There are some little SPOILERS ahead, but I'll keep them to a minimum.

Anyway, those who have read it, or have some vague idea of what I'm talking about, remember Nicolae Carpathia before we absolutely knew he was the AntiChrist? I think that's a good Hegemon, right there. A good model for one anyway.

Knowledgable, intelligent, peace + disarmament as their ultimate goal...

Sounds like a great plan... except that it put a whole friggin' bunch of nukes at the AntiChrist's disposal.

But take a less demonic Carpathia and apply the same plan...?

The last point on this thread seems to be a unified "western" governmemt as a step toward a unified world government. What kind of powers would the western government have? Where would you put in geographically? Would each person have an equal vote? how would it be set up? e.g. does each state in the US, Canada and country/and or state in Europe elect their representatives, and then those representatives elect European/North ameriacn level representatives, and these form a sort of coalition? or is it more direct, e.g. each citizen of Europe/north maerica gets one vote to elect a "western hegemon"? Would there be pollitical parties, or does the hegemon stand as an individual? What would you do on major issues where Europe and USA disagree?

When I ask where would it be geographically, it may not seem important, but phsycolgically it seems so. I mean in the EU, the European government is in Brussels, and also in Strasburg. All the änti-unification" articles refere to giving powers to Brussels, even thought Brussels and Belgium have no more power than other countries of the EU. How would you persuade European to be governmed from the USA, or Americans to be governed from Europe. Either would be very hard. Or would you have the different branches of the government in different countries?

I think this isn't quite as unreasonable as it may sound. I live in America, but I have contact with people in various parts of East Asia, and there is a gradually evolving Asian pop culture. Chinese and Taiwanese singers, Korean hip-hop bands, Japanese anime and toys...these fads may seem trivial but I think they're contributing to a sense of common identity among the people in that region. This would indeed be one step towards a multinational government. Of course, it may never jump the gap from a regional entity to a global one. Still, it's not such an impossible idea.

As for Humani's point about geography, I always imagined a Western world government being centered in New York. All right, I'm biased on this too. But New York is so cosmopolitan that it tends to have less of a specific national loyalty than other major cities. I mean, you can walk for blocks without hearing any English in some parts of the city. On the other hand, a better option may be to station branches of the government in different cities. Sort of the way parts of the UN are in Geneva? Except more widespread? I think that could be a good idea too.

If/When China is democratic, it would also be a good choice. They have to alot to create loyalty to.

Are there clearly defined world regions do you think? So maybe there could be 1 department in each region? That way it would be less orientated or associated with one country it was based in.

e.g.
1.North America
2.Central America
3.South America
4.Europe
5.Arab Countries
6.Africa
7.Central/Western Asia (Russia, Caucasus..)
8. South Asia (India, Pakistan..)
9. China
10.South East Asia (ASEAN)
11.Australia + NewZealand

What's missed out? where would Japan fit in? Should Central and South America be the same region?
[Changed "latin" to central, Latin america is south america, right?]

Personally I think that the subdivisions you've mentioned would be like a secondary level. The primary level should be separated by Continent.

1.) The Americas
2.) Africa
3.) Europe
4.) Australia/NZ
5.) Asia
6.) Micronesia/Polynesia/Indonesia

We have 3 branches of government. The executive (The president, Vice President, and the cabinet. This also covers law enforcement)

The Judicial(the courts)

and The Legislative (law making bodies)

our 2 house legislative system works this way.

First we have The House of Representatives. Each state gets a certain number of representatives based on population. This number of representatives is always the same, it is only the distribution that changes. That number is 540.

Next, is the Senate. Each state gets exacty two senators. No more, no less. This is a sort of check to give the smaller, less populous states a larger voice.

I don't believe that state borders have ever been changed to fit the population. There have been restructurings of borders, but not due to population. Virginia was split into two states over a disagreement on seccession during the civil war. Several New England States have been split in the past as part of a compromise over slavery issues, and my very own state, Texas, was chopped up into pieces when admitted into the union. But there hasn't been such a redrawing of the lines in more than 100 years. It wouldn't be an issue in the international Government.

