- Houellebecq’s omelette Theodore Dalrymple, First Things
- Hayek and the Lucas critique David Glasner, Uneasy Money
- An interesting alternative to federation Maxwell Tabarrok, Maximum Progress (h/t Vishnu)
federation
Nightcap
- Federal-republican security versus democratic peace (pdf) Daniel Deudney, EJIR
- Republics in the New World (don’t forget about the Cherokee) John Majewski, TIR
- Fresh air and fascism in the Bavarian Alps Lucy Lethbridge, Spectator
- After Christendom Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Commonweal
Nightcap
- “The Philadelphian System: Sovereignty, Arms Control, and Balance of Power in the American States-Union, Circa 1787-1861” (pdf) Daniel Deudney, International Organization
The Federation of Free States: Helping Atlas Shrug
After federating with 51 polities, with one round of peaceful federation happening in 2025 and another in 2045, life in the compound republic got real good, for everyone.
In 2055, diplomats, politicians, and policymakers from the federation began targeting wealthy provinces and countries for membership, a new development that was sparked in part by an alarming rise in despotism (democratic and authoritarian) and in part by stagnant economic growth in the non-Philadelphian interstate order. German, Indian, Brazilian, Italian, and Chinese polities were recruited to join the federation. The Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates were also recruited to join.
The military of the republic is relatively small compared to polities like Russia and China, but far more lethal and technologically advanced, so recruitment was bold. Poaching the rich provinces of second-tier regional powers was not welcomed by the second tiers. They felt bullied. China threatened war, as it did in 2025 when Taiwan joined the federation, but there was nothing the CCP could do about it.
A bunch of separatist regions applied for membership, too. This is probably the most important difference between Westphalian sovereignty and Philadelphian sovereignty. When the Westphalian interstate order was hegemonic, separatists wanted independence; the Philadelphian interstate order gives separatist movements an incentive to join the compound republic instead of trying to go it alone. Westphalian states do not much like the compound republic’s courting of their separatist regions, either.
So between the active courting of wealthy provinces and the active courting of secessionist movements, the stage has been set for a less-than-peaceful round of federating with polities that wish to join the federation of free states.
Many poor states continued to apply for membership, too.
In 2055, here is what the Philadelphian interstate order looks like:
Lagos and Los Angeles joined New York, Tokyo, and London as major financial centers. The people in Canaan, England, and Wales, taking a page out of the Ashanti playbook, let their nationalist sentiments wane to a cultural level rather than a politico-legal level. The people in these “states” had finally come to terms with their place in the Philadelphian interstate order.
The German states of Bavaria, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia (how ironic!), Baden-Württemberg, and Rhine-Hesse (a combination of the current states of Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate) all joined the federation.
The Netherlands joined as is. The Dutch provinces have a long, proud history of republicanism, and it was not an easy choice to make. But by themselves, they were just too small to join the federation, so they banded together a la the Nigerian states of 2045, and joined as a single unit, where they enjoy two Senate seats and roughly the same amount of representatives in Congress as New York or Pennsylvania.
Five Italian provinces joined: Veneto, Lombardy, Trentino-South Tyrol, Piedmont, and Liguria. Piedmont’s membership in the Philadelphian union is all the more remarkable given its role in forming Italy as a nation-state.
The Baltic states and many parts of Poland applied for membership, but the Baltic states could not, in the end, give up their Westphalian sovereignty, and the Polish voivodeships, too small to be admitted on their own, could not come up with a suitable agreement for merging and forming new “states” to join the Philadelphian union.
The United Arab Emirates joined as is.
Three of the wealthiest Indian states joined the federation: Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra. India was upset, but it’s long history of democratic and federal government, along with its close relationship with the West and relative military weakness compared to the union, prevented a war over the three states leaving for the compound republic.
War did not come to China, either, when the federation of free states poached five southern provinces and two special administrative units: Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangxi, and Guangdong (which merged with Macau and Hong Kong). The provinces were in almost open rebellion against the CCP. They had grown tired of the Party’s paranoia and broken promises. Street protests were massive. There is a history of violent uprisings in the region. The CCP, which had turned inward when Taiwan joined the Philadelphian union in 2025, had impoverished the country. Beijing had a massive military but it was outdated, ill-disciplined, and corrupt. China had no means to fight a war over the wealthy provinces that joined the compound republic. Unlike the 19th century, when China was humiliated by the West, only the Communist Party of China was humiliated in this confrontation.
