There are widening gaps between nation-states as they respond to global challenges. Polylateralism fills them in, and transcends them
From Noema
We were struck by this tweet from the cultural evolutionist Joe Brewer from Colombia the other day:
Quite a vision! But we want to dig into the article that Joe was referring to - from the editor of Noema, Nathan Gardels, on his new framing of global relationships - not multilateralism or unilateralism, but polylateralism.
“Polylateral” seems to mean all those who are not nation-states, but who are nevertheless seeking to act at a global level. Gardels lists them as “churches, private foundations, humanitarian organizations, doctors, scientists, companies, teen activists, provinces and cities”—not to mention operators on social media. And some structures we are developing too (see at the end). Gardels continues:
…Planetary realities — combined with the growing fragmentation of identities within nations and the newfound connectivity that links those identities beyond borders — suggest the emergence of something new: a distributed form of governance in which diverse constituencies from across the world with common interests and values can act effectively alongside creaking sovereignty.
In effect, what we are seeing is the beginning of a reversal of the whole Westphalian notion that political and cultural life could, and must, be contained within designated territories.
As evidence, Gardels quotes various private initiatives to get Afghans airlifted out of the country; the C40 group of city mayors coordinating their climate targets and methods; Jerry Brown’s California, coordinating climate action with Hubei and Guangdong, despite hostilities between China and US governments; and Gavi coordinating major actors to get Covid vaccines quickly distributed in the developing world.
He continues:
There seems a parallel with present debates in the West around how to integrate new forms of citizen participation into current systems of representative democracy, in order to mend the alienation and breach of trust between the public and the institutions of self-government.
The idea of “participation wthout populism” would do this by inviting the broader civil society into governance through new mediating institutions such as citizens assemblies and digital deliberative platforms. These would both complement and compensate for the waning legitimacy of representative government.
Such an innovation would rebalance the institutional equilibrium of republics, for an age when social networks have drawn more players outside the formal halls of power into the political fray than ever before.
In essence, polylateralism proposes a similar arrangement at the planetary scale by integrating those agents of action outside official channels into global governance in a way that complements the nation-state and the established state-to-state multilateral institutions.
Such a hybrid system would create a new balance between the multitude of effective actors that lack formal legitimacy and the nation-states that possess that formal legitimacy but lack the capacity to address planetary challenges on their own.
More here. We would nod, and note that this polylateralism should doubtless recognise A/UK’s more planetary networking and ambitions. This is a structure where locally-defined CANs (community/citizen action/agency networks), operating in a spirt of cosmolocalism, upload and download from a cloud (both digital and metaphorical) of best regenerative practice around the world. A CAN of CANs, as it were.