Global Governance

As last week’s UN Summit of the Future aimed for bold actions, our new study in the International Studies Quarterly finds that citizens around the world indeed support very far-reaching reforms of global governance. Overwhelming majorities in various countries across the global South, North, East, and West support the creation of a democratic world government to tackle pressing global challenges like climate change. Long supported by the likes of Einstein, scholars and advocates today promote similar ideas such as “cosmopolitan democracy.” However, such proposals are often discarded quickly, based on the argument that most people would not support them. Our study refutes such claims. We implemented an international survey experiment to explore public support for different notions of a world government. Between 2017 and 2021, we surveyed more than 42,000 respondents in 17 countries worldwide, representing 54 percent of the world population. Respondents in each country were randomly assigned to either the control or a treatment group. People in the control condition were…