Six of Brazil’s wealthiest states also joined the Philadelphian interstate order: Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Paraná, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul. Atlas shrugged, and the compound republic responded.
Lebanon gave up its sovereignty, too, but it joined Canaan so no new Senators were added. (I didn’t do the math, but Canaan might or might not get another seat in the House of Representatives.)
Secessionist movements have flowered since the experiment in self-government under the Madisonian constitutional order went global. It’s a counter-intuitive notion: the larger the Philadelphian union gets, the more secessionist movements flourish. In 2055, there were 26 more “states” that joined the compound republic, giving the union 127 members overall.
Hayek the globalist
“Since it has been argued so far that an essentially liberal economic regime is a necessary condition for the success of any interstate federation, it may be added, in conclusion, that the converse is no less true: the abrogation of national sovereignties and the creation of an effective international order of law is a necessary complement and the logical consummation of the liberal program.”
The case for Taiwan’s statehood
When Russia invaded Ukraine a few short weeks ago, some people began to worry that China might try to do the same thing with Taiwan. I didn’t worry about this myself, as China is mostly a paper tiger, but also because the US has close military ties with Taiwan. Taiwan has close economic relationships with several wealthy democratic states in East Asia, too. Contrast this geopolitical context with Ukraine, and the parallels, while tempting, do not add up.
The whole debate and worry over Taiwan got me thinking again about federation as a libertarian foreign policy. Why shouldn’t Taiwan just join the United States? Here are the most common objections to such a federation:
Geography. This is probably one of the strongest cases against Taiwan joining the US, since it’s so far away from not only the mainland but Hawaii, too. Aaaand it’s just off the coast of China, which would likely cause friction with the regional power were Beijing to suddenly find itself neighboring a transoceanic republic.
This is all much ado about nothing. A plane ride from Dallas to Taipei is 14 hours if you take out the layovers. Somebody living in Kaohsiung could send me an email after reading this essay and I could access it within minutes. Geography still matters, but its not an insurmountable barrier to a freer, more open world via the federative principles of the United States constitution.
Culture. A big complaint I see about adding “states” to the American republic is “culture.” Fellow Notewriter Edwin does this all the time, and it can make sense, on the surface, in some cases, but not in Taiwan’s, and not in the Indo-Pacific more generally.
Look at Taiwan’s 2020 presidential election results:
Look familiar? There’s only two colors. It’s a contest between a left-wing and right-wing, and both wings are committed to, and bound by, liberty and democracy. There are no “ethnic” parties, no “religious” parties, and no radical parties, mostly because Taiwan has the same electoral system as the US does: a “first-past-the post” one. So the cultural angle is even weaker than first imagined. Taiwan started out as a nationalist holdout against the Communist Party, but today nationalism doesn’t carry a whole lot of weight. Adding Taiwan to the republic would be like adding another California or Hawaii, albeit with more conservative votes. It’s plausible that adding Taiwan would give Democrats two more reliable seats in the senate, but this is merely cause to invite a polity that would reliably vote Republican to also join the United States.
Self-determination / cultural autonomy. There’s an argument in some circles that joining the US would be akin to losing self-determination and even cultural autonomy. I don’t see how any of this could be true. Even today, people in American states retain a “state-centric” identity when it comes to thinking about their place in the US. That Taiwanese would be able to add “American” to a plethora of other identities already at their disposal could only be a good thing.
China. Would China fight a war against the US over Taiwan statehood? Maybe, but given Russia’s poor showing in Ukraine, the war would end quickly, at least from a Taiwanese statehood perspective. The CCP’s military has no fighting experience, unproven tech, unproven hardware, and…no fighting experience. The worst that would happen, I think, is that the CCP threatens war, maybe sends some warships to the strait, maybe fires some rockets over the island and flies some fighter jets over the island, but that’s about it. The CCP just doesn’t have the muster to fight a war against the United States over Taiwan.
These four objections are so common that I can’t help but be exasperated by their banality, especially given the rich tradition of republican security theory and federalist thought over the past three or four thousand years. There are two reasons for Americans, and especially libertarians, to support Taiwan’s federation with the US:
The free riding problem. The first thing that all libertarians complain about when it comes to “foreign policy” is the free riding problem. This is a problem in political economy where agents will enjoy the benefits of a policy at the expense of other agents who are required to bear the costs. Libertarians aren’t wrong to complain about the free riding problem. It’s a big problem. Think of a Russian attack on NATO ally Lithuania.
