World Federalism

World federalism or global federalism, is a political ideology that advocates for a democratic, federal world government. The world federation would hold authority on issues of global concern, while member states would retain authority over local and national issues. Overall sovereignty over the world population would largely reside with the federal government.
World federalism is distinguished from unitary world government models by the principle of subsidiarity, in which decisions are made as much as possible at the most immediate level possible, preserving national agency to a large extent. Proponents maintain that a world federation offers a more effective and accountable global governance structure than the existing United Nations organization, while simultaneously allowing wide autonomy for continental, national, regional and local governments.

Scope

Unlike the more widely used concept of world government, world federalism describes a specific form of global governance, i.e., that of a federal, democratic world republic. The difference between world federalism and other types of global governance are outlined below.

Distinction to the existing United Nations

The United Nations is not a legislative body and is thus limited to a mostly advisory role. Its stated purpose is to foster cooperation between existing national governments rather than exert authority over them.
Furthermore, membership of the United Nations organization is reserved for states, not individuals.

Distinction to a unitary world government

A unitary world government would consist of a single, central government body with supreme sovereignty. While administrative subdivisions might exist, their powers are delegated by the central government. In a world federation based on subsidiarity, the delegation is the other way round, from local to central. Global federal government is subsidiary to local in that it only does what local government cannot.
Plans that sought to unify the known world by conquest have historically aimed at a centralized, unitary government, rather than a federal government. World federalists generally do not support violent paths towards a world federation

Distinction to a world confederation

A confederation is a union of sovereign nations, which are pursuing a common cause. Member states in a confederation are sometimes free to secede from the confederation.
In a federation based on subsidiarity, nations choose to give up their sovereignty over global issues they cannot manage to a central authority empowered to manage these issues at the global level. Sovereignty over national issues remains with the nation.
Different forms of federalism can be applied at the global level.
Traditional federalism is the model adopted by the United States, in which the States relinquish their sovereignty to the federal government, which in turn represents them in front of other nations. It constitutes a centralized model of world federalism.
The most decentralized model of world federalism is the confederation of States, or world confederalism, which gives the States a higher degree of power and freedom in which countries preserve their sovereignty, relinquishing to the federal authority only the powers to manage and regulate intergovernmental relationships.
The European Union can be considered an example of such system of government, because its Member States preserve their sovereignty even though they relinquish part of it to the community's authorities in specific matters.

History

Origins of the idea

World federalism has evolved from more general proposals for a world government. Proposals for a world government can be traced to antiquity when first aspirations of world rule appeared. Such aspirations are recorded in the Ancient Near East and later Greece, Rome and India. At least two similar concepts appeared independently, one in ancient China and later Japan, and another in the Inca Empire. These ideas were unhindered by the existence of other independent states, including competing empires, and the existence of unknown world of unknown size. Alexander the Great pursued the goal of conquering the entire known world and subjugating it under his rule.
Though characteristic element of premodern empires, the aspiration of world rule invariably expressed universal monarchy of divine kings and dynasties. Rome is the only state to establish universal empire under government other than monarchy. The Roman Republic attained supremacy over the Mediterranean by 189 BC. However, Rome continued to define client states as nominally independent for decades longer, and by 27 BC the Republic turned into universal monarchy without making a proposal for universal republic. The Romans talked about imperium sine fine but not "res publica sine fine".
Nevertheless, the Romans had an idea similar to world citizens. The Edict of Caracalla in 212 AD granted the Roman citizenship to all inhabitants of the Roman Empire. The contemporary Han Dynasty performed a similar process with a longer-lasting result. They granted the status of Han Chinese to all inhabitants of their Empire and eventually formed a single ethnic group, the largest in the world today.
In Europe, the Roman concept of universal monarchy long outlived the Roman Empire, though after Dante Alighieri the general attitude towards universal monarchy changes from positive and nostalgic to negative. Predictions of universal monarchy or universal caesarism were made by such late thinkers as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Fyodor Dostoyevski and Oswald Spengler. In the generation of Dostoyevsky and Spengler appeared theories of future global empire under undefined form of government.
Among the earliest proposals of world government other than monarchy and world state other than empire were the "universal republic" of Anacharsis Cloots and the "federation of free states" of Immanuel Kant, where it was explicitly proposed as a means to securing world peace. A world parliament as integral part of a world republic was mentioned first by Pecqueur in 1842. The idea has been popularized by a number of prominent authors, such as Alfred Tennyson, F.A. Hayek, and H. G. Wells.

Before World War II

The Campaign for World Government was founded in 1937 by pacifists and feminists Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Maverick Lloyd. The campaign aimed to learn from the weaknesses of the League of Nations by establishing a federal world government as an effective means to abolish war. Such a democratic world government would represent the interests of the world's people, rather than merely the national interests of member states. The pamphlet "Chaos, War or a New World Order?" outlines the campaign's approach to put the demands into practise: a World Constitutional Convention would be held to lay the groundwork for a Federation of Nations with democratic elections. The pamphlet further includes several policy suggestions, e.g., universal membership, direct representation, separation of powers, abolition of military forces, standardization of an international date system, the peaceful transfer of people out of population-dense regions, and a combined global free-trade and command economy.
Advocacy tactics involved congressional testimony, lobbying of legislators, national letter-writing campaigns, and participation in world government conferences. The campaign succeeded in motivating the resolution at the 1938 New York State Constitutional Convention encouraging President Roosevelt to call a world constitutional convention, and several Congressional resolutions and bills, including the "Alexander Peace Bill", and the "Tenerowicz Peace Bill". The organization was also one of the few independent observers of the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks conference at which the United Nations was first planned.
The rise of nationalism and the growing threat of fascism in Europe caused a resurgence of the idea of a unified world under democratic principles. With the release of the book Union Now, Clarence Streit proposed a political union of democratic nations. The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland were to form the seed for a democratic world republic. A world congress, made up of a House of Representative and a Senate should decide on matters related to defence, trade and currency.
During World War II, multiple other world federalist organizations were founded, especially in the United States. Inspired by Clarence Streit's Union Now, Harris Wofford Jr. founded the Student Federalists in 1942. The organization's success prompted Newsweek to predict he would become President of the United States.
The 1943 book One World by the Republican Wendell L. Willkie about his world tour through the Allied countries became an instant bestseller, further promoting the concept of world federalism and decolonisation to a wider audience. The publication of Emery Reves' The Anatomy of Peace in 1945, translated into thirty languages, further popularised the idea and was publicly endorsed by Albert Einstein.

After World War II

In 1947, the Committee to Frame a World Constitution was founded, releasing "The Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution" in 1948.
Also in 1947, over 50 world federalist organizations formulated the Montreux Declaration, encapsulating the demands of the world federalist movement in light of WWII:

We world federalists are convinced that the establishment of a world federal government is the crucial problem of our time. Until it is solved, all other issues, whether national or international, will remain unsettled. It is not between free enterprise and planned economy, nor between capitalism and communism that the choice lies, but between federalism and power politics. Federalism alone can assure the survival of man.

The United World Federalists emerged as the main advocacy group for world federalism in the United States after WWII. The United World Federalists was a non-partisan, non-profit organization with members in forty-eight states, founded in Asheville, North Carolina on February 23, 1947, as the result of a merger of five existing world government groups: Americans United for World Government; World Federalists, U.S.A.; Student Federalists; Georgia World Citizens Committee; and the Massachusetts Committee for World Federation. The organization was renamed to World Federalists, USA, World Federalists Association and then Citizens for Global Solutions, which is active to this day.