World Public Power Representation

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Interview

... of the Dutch politician Jan Pronk:

Daniel Jakopovich: You have directly interacted with various global economic and political protagonists during your work in the World Bank, in UNCTAD and elsewhere. What kind of restructuring of global decision-making and regulatory institutions is required to reduce the tensions between current forms of international governance and the relative anarchy of militarist and economic international competition? BRICS, the Non-Aligned Movement and other established and emerging actors have in recent years begun to force the answer to this question... Jan Pronk: Yes, but the answer is not clear. It is uncertain to what extent the members of the BRICS and the economic powers of the Non-Aligned Movement just want to have a bigger share of the pie, and whether they have in mind the global public good. The important question is to what extent any decision-making structure constructed by some or all of the major powers will really be in the interest of all people, rather than of the powers that be.

This means, firstly, that we need international decision-making structures which are based on international law, structures which are not based just on raw power relations, but on a body of international law which is agreed upon, which – if it is being violated – people can appeal to, so that you also have institutions with instruments necessary to bring to account those powers that are violating this international law, a legal framework based on an agreement about human values.

For me, we are talking here about the United Nations system, which has to be reformed, of course, but is nonetheless a system based on values embodied in international law, with a number of institutions and instruments which aren’t very powerful, but still have some influence. This UN system is being eroded by powerful countries and also by financial institutions and huge corporations with a grip on natural and other resources.

This means that we have to restore the world public power representative of all countries, and possibly representative of all people within all those countries, as a countervailing power to what does exist. One cannot "think away" individual countries as powers. One cannot "think away" the international companies and banks. But we need a countervailing power in the system.

We need a number of reforms of the present world economic and political system. We had some initiatives in that direction, for instance the new international economic initiative in the 1970s, some efforts to reform the Bretton Woods system. All of these have so far not been successful. I would be in favour of a new San Francisco conference, and a new Bretton Woods conference, not to start all over again, but to genuinely rethink the structures, not the basic values.

The basic global values have been agreed upon, for instance in the preamble of the UN Charter. That was a breakthrough for civilization as such. We don’t need new values. Of course, you have to rethink the importance of specific values given political developments in the world, but the UN system has allowed for that, for example through the concepts of UN Development and Security, Responsibility to Protect and Sustainability, all new values. The UN system allows the gradual development of the values which have been agreed upon in the past. We don’t need a new negotiation on values, but rather on institutions and instruments." (http://www.opendemocracy.net/daniel-jakopovich/countervailing-power-interview-with-jan-pronk)