Taiwan has a fairly hard guarantee of US military support were the Communist Party of China to attack it. This, the argument goes, allows Taiwan to be a bit more reckless than it otherwise would be when dealing with Beijing. Therefore, according to non-interventionists, the US should simply stop guaranteeing Taiwan’s military security and just trade with the people of the island instead. It would be an awful scenario to face were Taiwan to goad China into attacking it and thus draw the US into a war with China.
Federating would end the free riding problem once and for all. Taiwan’s citizens would be American citizens. They would benefit, and pay the costs, associated with such citizenship.
Sovereignty. Taiwan is not a sovereign nation-state, as China has blocked all of the island’s attempts to become so, and it never will be so long as nation-state status depends upon recognition by large states such as Russia and China (as well as the US). This actually makes it easier for Taiwan to join the republic. The American senate is a tool of international diplomacy that was utilized to bind independent states together in a federal union by trading their sovereignty for seats in a powerful upper house of Congress. Taiwan wouldn’t have to go through the arduous process of debating whether or not its sovereignty is worth the price of admission into a North American federal order, because its status as a Westphalian sovereign nation-state is non-existent.
By incorporating Taiwan into its federal order, the US could revamp the liberal world order, and it could do so by adhering to the principles which made it a beacon for liberty in the first place.
The Federation of Free States: Growing pains
We’re continuing our thought experiment on adding more states to the American republic.
Our initial experiment added 29 states to the union in 2025. After a few decades of relative success (the entire world grew economically from 2025 to 2045), the bicameral Congress of free states was willing to accept several new members, who in turn were willing to trade their sovereignty for two seats in the Senate. The polities that joined the federation of free states in the second peaceful geographic expansion of the Philadelphian federal order were varied, but only somewhat predictable. The Madisionian compound republic rearranged the map once again. Here is what it looks like in 2045:
As you can see, most of the expansion came in North America, East Asia, and West Africa. The experience of Canaan, England, and Wales hasn’t been bad, but enough nationalist-secessionist sentiments remain in these three “states” that none of their neighbors thought that giving up their sovereignty for Senate seats was worth it. All three economies grew, and peace finally came to Canaan, but if peace, wealth, and security from predation were the only things that people wanted then we wouldn’t be people. We’d be something else entirely. People want freedom, and the compound republic – the federation of free states – did not yet show in 2045 it was capable of extirpating the menace of nationalism from human existence.
The success of the ranching states of Mexico – Coahuila, Tamaulipas, and Nuevo León – within the United States prompted several more Mexican states to apply for statehood, but the pushback against too many states joining the union was stern. Yucatán and Chihuahua were added as is, giving the Senate four more seats, but the states of Zacatecas, Durango, and San Luis Potosí had to combine into one state (they called it San Luis Potosí, and it’s about the size of Nevada) in order to join the Philadelphian world order.
The prairie provinces of Canada also did well for themselves since 2025. So well, in fact, that five more provinces applied to join. However, Congress did not want to add five more states with such sparse populations, so the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Labrador merged to become a state that they called Nova Scotia, a massive landmass with enough people for only one or maybe two representatives. By the way, from 2025 to 2045, several old American states — Washington, Oregon, and Vermont – all held referendums on whether to leave the Madisonian republic and join Canada (or go it alone), but the referendums have proved to be unsuccessful.
Liberia’s success in the American federation is perhaps the most encouraging progress of all. Crime rates skyrocketed once Liberia joined the union, but this only shows how the American legal system does such a wonderful job of protecting property rights. Violent crime dropped, but crimes involving property rights reached an all-time high, which means that property rights in Liberia are finally being protected by a state strong enough to do so. The GDP (PPP) per capita of Liberia quadrupled from 2025 to 2045. Several neighboring states took notice, but only one, Sierra Leone, joined the federation outright.
Several Nigerian and Ghanaian polities joined the republic. All of the polities started out as administrative units within Ghana and Nigeria, and there were too many that wanted to join. So, they borrowed from San Luis Potosí’s playbook and merged with each other before applying for statehood as larger polities. From Nigeria, the states of Oyo (made up of five Nigerian states), Biafra (made up of eight states), Benin (made up of four states), and Bayelsa (three states) all joined. The states are all from the south of Nigeria.
Ghana sent three states to the republic: Ashanti (made up of five Ghanaian provinces), Volta (made up of three provinces), and Cape Coast (three provinces). The 11 provinces that made up the three new states were all from Ghana’s south. It should be noted the the Ashanti region had a relatively strong sense of nationalism when it applied for membership to the federation, and that the extirpation of this nationalism in exchange for self-government in a compound republic was not a problem for its inhabitants.
