DIRECTIONS: Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

Human civilization may not be able to survive if we do not manage to create a global government. This proposition may seem out of place at a time of rising international tensions, nuclear instability, nationalist populism and so-called identity politics which fuel a crisis of multilateralism. Yet, instead of contradicting the idea, these and many other problems are strongly rooted in the fact that no global government exists.

One of the key challenges of modern cultural evolution is the time lag between rapid technological development and slow political adaptation. The United Nations that represents the best governance model, humanity could come up with for the management of global affairs is now frozen in time. Its underlying principle of national sovereignty goes back to 1648, a hundred years before the industrial revolution even started. Yet, today we live in the 21st century, the world population is approaching eight billion and technological development continues to accelerate. The need for global governance to catch up with the accelerating pace of change is more urgent than ever before.

The human impact on global public goods such as the atmosphere must be regulated so that planetary limits are not transgressed and the stability of earth’s ecosystem is not jeopardized. Furthermore, the supply of important public goods like food security or the stability of the financial and economic system depends on how well global structures are working. Regulating research and development in fields such as artificial intelligence, genetics, biotechnology or autonomous weapons must be on the global agenda. Based on the collaboration of 193 nominally sovereign states, global regulation will never work well. Hence the need to move to a model of global government that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state.

States can freely decide whether to join or not to join an intergovernmental treaty. There is no way to determine global rules except through inter-state negotiations. The more ‘states’ participate, the more difficult it is to achieve results.