary boundaries
Human wellbeing depends on a stable and life supporting environment. This is provided by the Earth’s natural planetary system which includes the climate, biodiversity, freshwater, soils, the oceans and biogeochemical cycles. Human activities in sum have a strong large-scale impact.
In the most important areas scientists have defined boundaries that mark a safe zone for humanity. Their assessments indicate that most of these boundaries have already been crossed. This means an increasing risk of large scale and possibly irreversible changes, which can occur abruptly or over a long time span. Climate warming, for instance, raises the likelihood of extreme weather, ice sheet loss and sea level rise. The different boundaries are linked, so pressure in one area can reinforce problems in others. Safeguarding the Earth’s natural systems, and the climate in particular, is a unique planetary scale challenge. Despite decades of international efforts, global carbon emissions continue to rise to new record levels.
Poverty and inequality
More people than ever enjoy higher living standards and broader opportunities. But poverty and inequality persist. They remain global concerns for moral reasons and because their causes and consequences cross borders. Many people lack proper access to food, water, housing, health care, education and decent work, while often disproportionate wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few who strongly influence the media, politics and public decisions. This situation is maintained by national policies as well as international trade, finance and tax rules. Poverty and inequality undermine trust, fuel resentment and instability and make it harder to provide global public goods.
Pandemics and health
The COVID-19 pandemic showed how a virus can spread around the world, kill millions of people, overwhelm health systems and disrupt economies and daily life. Preventing and managing pathogen outbreaks is a global concern. It requires early detection and warning, fair access to vaccines and medicines, regulation of high risk research and monitoring biolab security. Other threats include growing antimicrobial resistance.
Advancing technologies
Advancing technologies such as AI, robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology offer huge benefits but also serious risks at a global scale. They can be employed for good purposes or for harm. Their development and use can lead to unintended consequences. AI systems and autonomous machines make it harder to ensure human control and accountability. Genetic and nano technologies, amplified by AI, can be misused to create dangerous pathogens or materials.
4. A system that cannot work
A scale mismatch
Critical risks, responsibilities and challenges now emerge in a global system. The planetary scale of many issues is not matched by planetary institutions able to deal with them. “One World or None”, scientists proclaimed in 1946 in view of the total destruction a nuclear Third World War would entail. But the world’s political structure has not adapted and changed. International cooperation remains in the hands of around 200 separate states. Common institutions such as the UN are not designed to operate as an overarching structure. This misalignment explains why global public goods are hard to provide.
The issue of sovereignty
International law rests on the idea that states are sovereign. This means that each state is considered the exclusive authority within its territory and independent of any higher power. Intergovernmental organizations reflect this understanding. Their authority comes from the member states that created them. With very few exceptions, they are not empowered to adopt binding decisions. Resolutions of the UN General Assembly, for instance, that do not deal with the UN’s governance, are mere recommendations under international law.
Sovereignty is a legal principle thought to protect states from outside interference, but a strict understanding limits what international cooperation can achieve. At the same time, decisions and actions taken within a state can have significant outside effects, which makes other states and their populations stakeholders as well. Further, no state is actually autonomous. For this reason sovereignty cannot be absolute in an interdependent world.
The right of peoples to self determination means that state authority cannot be an end in itself. It needs to serve the wellbeing and freedom of those who live under it. When a state fails to protect its people, systematically violates basic rights or commits mass atrocities, it is a global concern. Ultimately, it is the people who are sovereign, whether nationally or globally.
- The major barriers to solving global problems emerge from the fact that the international sphere is characterized principally by voluntary interaction between sovereign states.
- International Task Force on Global Public Goods, co-chaired by Ernesto Zedillo from Mexico and Tidjane Thiam from Ivory Coast, in 2006
The limits of treaties
Governments voluntarily decide which treaties they join, whether they make reservations and they can withdraw again if they wish. As a consequence, when international treaties are negotiated, decisions are usually taken by unanimity or by consensus. This gives every participating government, or small groups of governments, a veto. They can delay, dilute or block agreements until the lowest common denominator is reached. Broader participation thus tends to result in weaker substance. Even when a treaty happens to be widely accepted and relatively substantive, effective implementation depends on enforcement mechanisms, which are rarely provided for.
