For a Global Multilevel Participatory Democracy

Giampiero Bordino
Professor in Contemporary History and Political Analyst. President of the Einstein Center for International Studies

Orazio Parisotto
The Global Revolution for a New Humanism
Grafica EFFE 2, Romano d’Ezzelino (Italy), 2018

The challenges posed by the ungoverned globalization in which we live, the socio-economic, environmental, cultural and institutional crisis that accompanies it and, at the same time, the possible proposals to successfully face these challenges and this crisis are the major themes treated in the volume by Orazio Parisotto, a scholar of human sciences with a long experience in the world of NGOs and European institutions.

The horizon outlined in the book is the construction of a new humanism that involves the “peace operators” of all continents, aiming to achieve a “peaceful global revolution of a Gandhian type”. Given that “We are all aboard this Planet Earth vessel”, either we are able to build a “new common house”, giving back to politics and institutions (according to the formula of a multilevel, global and participatory democracy, as we will see later) their role of governing our common problems, from peace to the environment, or humanity is destined to chaos, barbarism, in short to self-destruction. Is such a perspective too difficult, almost impossible to achieve, a dream? The author cites in this regard a credible witness, one who has personally experienced and actually won in his own country a big challenge that many considered impossible, Nelson Mandela: “A winner is just a dreamer who has never given up”.

On what grounds, in which directions is it necessary to intervene to face the challenges of globalization and build a new common home? Parisotto’s book is full of ideas, intuitions and operational proposals. A non-exhaustive synthesis can be attempted, starting from the themes of training and information, to which the author rightly attributes a great value. As Albert Einstein, one of the most frequent references in the book, said: “If humanity is to survive, we will need a really new way of thinking”. The hypothesis is that of an intercultural, inter-religious educational model, based on a common worldwide ethic (“Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you” is, according to the Author, a principle common to all religions). In this direction, the idea of ​​a “universal Charter of fundamental duties” is also proposed, which should represent the shared foundation of common ethics. The proposed educational model, which among other things is explicitly inspired by a holistic vision of the world that goes beyond the mechanistic view typical of the Western tradition (in this regard the famous book by Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, is mentioned), is divided into three different and interconnected dimensions: psycho-physical, environmental, civic.

In this context and to these ends, the problem of information also arises. Information is now strongly threatened by the spreading of “fake news” on the net, and therefore requires the launch of a new course that guarantees its reliability and controllability. “This challenge is fundamental for our future”.

A second major topic on which it is necessary to intervene is, according to the Author, the environmental and socio-economic one. The neo-liberal model, dominant in recent decades and based on the uncontrolled exploitation of natural resources and human labor, has failed. In 2018, at the Davos summit, the world leaders had to acknowledge that inequalities have reached today an unsustainable level: the richest 1% of the world population owns as much wealth as the remaining 99%! At the origin of this situation there is, in general and in the first place, the impotence of institutions and politics to control and regulate capital and markets. Markets and capital are now transnational and supranational, while political powers are not yet so. It is the phenomenon analyzed by the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz in a very well-known passage concerning fiscal problems, taken up in Parisotto’s book: “In the presence of a situation in which capital moves easily from one jurisdictional area to another, if we try to impose a stricter tax on capital, capital simply moves to another place. Thus, ironically, at a time when inequality has continued to grow, and it did grow enormously over the last thirty years, the ability to redistribute income through capital taxation has been greatly reduced”. More generally, beyond the increasingly serious problem of inequality, the impotence of politics and institutions is evident in regard to the great environmental emergencies that are threatening the earth and its inhabitants: those of water, soil and air, of demography, and finally also of some new technologies (genetic manipulation, for example). In the face of these emergencies, if a radical change in the architecture of institutions and powers which overcomes the limits of national states and intergovernmental organizations is not made, the perspective of self-destruction is to be realistically forecasted in not too distant times.

The necessary turning point, drawing inspiration from the historical model of the federalist thought, consists in building institutions and powers at the supranational, continental and world level. It is no coincidence that the Author deals specifically with the theme of UN reform, outlines the proposal for a global institution “of the Third Millennium”, and proposes the idea of a Global Tobin Tax to guarantee its autonomy and operational capacity. The author devotes ample space also to a critical reflection on the process of the political unification of Europe, which “although not yet completed, represents the greatest initiative of peaceful unification of an entire continent pursued so far”.

In essence, one of the essential foundations of the new humanism proposed by the author is a political-institutional system of multilevel “participatory democracy”. Six levels of participation are outlined, mutually complementary and interconnected: family, municipal, regional, national, continental, world-wide. As the great historian of civilizations Arnold J. Toynbee wrote in his last book “Mankind and Mother Earth: A Narrative History of the World”, published posthumously in 1976, and quoted by Parisotto: “The present-day global set of sovereign states is not capable of preserving peace, it is not capable of saving the biosphere from man-made pollution or of conserving the biosphere’s non-replaceable natural resources. International political anarchy cannot last longer ...”.

Translated by Lionello Casalegno