What form would a stable and effective one-world government take? Would it have different branches of government? Would it one supreme leader for life? Would there be a Supreme Council or somesuch and, if so, how would they be appointed?
Semi-autonomous city-states or strict control?
By the way, this government would have to be above-board, not a soopersekrit cabal that rules behind the scenes.
One bump, because I’m surprised Skald the Rhymer hasn’t dropped by to lend some advice. 
High time we had a Republic of Earth.
If I had my way it would be a federal system of some kind, like a United Nations with teeth or the United States writ large, leaving current national governments alone where they don’t abuse their own people or invade others. There would be a bicameral legislature (an upper house with one member from each country, and a lower house based on national populations, with each country guaranteed at least one member), a president chosen by the legislature, and an independent judiciary, including a supreme court, with appropriate checks and balances. A world constitution including a bill of rights. Democracy, liberty, the rule of law, prosperity, peace, brotherhood and education for all.
Yes, I’m a crazy dreamer.
Would each country be allowed to have its own standing military?
Yes, but over time I suspect most would feel safe enough to drastically scale them back.
Bwahahahahaha. Oh, you.
Hey honey, come listen to this guy.
Say it again.
A centralized bureaucracy operated by a non-partisan civil service, where advancement is based solely on job performance, laws and policy decisions are crafted by the relevant committee, and there is no single individual who can be pointed to as the leader.
No figurehead at all to inspire and direct the populace?
What we need is a one-world government lead by a [del]fascist totalitarian dictator[/del] supreme, benevolent leader. Namely, me. My [del]shock troops and legions of terror[/del] peace-keeping brigade will be absolutely trustworthy and completely loyal to me, er to the people. All dissent will be [del]ruthlessly crushed[/del] patiently engaged and reasoned with, to the betterment of all.
Entrepreneurial activity will be tolerated or even encouraged so long as [del]my personal interests are prioritized[/del] the business leaders are fully accountable to the people; also all policies and revenue distribution must be [del]siphoned to support my pleasure palace[/del] fair to the workers.
There would be a supreme, advisory council, subject to my authority and will be [del]executed at my whim[/del] replaced regularly via a fair, global, electoral process.
People, it’s the only way.
And you see this as a stable system? To me, it looks like the world’s most successful suicide attempt.
You’ll be speaking with my Grand Inquisitors soon. You may then tell them all about this “suicide attempt.” Enjoy.
Since when did Skald change his username to Knorf?
The only one I’d support would be modeled after Heinlein’s Empire of the 20 Universes (Glory Road), which had basically one law: Thou Shalt Not Blow Up Thy Neighbor’s Planet (Blow up your own, if you feel like it). Obviously, in this case, read “Country” for “Planet”.
I’d think that it would need to be some sort of super federal republic. As in, you’d have the nation-states that we currently have, but then have some kind of popularly elected regional governments, similar to the US or EU.
I’d say that the “World Government” would be similar to the US system- bicameral legislature, executive branch & judiciary, except that it would be elected by the representatives of the regional governments, not the public at large.
The reason I say this, is because any sort of world-spanning election would seem to devolve into one of 3 bad outcomes- one where there’s some sort of campaign finance limitations, and a series of runoff elections, or one where well-known celebrities could win based on name recognition alone, or worst of all, one financed by big corporations.
Leaving the world government elections to the regional government legislators is kind of similar to the way senators were chosen until the 20th century.
You’d almost have to vest all military power in the executive branch of the world government- otherwise you could end up with warring regional federations or individual nation-states.
Oldest living non-senile person gets crowned Emperor or Empress, and serves as ceremonial head of state. (Actual governing to be done by an elected prime minister or chancellor.)
but you are no the only one
I think there are some structural-demographic problems with applying this model to a World Government. Looking at some existing federal states, the most populous state of the USA has about 66 times more people than the least populous; for Australia, the ratio is about 14; and for Germany, it’s about 27. If we consider the European Union to be a kind of federal state, it’s ratio is 191 (between Germany at over 80 million and Malta at well under half-a-million). That’s already problematic, and the EU isn’t actually a sovereign state, at least not yet, though it’s arguably the supranational organization which most closely approaches statehood.
For the current members of the UN, though, the ratio is over 137,000–China has over 1.3 billion people; Nauru has less than 10,000. This starts to make equal representation in the upper house (already a somewhat debatable proposition even in existing sovereign federal states) look really dubious; and in the lower house, either some of the smaller states are going to have to be massively over-represented, or else you’re going to have a World Assembly with some really absurd number of representatives. (Or possibly both.)
In practice, you’re probably goint to want to consolidate a lot of the smaller countries into regional entities along the lines of the EU, then those regional organizations and the largest of the existing nation-states would be directly represented in the World Government. That’s going to get very complex, though, with federations of federations of federations (Bavaria is a state of Germany, which is a member of the European Union, which is a member of the Earth Federation).
And then of course once we’ve got all those details ironed out Earth will no doubt finally be invited to join the Galactic Federation…
I like the cut of your jib, MEB.
The problem is that different people have different expectations of what we want in a government.
For example, we in America expect a government that recognizes private property and defends its ownership. How would we react to being placed under a government that has different ideas? For example, there are four times as many Chinese (who are at least nominally communist) as there are Americans. What happens if we all take a vote on redistributing some wealth around?
If you have some federal system where each country has an equal vote regardless of size, then China can’t outvote like that. But China and Sudan together can outvote us on the same redistribution plan.