From: "Robert J. Chassell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I made the point that
... institutions must not only be impervious to the bribery of their members, they must also be seen as being impervious.
I completely agree.
As a beginning, for a new international institution, I suggest
A three chamber organization:
* One chamber based on population, like the US House of Representatives,
Are you proposing that each nation would send x number of representatives, or have a single rep, who holds x number of votes?
I'm concerned that this would give an extremely populous nation like China (1/4 of the world's pop?) excessive influence, particularly considering it's not a democracy so that the actual desires of that billion+ people wouldn't necessarily be reflected even remotely in China's vote.
Some possible ways to mitigate this:
- Assign votes based on population on a log-type curve, so they don't become so out of proportion.
- scale the number of votes by a "democracy scaling factor" where dictatorships, traditional monarchies, theocracies, etc only get a small fraction (ie: 0.1x) of the votes they would get as a free-voting democracy. For democracies, ones that exclude women, certain races, etc would be penalized in a smaller way (ie: maybe 0.7-0.9x).
- have votes linearly proportional to population, but:
- scrap the idea of a 3rd economic-based chamber, instead tying those factors in here
- treat this number of votes as a maximum amount
- the actual number of votes given would be based on amount of dues paid, perhaps on a $/vote basis that maybe goes up as the number of votes purchased increases.
* A second chamber based on history, that is to say, based on the principle of one (or two) votes per nation-state, as in the current UN. This is similar to the arrangement made among differently sized states in the US at the time of the framing of the US Constitution.
(Some contemporary countries are very small. Consequently, the disproportion in power between large ones and small nation-states is even greater than it was in the 1780s between large and small US states. To prevent this disproportion from wrecking the whole proposal, it may be necessary that some small countries federate with each other.)
Do you mean the countries would have to share a single vote or representative? I'm not sure many countries would be happy with that. But then, giving some tiny country scarely bigger than, say, Delaware, the same voting power as the US or Russia seems out of whack.
* A third chamber based on the amount a nation-state pays in taxes to the international organization. (If you dislike the word `tax', refer to `payments made' or `dues'.)
Payments made should be proportional to gross domestic product. The institutional advantage of basing the size of representation in the third chamber on payments actually made is that countries that decide not to pay lose power.
Arguments should be made over how to measure `gross domestic product'.
Similarly, the member states should debate whether to increase third chamber representation if a member pays more than its due.
As far as I can see, a three chamber organization is the only way simultaneously to overcome rich countries worry about poor but populous countries, such as India, give populous countries power, and gain support from the small. What alternatives do you suggest?
See suggestions above
Further points:
Membership not necessarily that of the current UN.
A new organization need not encompass the whole planet, as the UN does.
Unfortunately, this leaves open the possibility of major war among large planetary coalitions, like the Cold War between the US and nations on its side, and the USSR and nations on its side. The war might be hot or cold.
On the other hand, if membership must include the whole planet, then I fear the institution will be as much a success and as much a failure as the present UN. On the good side, it will be a continuous diplomatic conference, provide useful technical bodies, and provide a method of settling some, not very important, disputes internationally without war. However, it will do little more. It will not be able to settle important disputes among its member states peacefully.
It will be as much a failure as the United States would have been had it included as member states both France and Great Britain as well as the original 13 `states'.
That is my concern as well. As much as we'd like to have the UN (or some future incarnation thereof) serve world interests, there is absolutely nothing to ensure that the voting member nations will *ever* act in anything other than pure self-interest. I have no idea what could be done to ensure that.
No veto by any member.
If certain strong states possess a veto, they will be in a position to make the organization work only for them or else be paralyzed. Weaker states may be cajoled to join such an institution, but will never take such an organization seriously.
Clearly, the United States will not join such an organization in which it cannot veto actions unless the US comes to believe that the organization will not undertake actions damaging to the US. (I suspect that the time period considered salient for this issue by US decision makers will be two or three generations, even if their salient time periods for other decisions are only two or three months.)
What do you think?
I agree that the US wouldn't join an organization it lacks a veto in. I'm not sure how it could ever be confident the organization would not ever undertake actions damaging to the US, given my concerns above about nations acting in self-interest.
Getting back to your original point about bribery and appearances, I'm not sure if a new organization or any of these proposed changes would make any difference as far as that goes. While if might be possible to mitigate the impact of bribery in the UN-type organization itself, in the end, all the UN's reps report to their own governments, which are the ones actually making the decisions. Those governments are vulnerable to corruption as ever. And so no matter how bribery-proof the UN's (or a future replacement's) reps are, it doesn't matter a bit, if Saddam (or some future bad-guy) was/is able to directly buy influence in, for example, the French and Russian governments.
-Bryon
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