Colombia and Panama. The Caribbean experience has had less of a “wow factor” than Liberia or Mexico. Economic growth in Antilles was a little bit better than the regional average, but not by much. The big change was demographics, as many seniors from the original 50 states moved to Antilles, and many young people from Antilles moved to the original 50 states. The crime rate was similar to that of Liberia, too, with violent crimes dropping but property crimes increasing a little bit. Most of the countries in Central America (sans Costa Rica) and all of the Pacific countries in South America applied for membership in one form or another. However, only four states were added in 2045: three from Colombia and the whole of Panama. The four states got together and pulled out a map of 19th century Gran Colombia to put together a plan for federation. Isthmo (Panama), Cundinamarca (made up of eight Colombian states), Magdalena (made up of six states), and Cauca (five states) all joined the federation of free states.
Things went so well in East Asia and the Pacific that the entire country of Vietnam applied lock, stock, and barrel. Like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines in 2025, Vietnam had too many states for the federation so six regions joined instead: Bắc Trung Bộ, Bắc Bộ, Tây Nguyên, Đông Nam Bộ, Tây Nam Bộ, and Đồng Bằng Sông Hồng. The Vietnamese now enjoy the military and economic benefits that come with being federated with the compound republic of the United States.
Further thoughts
The Canadian and West African states are the only ones with English-language speakers. Nevertheless, English continues to be employed as the lingua franca of the federated polity. This has produced a class division between those who can speak English and those who cannot, and eventually English will be spoken by nearly everybody in the polity (now numbering just over one billion souls), but the native languages are unlikely to disappear. They’ll continue to evolve on their own lines, and most people in the federation will simply be able to speak more than one language. The English of the Constitution and Bill of Rights will no doubt become antiquated as English evolves, but it’s already pretty antiquated today (2022) and there’s been no real challenge in 250 years to English’s status as the lingua franca of the republic.
Reactions to the compound republic from other states
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the United States’ decision to apply federation to its foreign policy is the reaction of other states. The Russians, who it could be argued had an alternative to the Westphalian order in the 19th century (and this is why it pursued its own foreign policy agenda throughout the Cold War, rather than for the exportation of the Revolution), are still doing what they’ve been doing since 2000: recognizing small states along their vast border and slowly chipping away at the losses of their empire. States such as Donetsk, South Ossetia, and Crimea are recognized as states by Russia, Belarus, and, say Kazakhstan, but in 2045 the compound republic decided to build upon its foreign policy of federation by recognizing these claims to independence. This means that post-Soviet states like Ukraine and Georgia lose territory, but it doesn’t necessarily make Russia stronger and it doesn’t mean freedom is in decline. Out of two states (in this example), five now exist, and there’s nothing to suggest that they won’t lean on the compound republic rather than the Russian Federation.
The CCP turned inward, especially once the compound republic called its bluff on Taiwan. Like Russia, it has been argued that an alternative state system to Westphalia existed prior to 19th century European imperialism. The Belt and Road Initiative was supposedly part of the Tianxia state system, but regardless of whether or not you buy this argument (I don’t), China’s expansion ceased once Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan joined the Philadelphian union. The CCP became even more repressive and paranoid. The non-Han grew more despondent, and the non-Mandarin speaking Chinese, especially those living along the wealthy seaboard of the South China Sea, grew angry.
The Europeans and their interstate system continued to try to keep the Westphalian European Union alive, but without the abrogation of state sovereignty, the EU continued to be ineffectual. The French, taking a page from the American playbook, revived an old effort to federate with its former colonies. The French continued to adhere to a Westphalian logic in this effort, and the French Union floundered as badly as the European Union. The key to Madisonian compound republic’s success has been its abrogation of state sovereignty (which is “traded” for seats in the Senate). Portugal reached out to Brazil and Angola to discuss a Lusophone federation, and ties became closer, but Westphalian sovereignty trumped all discussions of cooperation and the Portuguese found themselves in the same situation as the French: members of two ineffectual confederations that are built upon Westphalian nation-state sovereignty.
The remnants of the British and Spanish Empires (Peru, Argentina, Australia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Iraq, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the British Caribbean, etc.) continued along the same path as the Europeans. Economic growth continued at its slow pace, but compared to the societies living within the compound republic, it was becoming clear that the Westphalian remnants were losing ground, especially in regards to liberty, equality under the law, and democratic governance.