But on things such as Kyoto (or some future equivelent), on ICC, on Isreal, genetically modified food, legality of death penalty, civilians owning guns.. etc there are many things that EU agrees on, which the USA disagrees on.

What if, when the world government gets more powerful, that some countries decide to split themselves into 2 or more countries to get more votes? Like if UK became England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to get more votes?

Is it up to each individual country, how they define themselves as a country? If the UK were to say well already we are 4 countries, so we get 4 (or 8 if you get 2 each) votes. United kingdom, is a kingdom (??), not a country. Would this be allowed, if no real change within the UK?

But anyway, I think it is easier, and fairer if it is per person, rather than per country. what if one person were to declare themselves a country?? [OK probably this can't happen, considering how difficult palestine is finding it, to declare itself a counry] If each person has an equal vote, I think it is more fair. Or maybe it could be like 2 + (cetain fraction of population). So every country would get at least 2, then bigger (population) countries would get more.

And what areas do you think the world government should have power over? Trade rules, military, environment, human rights.. the kind of things we aready have international organisations for? Does the world government collect taxes, like in the shadown of the hedgemon. Would this be for things like famines in Africa, and other "emergencies"? or would this even be to provide social security in all countries?

Countries splitting to get more votes? That won't happen. to continue your previous analogy, you don't see states splitting to have better representation, because inevitably, the two would eventually disagree and would have the power to hinder rather than help the original. Plus, you are not taking into account the factor of nationalism/patriotism. Loyalty to one's nation is of paramount importance to most people. Barring some kind of civil unrest or political/religious persecution, a people will prefer to work within the existing state/system to make their changes. Nobody will be willing to forsake their country just to have an extra voice in the international government.

If you will remember, in all the recent examples of new nations coming about, you are not official, and you don't matter, until the other nations recognize your independant status. This is why civil wars are fought. To achieve independant recognition.

As to your proposal of a popular vote, or a certain number of votes based entirely on population, this is not any more fair. in this scenario, you get a huge populous country like China controlling the entire thing for their exclusive benefit and the detriment of the smaller less populous countries, like say Israel, or Rwanda or Lithuania. The two party system gives us majority rule but prevents the extremely large populations from dominating.

Something I neglected to mention about this system is that the way things work follows thus:

a law is first created in the house of representatives(based on the majority). Once they pass the bill, then it goes to the senate(2 each) where it can be halted. In this way, the smaller states get their voices heard, while still giving the larger states more representation than the smaller ones.

I'm sure you'll agree that this is more fair than a strictly populational system.

But that's changed.

We transmit incredible amounts of information instantly and effortlessly. A popular vote of the people has become remarkably and surprisingly more feasible.

Next, is the Senate. Each state gets exacty two senators. No more, no less. This is a sort of check to give the smaller, less populous states a larger voice.
a law is first created in the house of representatives(based on the majority). Once they pass the bill, then it goes to the senate(2 each) where it can be halted. In this way, the smaller states get their voices heard, while still giving the larger states more representation than the smaller ones.

OK, so in the international version of this, instead of each country having 2 "senators", it would be each region, as defined by one of the following:

1.North America
2.Central America
3.South America
4.Europe
5.Arab Countries
6.Africa
7.Central/Western Asia (Russia, Caucasus..)
8. South Asia (India, Pakistan..)
9. China
10.South East Asia (ASEAN)
11.Australia + NewZealand

1.) The Americas
2.) Africa
3.) Europe
4.) Australia/NZ
5.) Asia
6.) Micronesia/Polynesia/Indonesia

Or do we need a few more?

In the "house of representatives" or "world parliament" countries, or regions would have representatives based on their populations.

Now do we have political parties, or political groupings, or individuals?

