Faculty Research Fellow Sam Deese Authors Op-Ed on UN Democratization

Sam Deese, a Senior Lecturer in the College of General Studies and a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, authored a recent op-ed on the democratization of global governance for Democracy Without Borders.

Drawing on ideas from his 2018 book titled Climate Change and the Future of Democracy, Deese argues that there are three possible pathways toward supranational democracy: organizing municipalities in a global parliament; creating a federal union of the world’s democracies; and, most plausibly in Deese’s view, democratizing the United Nations.

Deese argues that establishing a UN Parliamentary Assembly is the most plausible way forward in large part due to current global challenges, particularly the backsliding of longstanding democracies and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“[The COVID-19] crisis, like the myriad ecological and public health crises that will emerge as a result of climate change in the near future, is global in nature and it requires a congruent response,” Deese writes. “If the UN is to meet this ongoing crisis and the others that lay just around the corner, it must become far more democratic, transparent, and responsive than it is today.”

Read the article here.

As a Pardee Center Faculty Research Fellow, Deese and Michael Holm will convene a three-day virtual symposium in October titled “Democracy Beyond the Nation State.” The symposium, co-hosted by the Pardee Center, will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from around the world to explore the creation of democratic global institutions to respond to future environmental and social challenges. More details on the symposium will be available soon.