In 2045, the American republic added 22 more states, making the federation a conglomerate of 101 “states” and the District of Columbia. Liberty is on the rise, and despotism is getting cornered.
“Federations, coalitions, and risk diversification”
[…] while we recognize that issues of participation in a coalition involve complex factors, there has been little discussion in the literature from a risk-sharing perspective. It is well-known in financial economics that the pooling of resources and the spreading of risk allows investors to realize a rate of return that approaches the expected rate. We take this to be a natural motive for federation formation among a group of regions. Indeed, the existence of an ancient state in China (the example given in the next section) supports our intuition. It appears that floods, droughts and the ability of a centralized authority to diversify risk paved the way for the unification of China as early as 2000 years ago. Thus, our approach is not empirically irrelevant.
Click the “pdf” tab on the right-hand side, not the “buy PDF” tab.
Supranational (political) entrepreneurs
[…] the basis of the functional (Coasian) theory of international regimes advanced by Robert Keohane: If interstate transaction costs were very low, relative to the gains at stake for each actor, decentralized negotiation among voluntary actors with property rights would generate efficient outcomes. In summary, we may define informal supranational entrepreneurship as exploitation by international officials of asymmetrical control over scarce information or ideas to influence the outcomes of multilateral negotiations through initiation, mediation, and mobilization. […] Most existing studies of entrepreneurship fail to address this central puzzle. They focus on characteristics of supranational entrepreneurs and their actions, not the nature of alternatives.
The link (pdf) is here, and it’s a good read despite the jargon. You’ll notice that neither the Federalist Papers nor Hayek are cited in the piece. Libertarians have a chance to become relevant again in international affairs, if only they came to re-embrace the ideas of Madison, Smith, and Hayek, by abandoning non-interventionism and alliance free-riding and recognizing that federation is both a foreign policy and a type of government.
Libertarian foreign policy for the 21st century
American libertarians are behind the times when it comes to foreign policy (also known as “international relations”). We’re still, to a large extent, stuck in a Cold War mentality. The non-interventionism of Murray Rothbard and Robert Higgs is still prevalent in our circles, but this non-interventionism is rooted in the bipolar power struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union; it’s concerned with imperial overreach rather than liberty and republican security, which is understandable given the America’s role in the Cold War (the reactionary opposite to the Soviet penchant for exporting revolution).
European classical liberals are ahead of us, as they are in a more multipolar environment than us Americans, but they’re missing something too. They think the Westphalian status quo is just fine. They point to the European Union and they say, it’s better than nothing. But the world has changed since Westphalian confederations were en vogue. How does Westphalian nation-statism answer puzzles like Somaliland or Biafra or Balochistan?
It doesn’t.
American libertarians and European classical liberals have built their exit-centric approach to international relations upon Westphalian assumptions.
I think that an entrance-centric approach to the world would be a much better, more libertarian option.
Nightcap
- Our very British brand of totalitarianism James Jeffrey, Critic
- Federalist versus democratic peace (pdf) Daniel Deudney, EJIR
- Go Bruins!
Nightcap
- British and American fascism, past and present Priya Satia, Los Angeles Review of Books
- Why a world state is inevitable: the logic of anarchy (pdf) Alexander Wendt, EJIR
- Greater Britain or greater synthesis? (pdf) Daniel Deudney, RIS
- The Sung empire vs. the Byzantine “republic” Branko Milanovic, globalinequality
Does federation unite or divide?
I am reading a lot on federation lately, for an article I would like to contribute to Brandon’s special issue of Cosmos + Taxis. I am going back to the debate about federalizing (parts of the) the democratic world which was very lively in the 1930s and 1940s. Reading the texts, for example the best-selling Union Now! (1939) by American journalist Clarence Streit, you can feel the scare for the authoritarian rulers and their nationalistic and militaristic policies. As an anti-dote, Streit proposed the federation of all the grown democracies in the world at that time, 15 in total, spread over the globe. This Union of the North Atlantic had to include a union citizenship, a union defense force, a union customs-free economy, union money and union postal and communications system After the war broke out, Streit published a new version, now calling for a union between Britain and the USA. Needless to say, none of these or other proposals went anywhere. Still some interesting perpetual questions remain.
Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek also wrote on federation during this period, as I described in Classical Liberalism and International Relations Theory (2009). I now went back to their writings, which is a treat. It is nice to have a fresh look, I also have deeper insights now (at least – I think!) than I had about 15 years ago when first encountering these ideas.
