How to govern humanely in a brave new world

How to govern humanely in a brave new world

On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics,

By Richard Falk,

The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995

288 pages

JAKARTA (JP): This book focuses on governance and systems of
governing, not governments. It invites reflections on the
shortcomings of present governance systems in the world, prodding
us to consider alternatives to remedy the failings.

This is a report on global governance developed from analyses
and findings of The Global Civilization Initiative (GCP) program.
It is part of the World Order Models Project (WOMP), a project
initiated by the Center of International Studies of Princeton
University. Professor Falk has been associated with the center
and this project since its inception in 1975.

Falk and his associates are concerned with the probable
emergence of "inhumane governance" in the early 21st century as
the outcome of diminishing capacity of the sovereign territorial
state to shape the history of humankind. They attribute this to
the "double historical movement", denoting globalization beyond
the reach of the territorial state, and fragmentation outside the
grasp of these same states.

They fear a continuation of basic systems in the new era will
foster inhumane conditions for those on the bottom of the state
hierarchy.

Most frequently cited among these conditions are:

* no provision of adequate food, shelter, healthcare,
clothing, education, and housing for the most disadvantaged 20
percent of the world population;

* denial of full protection of human rights to the most
socially and culturally vulnerable groups;

* lack of tangible, cumulative progress toward the abolition
of war as a social institution;

* insufficient effort in the protection and restoration of the
environment;

* failure to achieve dramatic growth of transnational
democracy, and little progress in the extension of the primary
democratic practices of respect for others, of accountability by
political leaders as well as market executives, and of popular
participation in critical arenas of decision.

Humane governance is a vision of efforts needed to correct the
social, political, economic, and cultural arrangements that cause
these ills. Success in the search for humane governance must be
built on similar efforts in the past while being fully rooted in
the unfolding present, combined in "aspiring to achieve an
imagined future". This desired future must be defined in terms of
dignity and worth of the individual, as well as the group.

Is this naysaying on the future justified? Falk addresses this
in the first two chapters, outlining commercial globalism that is
capital-driven, market-validated and media disseminated. He warns
the coalition between leading states in the West (possibly
inclusive of East and Southeast Asia) and transnational capital
deployed by corporate managers and banking operatives will wire
the world for purposes of advertising, indoctrination and
administration.

The negative fall-out is that the severity of environmental
decay and challenges emanating from civil society is likely to
make these combined state and market forces behave in a coercive
and interventionary way towards peoples in many societies.

Also casting a pall on prospects for the present system of
geogovernance is the prevalence of a political attitude defined
as "political realism". This dismisses moral and legal criteria
of policy as irrelevant and grounds speculation on an assessment
of relative power as perceived by rational, even ultrarational
actors, essentially states.

This bars consideration of passion, irrationality and
altruistic motivation of political forces, or the impact of
nonstate actors. The danger of political realism lies in its
belief that the only appropriate morality is the pursuit of self-
interest of statist scope in a societal space that lacks
community sentiment and agencies of government.

Another important shade in this skeptical viewpoint is that
our present way of administering our planet exhibits three
dangerous tendencies. These encompass a tendency toward "global
apartheid", or viewing and treating the entire world in terms of
two separate entities of the developed North and the
underdeveloped South; the leaning to avoidable harm", as shown by
those in authority who pursue policies that cause harm to
humanity; and a drift toward ecoimperialism, defined as the
worsening of environmental conditions and the persistence of
dominant growth-oriented priorities.

The pessimism thus seems justified. But more important is how
we feel about our collective future and our resolutions to these
prospect. Falk describes details of the quest towards humane
governance in Chapters 3 - 7.

The Global Civilization Initiative was the product of exchange
of ideas between scholars running the WOMP and Georgi
Shakhanazarof, former president of the International Political
Association and a special assistant to Mikhail Gorbachev (who
visited WOMP in 1986). The overriding purpose of the Global
Civilization Initiative is "to contest conventional notions of
international relations --notions which stress the pre-eminence
of the states system and inevitability of war as a means of
resolving international disputes".

The view of humane governance is one that links the global and
regional to the national and personal. What constitutes
cumulative humane governance is the aggregation of these various
sites of "decision making" power: from the personal level of
decision making to the local and national levels, and on to the
regional and global levels of bureaucratic power. Thus genuine
humane governance cannot be achieved without real progress in
participatory democracy. At each level there must be a sincere
commitment to values sustaining the idea of world order,
expressed in terms of peace, economic well-being, social and
political justice and environmental sustainability.

On the basis of this view, humane governance is a condition
comprising 10 dimensions -- curbing war, abolishing war, making
individuals accountable, collective security, rule of law,
nonviolent revolutionary politics, human rights, stewardship of
nature, positive citizenship and cosmopolitan democracy.

I couldn't help asking myself as I read this book: Where are
we at the moment in this regard? Have we started the journey
towards humane governance yet?

Despite the grim picture that emerges, the book is still
inspiring. Putting all the problems related to our efforts to
create a rechtsstaat, a state based on law, in light of this
unfolding picture of humane governance somehow makes me
optimistic about our collective future. It gives me the luxury of
feeling that we are swimming with the tide of history, not
against it.

-- Mochtar Buchori