But cruel are the times when we are traitors, and do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor from what we fear, yet know not what we fear — Shakespeare 

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Politics is in crisis. From a modern perspective, the political crisis is one of Reason. From a classical interpretation, one of Faith. 

Western democracies are going through a year of elections oscillating between the morbid and the sordid. The citizenry looks up to the political class for answers yet witnesses chaos. The riots across the UK—in Southport, Tamworth, and Sunderland—are the latest demonstrations of this. One would not be hard-pressed to agree that politics—how we live together and organize ourselves as humans—is at a crossroads. What are the choices for us to make? As governments and citizens search for an answer, we should explore the underlying question of democracies’ possible futures. 

Perhaps this juncture is a fork in history

Moderns think of History as a movement forward based on rational thought, logical inquiry, and scientific experimentation. Classicists perceive the movement of time as one of cycles that will come to an abrupt end on a final day—be it the coming of the Messiah, Armageddon, or the Day of Judgement. Therefore, the lack of Faith in an eschatological doctrine is the main problem of a classicist. The lack of application of Reason is the primary worry of a modernist. 

If History is the movement forward — through improved scientific understanding, technological advancement, and amelioration of morals — the current political organization of the world is a result of progress, a combination of leaps and gradual improvements in all areas of human endeavor. 

But if we are striding instead through yet another cycle, the current state of the world is merely another phase, after which we’ll return to earlier modes of living and governing. Progress, therefore, is not achieved through historical action but from faith in God. Salvation lies within the spiritual realm, not the temporal. 

The politics of the last century should be viewed as a period of absolutism in the theory and practice of government. The nation-state structure had a monopoly over our thinking of politics. And as the third decade of the century reaches its climax, the system’s rigidity is loosening. Representative chambers, government bureaucracy, political parties, independent judiciary, and central banking, to name a few salient examples, are losing their control over the historical tides. 

Today’s world comprises roughly two hundred political entities, primarily organized around peoples’ nationhood, with similarly-governed institutions and political structures. This is a historical anomaly. In the recent past, the world was divided among tribes, kingdoms, chiefdoms, republics, city-states, empires, khalifas, and large communes, all of which inhabited different parts of the land at the same time. One should question whether this state of affairs indicates human betterment, is an arbitrary outcome of human destiny, or is a fragile moment in a transient historical cycle. 

Perhaps this juncture is a fork in history, where we are faced with a choice between a “World Government”, a conclusion of Reason, or that of “Peoples’ Governments”, enabled by Faith. 

World Government is, by its nature, a secular program, the logical consequence of thinking in terms of efficiency and progress. The reasoning for one World Government is that the challenges of the future—climate change, nuclear proliferation, resource scarcity, and pandemics—require extensive international collaboration. The motive? Coalescing control over the broadest possible body politic. 

This is a return to the pre-nation-state world of duchies, republics, city-states, citizens’ assemblies, and kingdoms

Under a World Government, the globe is governed by centralized institutions. Think of an infusion of the European Union model of centralized cross-national parliament in the West with Chinese Communist Party rule — on a global scale. 

A single government running the world through advanced technology has long been the theme of science fiction. This may take the form of a government ruling all people on planet Earth using genetic engineering and drugs (“Brave New World”), a universal “Commonwealth” over multiple planets enabled by wormhole technology, a device that allows immediate travel between two points in space (“Pandora’s Star”), or governing the galaxy using “psychohistory,” the mathematics of predicting the future of any human action (“Foundation”). Advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and robotics have made variations of these visions a nearer reality. 

Under Peoples’ Governments, the current global political order instead breaks into sub-states based on old identities and new communities. This is a return to the pre-nation-state world of duchies, republics, city-states, citizens’ assemblies, and kingdoms alongside the emergence of new structures such as corporate governments, sovereign-individual oligarchies, and network states. 

The more current-event version of national fragmentation is in the Anglosphere. Non-national identities dominate the narratives of the 2024 election cycles. Class and race shape the conversation around Kamala Harris and JD Vance in the United States. On the British side, the Muslim religious voting bloc brought down Labour candidates based on their treatment of Islamic issues. The conversation is not about king, nation, or country but about different identities, looking for their political expression. 

Peoples’ Governments as a philosophy is the undertone of Faith, in which the temporal is cyclical and only the spiritual eternal. Peoples’ Governments is a future in which we will witness the disintegration of nation-states and the global, international order through the formation of hundreds of new republics, enabled by a mix of separatist movements, terror organizations, corporate autonomies, and tribal sentiments. 

Take Italy as a prime example. At the time of the Lutheran Reformation, the land covering modern-day Italy comprised over forty independent, diverse political entities fighting locally and trading globally. The entities had different governing institutions, political theologies, and cultures. They were all “Italian” in one sense but unique in many others. They thrived as small republics and kingdoms. By Napoleon’s time, however, the figure was less than half. In the second half of the 19th Century, Italy was unified into one nation-state with the tailwind of the Spring of Nations. 

Over the past decades, culminating in the country’s sovereign debt crisis, Italy was effectively ruled from Brussels by a parliament with representatives from across Europe and the United States’ heavy commercial and financial influence. Italian political decisions were made in Brussels, Berlin, and Washington. In hindsight, early 2010 will be perceived as the peak and end of the 500-year unification process. This unification process is the culmination of a process of Reason, a gradual application of tools and technologies by the center to control the periphery. 

World Government makes democracy obsolete…Peoples’ Governments make democracy an option

But we can easily imagine a version of the future where the trend will be thrown into reverse. In the decades and centuries to come, we may see the territory covering today’s peninsula bring Italian separation—dozens of San Marinos will blossom, the state will become many cities, and local and global communities will buy land to resettle and enact new models of government. 

Echos of this alternate historical current are evident across the world. In the US, with the growth of the secession movements of California and Texas and the emergence in Silicon Valley of network states and start-up cities (commercial companies building cities with sovereign elements). In the UK, with the networked spread of disorder based on race and religious identities. In Europe, we see this with the revival of separatist movements among ethnic minorities (Catalonian, Scottish, South Tyrolean), and immigration upheaval aiming to deconstruct national institutions. Likewise in the Middle East, even more newly minted countries are struggling, and increasingly failing, to keep religious, ethnic, and tribal identities under one nation-state roof (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon). 

The technological dimension of the fork is a World Government enabled by artificial intelligence or Peoples’ Governments enabled by blockchain encryption. Artificial intelligence will allow a small government to effectively run the lives of billions, accumulating their tastes, preferences, and actions on centralized models to make informed decisions (and maintain tight control). This is Isaac Asimov’s “psychohistory” technology coming alive. For Peoples’ Governments, blockchain encryption will be key, allowing communities to organize themselves outside of external powers, administering their finances, government, and culture on a network out of reach of other temporal entities. 

In both cases, the democratic cause will be more demanding to further, and more taxing to defend. World Government makes democracy obsolete. When a Government runs the lives of billions using advanced technologies, an individual’s freedom becomes asymptotically zero. Their ability to effectively oppose policies is negligible. Peoples’ Governments make democracy an option. In a world of thousands of political autonomies with smaller populations, whether each one observes democratic tradition becomes less relevant and much more challenging to enforce. 

So, what is the nature of the choice to make in this moment of crisis, with new technologies and alternative pathways of Reason and Faith? A move toward World Government, with increasing centralization of power to tackle existential problems, feels increasingly possible. It is a danger we must resist. Yet, as these tensions play out, it is the preservation of democratic values and processes with which we must grapple.