One of the divides between Mises and Hayek (which they never openly discussed, as far as I am aware) revolved around the alleged pacifying effect of federations. Mises made the point that joining a federation would lead to a larger loss of sovereignty than was normally conceived in the debate. It was not just about pooling some powers at the federal level. In an interventionist world, Mises argued, the number of policies that are dealt with from the center, or the capitol, continually rise. After all, the call for intervention will be made from all corners of the federation, all the time. This leads to a call for equal treatment, which in turn lead to a larger number of policies and regulations administered from the capitol. Consequently, the member states increasingly lose sovereignty and eventually end up as mere provinces. This would be a new cause of division, especially when the member states of the new federation used to be powerful countries on their own. Hence, a federation divides, not unites. Therefore, he proposed a much more radical solution in his plan for Eastern Europe: no federation but a strict central union (administered by foreigners, in a foreign language he even once suggested) where the members would basically have no say at all over all the important legislation normally associated with sovereignty. The laws and regulations would be limited, ensuring maximum economic and political freedom for the individual citizen.
This blog is not meant to discuss the merits of Mises’ ideas. It solely aims to point at a division between Mises and Hayek. Hayek, and most thinkers on federation with him, Streit included, had different expectations about the political effects of federation. They expected that federation would be a force of unity. In a federation you arrange the most difficult and divisive policies at the center (for example defense, foreign policy and foreign trade), while leaving all other policies to the constituent parts. This allows room for different policies in those states, while taking away their instruments to start violent conflict. Yes, this would mean less sovereignty, but also less trouble, while the freedom within the federation still ensured as much or as little additional policies as the individual states see fit. Hayek would favor his idea the rest of his life, also proposing it for the Middle East, for example.
Who was right? That is impossible to say, I think. There are elements of both Misesian and Hayekian arguments in the real-life experiences of federations around the globe. For some it is indeed a good way to pool the core of sovereignty, while remaining as diverse as possible. Although most them do not disintegrate with violent conflict, the increase of all kind of policies at the federal center has certainly happened. However, this is not unique to federations and most importantly, it is not a question of formal legal organization. It is a question of mentality of both politicians and populations. This is another reason to keep fighting ‘the war of ideas’, because ideas have the power to change societies.
Exit, federation, and scale (from the comments)
I think you make an interesting point, but allow me a bit of push back. The world government would set the rules of how federated entities would interact. This would be like standards and protocols. You are correct that a set of shared standards can allow for enhanced competition, of the good variety (what I call constructive competition). This would be a good thing.
However the same shared standards would lock in the world to one set of protocols, thus reducing the discovery via variation and selection of the shared institutions themselves.
Thus we would see more short range constructive competition between states, and less long term exploration of new and potentially better institutional standards.
This is from Rojelio. He is pushing back against my argument in favor of world government from a libertarian point of view. He’s right, of course. There’s two points I need to do a better job of clarifying when I advocate for world government from a libertarian point of view:
- I don’t think federating the entire world is a good idea. I think the piecemeal federation of political units is what libertarians ought to aim for. (I think the US interstate order is the best avenue for achieving this aim.) A healthy “world federation” would govern (say) 85% of the world’s population. This brings me to my second point I need to clarify.
- The importance of exit needs to be addressed and institutionalized in a proper federal order. This is difficult to do, but not impossible. My argument is to make exit difficult, but not too difficult. The difficulty of exit should be somewhere on the scale between a constitutional amendment (too difficult) in the US order and Brexit (too easy) in the Westphalian order.
The bottom line is that a more libertarian world will likely be composed of a large federal polity that protects the freedoms of the vast majority of its citizens better than most nation-states do today. The other 15% of the world would live under despotism (which will center around “cultural cores”), or under sparsely-populated democratic republics (i.e Australia), or within free-riding microstates that otherwise rely on the protection of the large federal unit.
If, say, England, Tamaulipas, and Duyên hải Nam Trung Bộ were to federate with the United States tomorrow, these polities would not be agitating for exit after 10 years of experimentation in self-governance. If, say, Texas or Vermont wanted to exit after 10 years of federation with those 3 polities, they would have to go through a process (via all of the legislative branches involved) to do so. A simple majority vote would be disastrous. It is unlikely, then, that Texas or Vermont would leave such a federation. Pure freedom would be unrealized, but billions of people would be much freer.
Notes On Liberty 