An exercise in Planetary Thinking for an age of crises.

Reading “Children of a modest Star” by Jonathon S. Blake and Nlis Gilman.

According to the authors of this book, the current world order is an ad hoc multi-scale governance dominated by the nation-state. In this world order, the primacy of the sovereignty of nation-states determines the shaping of local, sub-national, and global, super-national governance. According to the authors, this world order stands in the way of solving climate problems. We should not think globally, where the primacy of the nation-state is still the starting point, but think planetarily.

A world order based on planetary thinking starts with the planet as a whole and allocates political power based on the principle of planetary subsidiarity. The idea is to scale up or scale down government tasks to new functional entities when policy goals will be more effectively implemented by these entities. The authors acknowledge that many facets play a role in the formation of multi-scale governance, including facets of identity, but choose and expect that the scientific analysis of optimal task allocation to scales can be made 'leading' for change.

I do not believe that. Reality is different. Every world order is largely determined by territorial identity. A person has many territorial identities: my house, my village, my city, my region, my country, my continent, even my world! It is much more logical and practical to make this territorial identity 'leading' in the development and construction of a multi-scale governance structure (MLG).

What exactly is territorial identity? Territorial Identity is linked to community and derived from essential human characteristics. A territorial identity is an extension of the human need for a protective home. The identity is familiar; the territory offers protection and security. The authority of a community is an extension of individual will. This collective will is not necessarily a popular will of a national community. All territorial scales are potential sources for identity and community formation.

What determines which territorial identity is the most important? How did identity-rich nation-states arise? Many factors play a role. Not least the scope of communication and mobility, which determines the system boundary of a community. But identity formation also requires a certain homogeneity (for example, a people). When people recognize themselves in each other, the step to a community with authority and governance is easily made. Identity is linked to group identification. Therefore problems arise when the group becomes too diverse (e.g., through migration). But generally spoken, no group is homogeneous. There is a governance solution for diversity: it is called democracy.

If a ruler represents the popular will and all citizens are completely identical and homogeneity is 100%, then the form of governance of an autocracy is sufficient for the community. Complicated 'checks and balances' (such as a parliament, a rule of law, separation of powers) are unnecessary. The ruler acts entirely in the name of the people. But there are always minorities. Every territorial identity and associated community is, in reality, a vessel full of conflicting interests. To allow the popular will to take these differences into account, we have devised democracy in which minorities are protected by the rule of law and a palette of political views come together and are weighed against each other in a process of integral governance. This democratic process is much stronger in forming identity than the saving decision of an autocrat. Provided the general interest consideration - making difficult choices between conflicting positions - is well presented, this creates a strong territorial identity of people and community.

Back to the book review. By choosing to build an MLG on the principle of subsidiarity, you avoid these complicated processes around identity, but at the same time, it is devoid of realism. Blake and Gilman trace the history of the concept of subsidiarity back to the ideas of Althusius. This German Calvinist resisted too much centralization of power and argued that tasks should be carried out as low as possible, by local communities, and only centralized if it could not be otherwise. Blake and Gilman believe that issues around climate problems must necessarily be done at the planetary level because the national scale cannot deliver effective policy. They give the example of the PAS (Planetary Atmospheric Steward), which should be a separate (functional) institution and not bound to national states as is the case with UN institutions such as the WHO or UNEP. However, a PAS can never be a carrier of territorial identity. Moreover, difficult choices are lacking because there is no integral governance in which different policy issues must be weighed against each other. For the authors, this may be desirable. I think it does not provide a workable solution. An MLG must be based on territorial identities and integral governance. The question we need to answer is, how can we break the dominance of national identity and create new local and global identities with corresponding integral governance?

My proposal involves two steps: The first step is to create a rough planetary model of tasks per scale. Local and global scales should be assigned full task packages that fit the scale. This corresponds to the principle of subsidiarity, with the addition that we seek total packages. These functional total packages bundle different policy components and make an integral governance consideration necessary. For example: no separate functional institutes for water management and housing, but a governance layer in which these conflicting interests must be brought together. This can sometimes mean that a task that, from a functional approach, can be better carried out higher or lower, remains where it is.

The second, most daring step, is to stimulate the fluidity of territorial identity, whereby the potential identity carriers - the task packages at different scales - are provided with identity. It is this identity-forming process that ultimately shifts power from the national scale to local, regional, continental, and global scales. The EU is a good example: why does the EU lack identity, and is the bond between voter and community so much weaker than in nation-states? Answer: Because the citizen has no opportunity to embrace the 'European identity'. The entire EU, despite the transfer of tasks, is still based on nation-states. My solution for the EU is very simple. Let citizens choose which passport they want to have: a national or a European one. But both are no longer possible. In general, I propose that the identity paper must be potentially scalable, and the chosen scale determines the primary identity of the citizen and not only that: it also determines who you can vote for in the formation of a new governance.


At the basis of all identity and change of identity are elections of governance. And the passport determines your voting rights. Since passports are explicitly tied to nation-states, the primary territorial identity of citizens cannot shift. The scalable passport changes this: I call this passport a neo-passport. And the communities you can choose in your scalable passport I call neo-states, as opposed to our current nation-states, which I call geo-states. Because neo-states can arise at different scales on the same territory (since they are based on individual choices of citizens), they are no longer traditional geo-states. The territory is no longer exclusive. The relationship with the citizen, on the other hand, becomes exclusive.

This exclusive relationship is determined by the voting rights of a neo-citizen in a newly built planetary governance system. In this system, each neo-citizen has two votes for their primary identity/community (one vote for the ruler and one vote for representation (the parliament), and for each other scale only one vote (the representative). If the EU becomes a neo-state (and receives enough citizins of its own), these citizens can directly elect the president of the European Commission, who then assembles their own governance team. In addition, The citizens living within the territory of the EU can elect representatives in the European Parliament. But here too, there is a difference between EU neo-citizens and non-EU neo-citizens. EU neo-citizens elect representatives from real European political parties. Non-EU neo-citizens elect their representatives through the lower 'districts' (in this case: national political parties). This is the present practice. There is thus a mixed system of direct and district-bound elections. The ratio between direct and district-bound seats in the European Parliament is determined by the ratio of EU neo-citizens to non-EU neo-citizens. The system is also a mix of the Anglo-Saxon and Continental models of governance. The neo-citizen elects both the head of government directly and a representative directly (not bound to a district).

Changing voting rights is, of course, only the starting point. What other rights and duties a neo-citizen has will need to be further defined. The entire process will take a long time and proceed gradually. Initially, a change of primary identity has mainly symbolic significance. But it undoubtedly sets a social change process in motion. In changes of someones primary identity to different scales, the principle of legal continuity should apply. As long as the target (neo) state does not yet function fully, the rights and duties of the source (neo) state should, in principle, continue to apply to the transferred citizens, except for voting rights. This 'protection rule' should prevent neo-citizens from being rejected as 'foreign bodies' to stateless states and subsequently no longer being able to claim acquired rights from the source state (work, social security, education, etc.).

In summary, the introduction of a fluid territorial identity through a scalable passport will lead to a shift of power from national states to other scales of governance, which implicitly also initiates a reshuffling of tasks (according to the planetary model) and a reshuffling of financial flows between the scales.