We live under global governance that is comprehensive, consequential, and almost entirely undemocratic.
Across the world, the systems that govern trade, security, borders, and finance were built without the consent of those who live beneath them — and their failures are now impossible to ignore. From Gaza to Myanmar, from Sudan to the United States, international institutions have watched atrocities unfold while communities have quietly built their own alternatives: mutual aid networks, Indigenous councils, local peacebuilding circles. Scholars of international relations are being called not to redesign global governance from above, but to listen, document, and teach alongside the communities already reimagining it from below — a generational shift in who counts as a political author.
- Global governance systems — trade regimes, security councils, border controls — shape billions of lives while remaining almost entirely insulated from democratic accountability or public input.
- The UN's structural failures are no longer theoretical: veto-wielding permanent members block accountability, and institutional expansion has produced bureaucratic overhead rather than protection for civilians in Iran, Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, and Myanmar.
- Communities are not waiting — local Emergency Response Rooms in Sudan, diaspora networks in Iran, mutual aid systems in American cities, and decentralized councils in northern Syria are already outperforming centralized institutions on the ground.
- Indigenous governance systems — from the Haida Nation to the Buganda Kingdom to First Nations in Canada — demonstrate that political legitimacy has never belonged exclusively to the nation-state, offering functioning models the discipline has long rendered invisible.
- IR scholars are being challenged to leave elite spaces and teach in community halls, faith institutions, and schools — treating the documentation of grassroots political visions as core scholarly work, not peripheral outreach.
- The field faces a generational reckoning: knowledge production that centers state power has reproduced existing hierarchies, and answering the democratic deficit requires treating communities as epistemic agents whose lived experience shapes what futures become thinkable.
The world is governed by systems almost no one helped design. Trade regimes, financial architectures, border controls — these shape where people work, whether they can move, and who receives protection. Yet the people living under these arrangements have almost no voice in how they operate. This is the crisis scholars of international relations are now being asked to confront.
The failure is visible. From Iran to Gaza, Sudan to Ukraine, Myanmar to the United States, citizens have watched governments commit atrocities while international institutions stood by. The UN Security Council's permanent members wield veto power that shields them from accountability, and the General Assembly holds no binding authority. Faced with mounting crises, the institution has responded by growing larger — more agencies, more staff — without delivering more protection. Expansion has produced distance, not safety.
Meanwhile, communities have been solving problems themselves. In Sudan, local Emergency Response Rooms provided healthcare when the state could not. Iranian diaspora networks organized neighborhood by neighborhood. American cities built mutual aid systems to shield migrants. In Myanmar, ethnic councils and civilian administrations operate entirely outside military control. Research consistently shows that locally led peacebuilding reduces violence more effectively than centralized interventions. The evidence is not ambiguous: trust communities with resources, and they deliver.
Beneath the institutional failures lies a deeper assumption — that the nation-state is the natural and only legitimate unit of political life. Yet Indigenous peoples have governed themselves for centuries through their own laws and cosmologies. The Haida Nation enforces land and marine governance grounded in Haida Law. The Autonomous Administration of northern Syria operates through decentralized councils with gender parity. First Nations in Canada assert governance rooted in relational accountability. These are not experiments — they are functioning political systems that organize territory, justice, and social services, proving that legitimacy can flow from many sources.
This convergence of institutional failure and community resilience opens a space for reimagining. The question is not how to reform the UN but how to democratize global governance itself. IR scholars are called not to architect a new system but to serve as educators who demystify how global order shapes daily life, facilitators who open dialogue, and archivists who document what communities actually want. The work is concrete: teach in schools, faith spaces, and town halls; build open-access repositories and oral history projects; make findings public and iterative.
This demands a shift in scholarly identity. Knowledge production is not neutral — claims to detachment have too often reproduced state-centric hierarchies while marginalizing lived experience. Scholars must instead ask communities what questions deserve to be asked at all: How do people experience global governance? What forms of authority feel legitimate from below? A more democratic global order will not be authored by elites in moments of crisis. It will be shaped over generations by people who live under militarized global governance every day — and the duty of the field is to document, preserve, and transmit their visions of something different.
The world is governed by systems almost no one had a hand in designing. Trade regimes, financial architectures, security arrangements, border controls—these shape where people work, what they earn, whether they can move, who gets protected and who does not. Yet the people living under these systems have almost no say in how they operate. This is the central crisis that scholars of international relations are being asked to confront: we live under global governance that is comprehensive, consequential, and almost entirely undemocratic.
The failure is no longer hidden. From Iran to Gaza, Sudan to Ukraine, Myanmar to the United States, citizens have watched their own governments commit atrocities while international institutions stood by. The United Nations, designed to prevent such horrors, has proven unable or unwilling to stop them. The Security Council's five permanent members wield veto power that insulates them from accountability. The General Assembly, though formally inclusive, has no binding authority. The institution was built to manage relations between states, not to represent humanity as a political collective. As its failures have mounted, the UN has simply expanded—more agencies, more staff, more bureaucracy—following a predictable pattern: when institutions face growing problems, they grow larger. But expansion has not brought protection. It has brought distance, delay, and the absorption of resources into administrative overhead rather than actual aid.