I think the two-house system is a nice compromise. But your regional breakdown needs some work. The first system not only excludes Japan, it also leaves out Korea. Yeah, I know Korea doesn't sound too important, but I *am* Korean so I feel a bit left out. If we go with the first system, it should be called East Asia. My problem with the second system is that having just an "Asia" region is too broad and general. And I'm pretty sure that places like India and Pakistan are not going to agree with each other on anything, so dumping them together in the same region may be counterproductive. Split Asia into the Islamic countries, India and its Hindu neighbors, Southeast Asia and East Asia, perhaps?

I don't know about most people having the Internet. There are people without telephones in some countries still. Of course, we don't know exactly what the world would be like in the future. I prefer a political party system. Or rather, I see it as a necesssary compromise. Party systems evolved because populations grew too large and complex, so I think they would be inevitable in a global democracy.

What about this? Each country votes on electors, who then vote for party candidates on a regional election for representatives to the World Parliament/Congress. The representatives then can vote for party candidates on a global election for President/Hegemon.

Also, any ideas about term lengths? A short term length reduces the chance for a cohesive long-term government policy, but a long term length increases the risk of dictatorship or tyranny. I prefer the long term length, myself. How long would terms be?

http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

has populations, a long with whole load of other info.. does anyone have a link, of populations more directly?

Whilst we're thinking about political aprties etc, I'll write about how it works in the European Parliament.

Each country in the EU is assigned a number of representatives, according to population. The countries can then sub-divide this by region/state if they wish.

In the Euro-pariliament there are political "groups" e.g. socialists, librals, christian somethings..(i don't remember their name), greens/enviromentalists etc, independants..
Then each political party in each country chooses a group to affiliate to, or they can create a new one if none fit. So in the countries you vote for one of the parties in your country, and this counts to the political grouping which that party has chosen. maybe there could be a similar system? The political groupings have their own manifestos, websites etc..

I mean when you vote for a political party in your country, the representative will be from that party, and be from your country. In the parliament the representative would sit with the other representatives of the same political grouping, even if they were from another country.

This way if you don't happen to agree with the majority of your country, your vote still counts to what you voted for, not what the majority of your country voted for.

They are basically the same as political parties, but have different names in each country, depending on which parties were already there before the existence of a euro parliament.

I'm suggsting it, because each country in the world already has different selections of political parties. Instead of getting rid of them all, and creating new world parties, this is a type of compromise. So for example the German Socialist party, and the UK labour party, and the australian labor party would keep their original names, but act as one party in the world parliament. Because they probably have similar (socialist) views on most issues, if they don't they can choose to be separate if they like. It just makes for less really small local parties in the world parliament.

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2. What is all this talk of giant States(capital S)? A. Throwing everybody into one mob will i. Defeat the purpose of having a Senate, as the State will not have a strong common view point. ii. Increase chances of one group(country, ethnicity, or religion) taking control of more power(the whole State) than they are entitled to. iii. Severely increase chances of rebellion against the newWG if such a group did take control, especialy if in more than one State. B. Even now the democracy of the U.S. is becoming limited by the fact that people in different areas of the individual states have totally different cultures and situations. Therefore, instead of grouping the smaller ones, I propose we shrink the larger countries, perhaps even to the size of large cities. None of this, of course, can happen in full until after the newWG is united, to do so would create to much discord.

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No-one said the have big states. It was just a comparison to the roles of states in the US senate, to the world regions in the 2nd house of the world government (which we didn't have a name for yet).
It would be an option to have indivual countries, and split up bigger countries into regions, but that would make too many representatives. The world has about 6 billion people, and they are all equally imortant, we are trying to think of way that everyone is reasonaly equally represented, without smaller groups having no say. If you have another idea, please post it. Already countries in th same area are forming groupings, such as EU, ASEAN, SAARC, Arab league, carabean and latin american trading block (name??), Nafta, african has discussion thing too, Commonwealth of independant states (Russia and some more are in this)... etc.. we are sort fo expanding on this idea.

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3. Yeah, I left out Japan and Korea, they might be the key to annexing China perhaps? Certainly that action will be difficult, more difficult, I think, than getting the muslims to join us.

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4. Maybe I spoke too soon starting with the western world, perhaps the thing to do is to start small and highly focused? Or perhaps not.

