Who wants a world Parliament?

An interesting poll of 117,000 people in 101 countries on whether they support or oppose their being a World Parliament. They say 40% support it, 27% oppose and 33% undecided.

The question design is very important. The question was:

Would you support or oppose the creation of a citizen-elected World Parliament to handle global issues?

If you asked whether you support there being a World Parliament that could over-rule national governments, you might get different responses. Would the World Parliament have any actual power or would it be a talkfest?

The lobby group behind the poll says they advocate for:

Democracy Without Borders advocates demo­cracy as a global right that spans across all levels and must be realized in all its dimensions: representation, participation, rights and liberties, and the rule of law.

I agree democracy is a global right. But one of the problems with a World Parliament is that it could be so large to be useless. If you get one seat per five million people then the Parliament would have almost 2,000 MPs. You could just give representatives votes proportional to their population but then it just becomes like a UN General Assembly with weighted voting (which would be great for China, India etc).

What is interesting with the poll is which countries are most supportive and opposed. Of the 20 countries polled in Asia-Pacific 18 were supportive and the two against were Australia (net 6% opposed) and New Zealand (net 7% opposed). Generally countries that are wealthy and democratic are opposed while almost all other countries are supportive. Maybe it means that citizens in countries which don’t get much of a vote would like one, or it could be that they support an institution that would give them more power (as they have large populations) and developed countries less power.

The 12 countries most supportive are:

1. Turkey +38%
2. Mozambique +38%
3. Cuba +36%
4. Cote de Ivoire +29%
5. Senegal +29%
6. Lebanon +29%
7. Nigeria +28%
8. Palestine +27%
9. Egypt +26%
10. Zimbabwe +25%
11. Iran +25%
12. Tunisia +25%

The countries most opposed are:

1. Austria -11%
2. UK -10%
3. US -8%
4. NZ -7%
5. Denmark – 7%
6. Netherland -7%
7. Australia -6%
8. Israel -6%
9. Germany -4%
10. Switzerland -4%
11. Poland -4%
12. Romania -4%

I know which group of countries I would rather be in.

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