World Federalism Is On The Rise

Borders will one day dissolve. Take the European Union for example. It doesn't care about border between it and the nations it will soon absorb, such as Turkey and the Balkan countries, because they will soon be one. Nations and institutions in Europe develop cooperative and positive-sum arrangements. It was only 60 years earliers that Europe tore itself apart, and today it's the world's most powerful economic and political union. Unionization through regional federalism is becoming more popular and more feasible than the kind of political globalization we see through international organizations such as the United Nations. Talk of "reform" in the UN might be implausible. In fact, a restructuring of the UN might be impossible. Perhaps we need to abolish that un-democratic body and rely on regional organization instead. After all, that's how nations are making decisions already.

Federalism works well with Constitutional Democracy. The basic principle of federalism is that policy matters fall under the authority of local governments. "Soft" federalists will tell you that some policies do but others actually fall better under international and national authority. But I don't accept that. Local authority is always better. The trend in organizations like the EU, hopefully, will be an international recognition and fostering of this idea. So it will be international federalism. Call it International Localism--or at least that's the idea. The current international structure gives too much power to these national decision-making bodies, and not enough to local and international bodies.