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I think the political groups idea is interesting, but I do have some small objections. People might support a party's policies on the national level, but not on a global level. Example: New Yorkers are notoriously Democratic, and most of us voted for Gore in the last elections, but we ended up electing a Republican mayor *again*. I know a lot of people who call themselves Democrats, but voted for Bloomberg (the Republican candidate) in the last mayoral elections because they thought he could deal with the economic setback in the city better. The party may have good policies on the national level, but not necessarily on the global level. Also, what about nations that don't have as many established parties? I think that would put some political groups at a disadvantage. I really like this idea of groups, but I think it needs some work.

The idea about splitting states into large cities...we're just considering this as a way to divide up voting, right? We wouldn't actually redraw any political boundaries? I think the regional idea is still best, as long as we take into consideration cultural differences and population size.

In the european parliament now, there are separate elections for that, than for national elections.

You mean like, if there was a socialist group, then at the moment there is no socialist party in the USA, so this would be unfair to the socialist group? I guess, if they thought that people in the USA would want to vote for them, they could create a new party? There's no rule, as far as I know that says there can only be 2 parties in the USA, or is there?

Another thing, dang it all, I'm not anti-China! Alls I meant by "Annexing" is getting them to throw aside their government and join a higher cause. I happen to have a great deal of respect for Chinese culture and history, which their government has all but destroyed. I also believe in the goodness of the Chinese people, as I believe in the goodness of all people. Many of the inate freedoms of those people(who I like) have been taken away by their government(which I don't like). Additionally, I don't believe that any such government should have any part in the creation of the newWG. That is, as I assume, it is to be a moral establishment. Now do you get it?

On a similar note, but a more conroversial one(But controversy is not the purpose here), and to answer your question about the two party system in the USA, Humany, There not only can be, but indeed are other parties in the U.S., but due to a great deal of scandalous control through wealth (because of which both parties should be denied, or seriuously reformed before, participation in the creation of the newWG) those other parties never hold any kind of real power.

Question Tarig, what exactly do you mean by,'Poltical boudaries' in your last post? What I thought we were discussing, and indeed what I thought more important, was the geographical an populational size of the States(cap. S) that the House of representatives, and probably more crucially, the Senate, would come from. What were you talking about?

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"It would be an option to have indivual countries, and split up bigger countries into regions, but that would make too many representatives." Ok, wait a minute, what exactly makes you think that there will likely be to many elected representatives provided all reps are elected fairly, and (via the internet, most likely) can vote on policy fairly? As to "smaller groups having no say", I'm afraid I misunderstand. Are we trying to give political power to groups? Or to the people? Be aware, groups have leaders, not always fairly elected. Further, It seems to me that the clause, "majority rule, minority right" applies here. Everybody has their unalienable rights, but beyond those, the will of the majority must be served.

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Another thing, dang it all, I'm not anti-China! Alls I meant by "Annexing" is getting them to throw aside their government and join a higher cause. I happen to have a great deal of respect for Chinese culture and history, which their government has all but destroyed. I also believe in the goodness of the Chinese people, as I believe in the goodness of all people. Many of the inate freedoms of those people(who I like) have been taken away by their government(which I don't like). Additionally, I don't believe that any such government should have any part in the creation of the newWG. That is, as I assume, it is to be a moral establishment. Now do you get it?

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Humani, you are misinformed. the physical size of states differs widely in the USA. the smallest, Rhode Island, is very very different in size from say, Texas, or Alaska, or Arizona, many of which have grossly smaller populations than say, new York or New Jersey. Population density must be taken into account. But this is why the 2 house system is neccessary. If all subdivisions were approximately equal in size, then you wouldn't need the limiting factor of the Senate. But seeing as how splitting up countries probably wouldn't go over very well, the 2 party congress makes more sense.

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OK, i don't know the populations of US states, what is the biggest (pop) and which is the smallest? By the way everytime i mention big/small. i mean population size and not physical land area. but anyway it varies ess than Vatican city compared to China.. that's what i was comparing it to.