A Fair Diagnose But Proposed Remedies Are Quite Inadequate

There is, as you say, a deficit in substantive democracy. But, despite breezy drive-by, procedural democracy also has a deficit.

In any case, remediation focused on local and global level institutional reform conveniently seeks to discount the elephant in the discussion — national level institutions.

It is true that global level politics reflects the detached elite problems identified. However, it is important to recognize these institutions are creatures of, by and for nation-states.

Global governance institutions under attack do not, however, represent a paradox. Rather, it is the direct result of failed national institutions. In this context, the suggestion that global governance might aid in mitigating current problems by devolving power to local levels is an abstract bridge too far.

Local level politics, presented as an ambiguously amalgam, do engender better involvement. However, such local involvement is overwhelmingly dominated by exceedingly parochial issues, far easier to corrupt and distort, and garners, to be kind, suboptimal media coverage and analysis.

Btw, hand wringing about new wars, however defined, begs the question of how global governance justifies an annual military expenditure of between $2–3 trillion USD without any program to curtail this wasteful scourge. Said differently, the business of war making fuels the war making and criminal activity decried.

It seems obvious that all these malcontents largely get the money to acquire the weapons for their nefarious activities from this global financial pool, which simultaneously provides the weaponry. So how does this end? In this respect, you are correct in stating the need for a reconceptualization of global governance.

Nation level politics, as seen globally, is where both the global and local problems and opportunities now rest. So, assuming the nation-state can be bypassed is Pollyannaish. It is, for better or worse, the public’s, and thus media’s, political center of gravity and where the real problems lay. Indeed, the problem of the “other” is a nation-state issue, notably as an economic issue.

So, despite pro and con globalization rhetoric, globalization is not the issue per se. Rather, it is the failure to articulate a believable roadmap that goes from the current global movement toward labor and lifestyle parity, to ever greater technological automation and resulting labor displacement, to a world where the cultural model of self-worth, self-identity and upward mobility will have been eviscerated. The nation-state publics already experiencing the downside of today’s parity intuits this big picture, yet hears only empty political rhetoric and are scared to death.

So, while there is a backlash against globalization, it is a symptom of both substantive and procedural national institutional failures — e.g., election tech, renter economy, ongoing economic inequality, deep state, and expansive ubiquity of 24/7 media. It is what you rightly call “sclerosis of the nation-state” and a backward looking mindset.

In this context, aside from authoritarian regimes, even the most liberal democracies are products of medieval and Enlightenment origin and design. As such they are no longer responsive and thus are no longer seen as legitimate.

So what is needed before the reconceptualization of global institutional governance suggested is a reconceptualization of nation-state democratic governance. In light of the technological capacity to experiment with new democratic models, the failure to do so insures any incremental measures, at any governance level, will be inadequate and thus exacerbate current unrest.

Since economic issues and advances in technology are going to become far more pronounced and visible over the next decade, preventing, preempting or arresting experimentation of new national democratic models today guarantees the employment of greater surveillance and thus the additional unrest that will generated later.

Said differently, without nation-state experimentation with new democratic models now, the only road open is a dark cul-de-sac that makes today’s problems look minor. Brace yourself

Doc Huston