Cooperation dilemmas
Voluntary cooperation leads to well known dilemmas. The free rider problem occurs when everyone benefits from a common good but each actor prefers that others carry the cost of providing it. Governments may publicly support climate protection, for instance, yet in practice each does less than it could because it hopes that others will make the effort. The result is that the common good is underfunded or not provided at all. Short term national advantages then prevail over the long term interest that all share.
The weakest link problem arises when the success of a common effort can be thwarted by just one ineffective participant. In areas such as pandemic control, nuclear security or the prevention of money laundering, the protection of all is only as strong as the capabilities and political will of the weakest state. Even if most governments act responsibly, a few gaps in surveillance, regulation or enforcement are enough to create serious vulnerabilities that others cannot easily compensate for.
The summation problem occurs when the overall result depends on the cumulative effect of many small contributions. A single state’s emissions, subsidies, arms transfers or financial regulations may seem insignificant on their own, but in sum they make the difference between stability or crisis. Because each actor sees its own share as marginal, there is a tendency to do less than needed. The sum of many individual decisions can then lead to failure even if no one intended that outcome.
The tragedy of the commons is a case when many actors use a shared and unregulated resource, such as a fish stock. Each will tend to maximize individual benefit, which in turn can lead to overuse and depletion.
The issue of legitimacy
Many states are ruled by authoritarian governments that do not represent the people. Some are captured by corrupt networks or oligarchs. Yet they participate in international cooperation and institutions on an equal footing. Even democratic governments primarily represent only those who voted them into power and not all people. In most systems there is a sizable political minority that is not part of the government. In addition, there is a tension between the equality of people and equality of states, as population sizes differ vastly across countries. At the same time, some stateless peoples and nations have no representation at all.
International cooperation tends to be opaque and inaccessible to those who are not directly involved. The patchwork of hundreds of bodies, forums and processes running at the same time is difficult to navigate even for those who are. Important negotiations are often conducted behind closed doors. Shifting decisions into the international sphere can be convenient for governments to limit domestic debate and scrutiny.
Competition and power politics
International affairs are strongly shaped by competition and power politics. There may be international rules and states formally equal, but in practice their different military strength, economic weight, access to strategic resources and geopolitical position creates a global power hierarchy. Some states do not hesitate to use their leverage to advance their interests. Others are outright aggressive and use threats and violence as they attempt to enforce their will. Impact can also be achieved in asymmetric ways. Private networks of corporations, financial actors, oligarchs and, in some cases, ruling clans are intertwined with this system.
- If the United Nations is to become effective, we must make the transition from power politics to a policy of collective responsibility to mankind. Of all human activities, the relations between states have been left stranded in old patterns
- U Thant—UN Secretary-General (1961 to 1971)
- Photo: UN/Yutaka Nagata
5. A new vision
The system of international cooperation does not match the requirements of a shared planetary civilisation. A vision is needed that recognises humanity as a political community and gives it institutions capable of implementing common decisions. The world needs to move to a new level of political integration. Replacing a dysfunctional system of competition and power politics with a democratic rules-based order will strengthen self-determination at all levels.
Following the League of Nations and the United Nations, a third generation world organization needs to ensure the provision of global public goods. It needs to be built in a way that overcomes the mismatch of scale, the voluntary and weak nature of international agreements, the lack of democratic legitimacy, rampant fragmentation and the typical dilemmas of voluntary cooperation.
- Nation borders on nation, peoples get in touch with each other, and an institutional system for coexistence is developed until it passes over into a constitutional system of cooperation
- Dag Hammarskjöld— UN Secretary-General (1953 to 1961)
- Photo: UN/JO
A global constitution
Creating a global constitutional order is a way to achieve this. A global constitution should reflect the recognized principles of any legitimate political order that emerged over centuries: the rule of law, separation of powers, human rights and the people as the ultimate source of authority. It will need to be discussed, drafted and adopted in a broad, inclusive and democratic global process.
Democratic constitutions, political practice and federal systems at national and regional levels all over the world offer valuable lessons into how representation, participation, and checks and balances can be organised. A global constitution would build on these experiences.
The constitution would determine how a new world organization is designed and how it functions, structuring it according to three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. It would establish a universal legal framework with the constitution at the top, followed by world law, then regional law where applicable and finally national law, each with its own field of application. Following the principle of subsidiarity, only clearly defined issues that cannot be dealt with effectively at lower levels should be put into the hands of the world organisation.
