The notion of a single political organization encompassing the whole of humanity—a world state—has intrigued mankind since earliest recorded history. This book provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of the history of world government, and questions whether political globalization, in the form of a federal world government, could and should complement the ongoing processes of economic and cultural globalization. While the potential peacekeeping advantage of such a state is obvious, the consensus judgment has always been against it, because it could lead to totalitarian tyranny. Yunker examines whether this judgment is still correct, considering that nuclear weapons of unimaginable destructiveness now exist, capable of destroying human civilization as we know it. Summarizing the lessons of history, the author suggests that while the conventional world federalist concept of an unlimited world government is still impractical in today’s world, there may be a role for a limited federal world government that would go well beyond the existing United Nations, thereby providing a stronger institutional basis for the evolutionary development of genuinely effective global governance. This book is an important resource for all students and scholars of global governance, international relations and international organizations.

There is much discussion in contemporary international relations about global governance but where did this idea originate, what are its intellectual antecedents and does it have a realistic future? This book is a concise yet comprehensive account of the intellectual history of world government up to the present day.

There is much discussion in contemporary international relations about global governance but where did this idea originate, what are its intellectual antecedents and does it have a realistic future? This book is a concise yet comprehensive account of the intellectual history of world government up to the present day.

A world government capable of controlling nation-states has never evolved, but governance does underlie order among states and gives direction to problems arising from global interdependence. This book examines the ideological bases and behavioural patterns of this governance without government.

By intelligence officials for intelligent people

Presents the arguments for the establishment of a world government to answer pressing global issues such as war, global injustices and environmental problems.

WORLD GOVERNMENT, READY OR NOT! is the first how-to-do-it and how-it-is-being done book on the making of world peace through government of, by, and for the citizens of the world recounted in masterful detail by a veteran of over 50 years experience in the "field." WWII bomber pilot Garry Davis, in 1948 took Emery Reves (Anatomy of Peace) at his word first that "...the ideal of the nation-state is bankrupt.." and second that "There is no first step to world government. World Government is the first step." The eclectic Renaissance Man, stateless World Citizen Davis "lives" the future today treating philosophy, law, economics, travel, space, history and more with equal ease and insight. Moreover, as a world activist, he has seen the inside of over 30 national prisons. E. B.White wrote that "Davis marches to the beat of the Universe while we all march to a broken drum." "The birth pangs of the new world order are already upon us," Davis writes in the Prologue, "and as necessity knows no law but its own, we are too busy attending to that long-heralded and momentous birth to still the shrill cries of infidelity." WORLD GOVERNMENT, READY OR NOT! is a book for the 21st century and beyond.