Would a directly elected UN Organ be of any use

Great Debates
1

I believe that there has been a proposal in the past to have such an organ.

So lets say a directly elected “Peoples Assembly” with each country getting a number of seats related to but not directly proportional to population (meaning, China, India etc get more seats, Ireland less). You have direct elections, like in the EU Parliament

Say the other Organs continue as before,
What would be the Powers of such an assembly. I would think it would be appropriate that the UN Budget had to be approved by this assembly. What other powers? Peacekeeping missions need to be approved. Perhaps the Secretary General elected from there.

2

One problem is how elections would be run in one-party states like China. How would you get the Chinese government to allow any system which would allow non-members of the Community Party to be elected?

3

True. But then how would anyone not a Republican or a Democrat get elected in the US?

An elected body would inevitably increase its influence; and unlike the other organs it would have democratic legitamacy.

4

I don’t see how the UN could compel its member states to allow democratic election of said seats, or verify that the election process in each nation was free and fair. Presumably a corrupt sub-Saharan state could just rig the election so that the winning candidate was invariably a government spokesman, while North Korea could just put out a ballot with only one name on it and have anyone who doesn’t vote disappeared. And if you limit membership in the body only to those nations that vow to allow free and open election of its officers, then you’d have to limit its jurisdiction to those states as well, which would pretty much hamstring its effectiveness.

5

Have we got the process in reverse here? Surely we should look at the functions of the General Assembly (current or proposed) and then make a judgment about whether it is appropriate for a body discharging such functions to be directly elected.

Giles makes a good point. In general elections are about making the institutions of the state accountable, but they play out different in different societies so as to make the accountable in different ways, and to different people or groups. I don’t know that there’s a sufficient global consensus on how, and to whom, governments ought to be made accountable to make elections the norm for choosing the members of the General Assembly.

You could, though, adopt an intermediate position; assign each country a number of GA representatives relative (but not directly proportional) to its population, and then leave it up to domestic law to determine how those representatives should be chosen.

Note that in the example of the EU parliament, where there is a much greater consensus on democratic accountability, member States at first were allowed to conduct EU parliamentary elections as they wished, and only later were required to adopt a system based on the principle of proportional representation (though they still use different PR systems for EU parliamentary elections in different EU member states).

6

Having a UN level election commission would certainly help in alleviating such problems. Admittedly its not perfect, but better the leaving it up to the Member States.

7

Which still presumes a stronger level of federation than currently exists between the UN and its members. I just can’t see North Korea or Saudi Arabia or Syria allowing a “UN election commission” to come into its borders, set up shop, and run elections for people not accountable to the government who would nonetheless have authority over it in the UN.

8

^
Actually I think S Arabia and Syria would only be too happy to allow such a commission. Its the US which would most likely object.

9

To whom?

10

First, don’t we need a world where it’s possible to have free and fair elections, to such a global body, in every country? Otherwise, what kind of popular mandate could a global People’s Assembly or whatever claim?

11

I think it would be a great idea, so long as it was balanced out by some sort of realpolitik based upper house; sort of a World Senate, if you will. I think there needs to be real, solid brakes on the “bread and circuses” tendency of proportionally elected legislatures.

Lower house: proportional to population.

Upper house: proportional to GDP (or something else)

I’d tend to think that the lower house ought to be popularly elected and the upper house should be appointed by the governments in question.

12

^
I believe that the General Assembly as it is would suffice,

13

What problem are you trying to fix?

14

Would this elected body have a military of any sort? If not, the body is toothless and if so, why should I support such a body where China, an authoritarian regime, will have (based on population) forty times the influence than my own country, Canada, a liberal democracy?

If you wanted to create some kind of elected U.N. lite made up of G7 members (and other liberal democracy candidates) to oversee a NATO-like military, maybe… the point being that I see no value in trusting nondemocratic regimes to contribute usefully to a democratic body.

15

Don’t like. Don’t want. I don’t want people in China or Saudi Arabia or some other shitty place to have a say in what I should do or not do. Their nations are shitty for a reason: they make shitty decisions.

16

That last sentence gives me the chills.

17

OK, what we have here is failure to understand what exactly the United Nations IS. It isn’t a government. It has no actual powers, other than what the member states agree to do. And why is that?

Because it wasn’t created as a transnational government (like the European Union), it was created as a way for already existing member states to resolve disputes short of war, so we could avoid World War III. Would the USSR in 1945 have joined any organization that interfered with the internal workings of the USSR? No, of course not. AND NEITHER WOULD ANY COUNTRY ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Except of course, countries that have mutually beneficial relations. And this is how the European Union came about. But note that the European Union is of an entirely different character than the United Nations. The United Nations includes every state on Earth. It includes totalitarian dictatorships, monarchies, theocracies, and liberal democracies. Why would anyone living in a liberal democracy agree to let the government of a totalitarian dictatorship interfere with their internal workings?

I can imagine the United States becoming part of a transnational global governing body, but such a governing body has to be composed solely of liberal democratic states, such as those that comprise the European Union. Note the stringent requirements before any state can petition to be allowed to join the EU. Only liberal democracies of good character can be considered. Anything else is insanity, it would be like inviting the Soviet Union to join NATO. NATO was an organization set up for mutual defense against the Soviet Union, allowing the Soviet Union to join would have made NATO pointless.

The United Nations is a talking shop to allow existing governments of all sorts, whether fascist dictatorships or liberal democracies, to sit down and try to hash out differences as an alternative to war.

If you want a transnational government, you have to start with a brand new organization. Or, if you want to turn the UN into an effective transnational government, the dictatorships and illiberal states will have no place in the UN, and will either leave, or have to be kicked out. And then you’ll probably want to set up some sort of organization where the states, even illiberal states, can try to resolve disputes between themselves. And since the United Nations no longer serves that purpose, you’ll have to create a new one.

So wouldn’t it make more sense to leave the United Nations as it is, a talking shop open to any state of any character, and set up a new transnational governing organization? Or persuade the European Union to change its name to the Liberal State Union, and allow Canada, Australia, Japan, Costa Rica, and any other other interested liberal democratic states around the world, to join?