In addition to peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development, the stability of the Earth system is such a case. Important planetary boundaries need to be treated as core concerns in all areas of global policy.
While it would be left to states and regional blocs to determine how they are organised internally, global norms at this stage of integration should require them to be democratic.
Individuals would be recognised as subjects of world law endowed with global constitutional rights.
A world parliament
Empowering the world organisation to adopt universally binding world law is one of its most important features. To do so, it needs a legislature. A long standing proposal is a world parliament. Following the example of existing federal states, it could consist of two chambers.
One chamber would be a parliamentary assembly elected by the world’s citizens, representing humanity as a whole and the world’s political diversity. The other chamber would represent individual states and, where appropriate, regional organisations.
The allocation of seats in both chambers would need to take population size into account. To adopt binding world law, a high threshold of approval should be necessary in both bodies, but no vetoes or unanimity requirements should apply.
The constitution should grant the world parliament limited powers to raise global funds, independent of state contributions, to support the world organisation and the implementation of global programmes. To enhance participation, the world parliament should set up the instrument of citizens’ initiative, which allows ordinary people to put forward proposals, and make use of advisory citizens’ assemblies composed of people selected by lot.
An executive and judiciary
Existing institutions and programmes within and around the UN system already form the embryo of a global executive, but in fragmented ways. In a new world organisation, they could be consolidated and restructured under the common roof of a world commission. This commission, elected by and accountable to the world parliament, would prepare the budget, implement world law and manage global action.
Global courts would help interpret and apply the constitution and world law. A world constitutional court would make sure that the legislative and executive bodies of the world organization as well as individual states comply with constitutional principles and responsibilities, including review of legislative acts and executive action.
The interpretation and application of world law in other fields would be dealt with by other specialized courts, building on existing ones such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. This includes legal protection to those affected by violations of world law and independent oversight bodies.
- In our vision, global governance will evolve into global government through a process of democratic revolution and political integration.
- Jo Leinen and Andreas Bummel in the book A World Parliament
6. Ways forward
The question is not whether the world will change, but whether humanity will be able to shape this change in a positive way and secure a life in freedom, dignity and security for all and future generations. Deliberation on a global constitution and efforts to bring it about are necessary. At the same time, action is needed to help create favorable conditions.
Advancing democracy
Through democracy people have the right and opportunity to be involved in political decisions that affect them. It is the key to mitigating different interests and perspectives in a peaceful and just way through dialogue and compromise. Deep social and economic inequalities weaken trust and solidarity which are a foundation of a democratic society. A global constitutional order will need to build on solid democratic states. Authoritarianism and extreme inequalities are major obstacles, nationally and globally.
- Democracy is the only political system that can move us closer to global peace.
- Michelle Bachelet—Former President of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Photo: OHCHR
Supporting education
Education is the key to life opportunities, empowerment and critical thinking. It is an indispensable foundation for the wellbeing and development of each individual and every society. Investment in education for all children is necessary. Good primary and secondary education helps reduce inequalities by giving people an ability to participate in economic, social and political life. Global citizenship education should help foster understanding of an interdependent world.
Building state capacity
States must be capable of providing security and public services. In many countries, state structures are weak or even absent. People then often suffer from widespread violence, corruption and neglect. Supporting the creation of functioning state institutions that serve the people needs to be an important priority.
Deepening cooperation
Trust among states, especially among democracies, needs to be strengthened through deeper cooperation wherever possible. Regional organisations play an important role in advancing political and economic integration.
At the global level it is important to defend and advance norms, institutions and programmes that are reasonable and useful, including fundamental principles of international law. Closer cooperation should also aim to make the global economy fairer and more sustainable.
- It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference.
- Wangarĩ Maathai—Kenyan social, environmental, and political activist
- Photo: John Mathew Smith/CC BY-SA 2.0
Engines for change
Engines for change are needed inside the system. One proposal is the creation of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, which would bring elected representatives into the UN and connect it closer with the world’s citizens. Another is the instrument of World Citizens’ Initiative that would allow people worldwide to put issues on the UN’s agenda if they gather sufficient support.
Over time, these and other steps help strengthen the idea that humanity is a political community and prepare the ground for an inclusive and successful global constitutional process. This includes a UN Charter review conference, as foreseen in the UN Charter itself, to examine how the world organisation needs to evolve.
© Democracy Without Borders, 2026