The reading list below is based on a reading list originally used for an internal GPI reading group. These reading groups are used as a way of doing an early-stage exploration of new areas that seem promising from an academic global priorities research perspective. Each topic is often used as the theme for one or two weekly discussions, and in most cases those attending the discussion will have read the suggested materials beforehand.
As I thought that it could be a valuable resource for those interested in academic global priorities research, I’m sharing it here, with permission from the authors. All the credit for the list below goes to them.
Disclaimer: The views presented in the readings suggested below do not necessarily represent views held by me, GPI, or any GPI staff member.
Motivation
This list presents readings investigating the merits of world government and other forms of global governance. The first half will investigate general issues that bear on the topic. The second will turn to global governance itself.
1. Centralization and Coordination
2. The Size of Nations
- Alberto Alesina. 2003. “The Size of Countries: Does it Matter?” Journal of the Economic Association: 301-316.
- Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore. 1997. “On the Number and Size of Nations,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112: 1027-1056.
- Alberto Alesina, and Enrico Spolaore. 2015. “What’s Happening to the Number and Size of Nations?” E-International Relations: 1-4.
- “Goldilocks Nationalism.” 2014. The Economist.
- Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore, The Size of Nations (MIT Press, 2003).
- Rose, Andrew K. 2006. "Size Really Doesn't Matter: In search of a National Scale Effect." Journal of the Japanese and International Economies 20: 482-507.
- Jens Blom-Hansen, Kurt Houlberg, Søren Serritzlew. 2014. “Size, Democracy, and the Economic Costs of Running the Political System.” American Journal of Political Science 58: 790-803.
- Banerjee, Abhijit, Lakshmi Iyer, and Rohini Somanathan. 2008. “Public Action for Public Goods” In Paul Schultz and John Strauss (eds.), Handbook of Development Economics. Vol. 4.
- Ray, Debraj and Joan Maria Esteban. 2001. “Collective Action and the Group Size Paradox.” American Political Science Review 95: 663-672.
3. Federalism and Subsidiarity
4. Technocracy and Polycentricity
5. Is a world government desirable?
- Yael Tamir. 2000. Who’s afraid of a global state? In Goldmann, Hannerz, and Westin, eds. Nationalism and Internalism in the Post Cold-War Era, 242-63. London: Routledge.
- Bryan Caplan. 2008. The totalitarian threat. In Bostrom and Cirkovic, eds. Global Catastrophic Risks, 504-17. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Bertrand Russell. 1959. Common sense and nuclear warfare. London: Routledge.
- Amitai Etzioni. 2001. “Beyond transnational governance.” International Journal 56, 595-610
- Torbjörn Tännsjö. 2008. Global democracy: the case for a world government. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Daniel Deudney. 2006. Bounding power: republican security theory from the polis to the global village. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press - Ch. 9 ‘Anticipations of world nuclear government’
- Luis Cabrera. 2010. “World government: renewed debate, persistent challenges.” European Journal of International Relations 16, 511-30.
- Nick Bostrom, 2019. “The Vulnerable World Hypothesis.” Global Policy 10: 455-476.
- Nick Bostrom, 2004. The future of human evolution. In Tandy, ed. Death and Anti‐Death: Two Hundred Years After Kant, Fifty Years After Turing, 339‐371. Palo Alto: Ria University Press.
- Nick Bostrom, 2006. “What is a singleton?” Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations 5: 48-54.
- Catherine Lu, 2021. World government. In Zalta, ed. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Juan Gil, 2021. “Key characteristics for evaluating future global governance institutions.” Rethink Priorities
6. The inevitability of world government?
- Alexander Wendt. 2003. “Why a world state is inevitable.” European Journal of International Relations 9, 491-542.
- Robert Wright. 2000. Nonzero: the logic of human destiny. New York, NY: Vintage - Ch. 15 ‘New World Order’
- Dani Rodrik. 2000. “How far will international economic integration go?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, 177-86
- Robert Carneiro. 2004. “The political unification of the world: Whether, when, and how — some speculations.” Cross-Cultural Research 38, 162–177
- Peter Peregrine, Melvin Ember, and Carol Ember C. 2004. “Predicting the future state of the world using archaeological data: An exercise in archaeomancy.” Cross-Cultural Research 38,133–146.
- Daniele Archibugi and David Held. 2011. “Cosmopolitan democracy: paths and agents.” Ethics and International Affairs 25,433-61.
- Robert Goodin. 2013. World government is here! In Ben-Porath and Smith, eds. Varieties of sovereignty and citizenship, 149–65. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
7. Global governance
- Arie Kacowicz. 2012. Global governance, international order, and world order. In Levi-Faur, ed. The Oxford handbook of governance, 686-98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Thomas Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson. 2014. “Rethinking global governance? Complexity, authority, power, change.” International Studies Quarterly 58, 207-15.
- James Rosenau and Ernst-Otto Czempiel, eds. 1992. Governance without government: order and change in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Craig Murphy. 2000. “Global governance: poorly done and poorly understood.” International Affairs 76, 789-804.
- Simon Caney. 2006. “Cosmopolitan justice and institutional design.” Social Theory and Practice 32, 725-56.
- Thomas Weiss. 2009. “What happened to the idea of world government?” International Studies Quarterly 53, 253-71.
- John Ikenbery. 2011. Liberal leviathan: the origins, crisis, and transformation of the American world order. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press.
- Thomas Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson, eds. 2014. International organization and global governance. London: Routledge.
- Jonathan Kuyper. 2015. Global Democracy. In E.N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Scott Barrett. 2005. “The theory of international environmental agreements.” Handbook of Environmental Economics 3: 1457-1516.
- Scott Barrett. 2016. “Collective Action to Avoid Catastrophe: When Countries Succeed, When They Fail, and Why.” Global Policy 7: 45-55.
8. Unipolarity vs. Multipolarity
- William C. Wohlforth. 1999. “The Stability of a Unipolar World.” International Security 24: 5-41.
- G. John Ikenberry. 2012. “Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order.” Princeton: Princeton University Press, ch. 4.
- Kenneth N. Waltz. 1964. “The Stability of a Bipolar World.” Daedalus 93: 881-909.
- R. N. Rosecrance. 1966. “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Future.” Conflict Resolution X: 313-327.
- Ikenberry, G. John, Michael Mastanduno and William C. Wohlforth. 2009. “Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences.” World Politics 61: 1-26.
- An introduction to this special issue, which contains other relevant articles
Thanks for sharing! I'm curious if any of these readings were most helpful around forming "theories of change toward achieving a limited form of global governance in specific key domains where it might be most important" or "viable mechanisms for partial global governance in those domains."
As someone exploring alternative ways to govern near-global powerful technology organizations that interact closely with nation-states and fund a significant proportion of AI research, this is what I would be most curious about (and which also seems e.g. particularly relevant re. x-risks). In the linked doc, I focus on sortition-based systems as one potential approach, but there are additional routes (e.g. ML-augmented) that I am also exploring using ~this framework, and I'd be interested any I have not considered.