Meanwhile, communities are solving problems themselves. In Sudan, local Emergency Response Rooms have provided healthcare and distributed food when the state could not. Iranian diaspora networks have organized neighborhood by neighborhood for political change. American cities have built mutual aid systems to protect migrants from immigration enforcement. In Myanmar, multiple forms of governance operate outside military control—ethnic armed organizations, Indigenous councils, civilian administrations aligned with resistance movements. These are not ideological rejections of global order. They are pragmatic responses to institutional failure. Research shows that locally led peacebuilding—community mediation, inclusive dialogue, early-warning systems—reduces violence and strengthens social cohesion more effectively than centralized interventions. The evidence is clear: trust communities with resources, and they deliver.
But there is a deeper problem beneath the institutional one. International relations as a field has always centered the nation-state as the natural unit of political life. This assumption has become so embedded that alternatives are rendered invisible. Yet Indigenous peoples have governed themselves for centuries through systems rooted in their own laws and cosmologies. The Haida Nation enforces comprehensive land and marine governance grounded in Haida Law. The Buganda Kingdom in Uganda provides services through its own parliament and cabinet. In northern Syria, the Autonomous Administration operates through decentralized councils with gender parity and community-based decision-making. In Canada, First Nations assert governance systems grounded in Indigenous Laws and relational accountability. These are not marginal experiments. They are functioning political systems that organize territory, security, justice, and social services. They prove that political legitimacy does not belong exclusively to the nation-state, and that governance rooted in local knowledge and collective stewardship can operate as a parallel and sometimes competing source of authority.
This moment—when existing institutions are visibly failing and communities are visibly succeeding—opens a space for reimagining. The question is not how to reform the UN or expand regional bodies. It is how to democratize global governance itself by centering the people it affects. This is where international relations scholars come in. They are not meant to be architects of a new system. They are meant to be educators who demystify how global order shapes daily life, facilitators who create spaces for dialogue, and archivists who document what communities actually want from global governance. The work is concrete: teach IR in community spaces, schools, faith institutions, town halls—anywhere people gather. Build open-access repositories and oral history projects that capture how communities understand global and local governance across generations. Make these findings public, accessible, iterative, responsive. Treat this as core scholarly work, not outreach.
This requires a shift in how scholars understand their role. Knowledge production is not neutral. It shapes what is seen as possible and legitimate. Claims to scholarly detachment have too often reproduced existing power hierarchies, privileging state-centric perspectives while marginalizing lived experience. Scholars must instead ask communities what questions should be asked in the first place. How do people experience global governance in their everyday lives? What do they want it to do or not do? What forms of authority and accountability feel legitimate from below? These questions have been excluded from the discipline. Answering them requires treating communities as epistemic agents in their own right—people whose knowledge and experience matter as much as institutional analysis.
The work is transgenerational. A more democratic global order will not be authored by elites in moments of crisis. It will be shaped over generations by people who live under militarized global governance every day. This introduces a duty: to document, preserve, and transmit how communities understand global power and imagine different futures. The authors of this call have committed to putting it into practice themselves—engaging communities as epistemic agents, teaching beyond elite spaces, documenting how people understand and imagine global-local governance across diverse contexts, and reporting back publicly. The field of international relations now faces a choice. If it is to remain relevant in a world increasingly shaped by grassroots transnational relations and alternative political imaginaries, it must evolve. It must coordinate knowledge production differently, engage the public differently, and hold itself accountable to the futures it helps imagine. This is not a call to abandon the state or international cooperation. It is a call to unsettle the assumed centrality of the nation-state and to normalize and archive diverse models of governance to be explored through grassroots-driven, transnational design. The opening is there. The duty is clear. The question is whether the field will answer.
Notable Quotes
The UN was designed to manage relations among states, not to represent humanity as a political collective.— The authors, on the institutional limits of the United Nations
A more democratic global order will not be authored by elites in moments of crisis but shaped over generations by the people who live under militarized global governance every day.— The authors, on the transgenerational nature of democratic redesign
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When you say global governance is undemocratic, what exactly do you mean? Isn't the UN General Assembly open to all nations?
The General Assembly is formally inclusive, but it has no binding power. Real authority sits in the Security Council, where five countries have veto rights. Most people have no way to influence either body. They don't elect their UN representatives. They can't hold them accountable. And even if they could, the institution was designed to manage relations between states, not to represent people.
So you're saying the problem is structural, not just a matter of bad leadership?
Exactly. The structure privileges powerful states and insulates them from accountability. But there's something deeper too. The entire system assumes the nation-state is the only legitimate unit of political life. That assumption has erased other ways of governing that have worked for centuries.
Like what? Can you give me an example?
The Haida Nation in Canada enforces comprehensive systems of land and marine governance grounded in Haida Law. The Buganda Kingdom in Uganda provides services through its own parliament. These aren't marginal. They're functioning political systems. But because they don't fit the nation-state model, IR scholarship has largely ignored them.
If communities are already solving problems better than institutions, why do we need scholars involved at all?
Because the existing global order is deeply institutionalized. Without comparable coordination across regions and contexts, grassroots efforts remain fragmented. Scholars can help by demystifying how global systems shape local life, creating spaces for dialogue, and documenting what communities actually want. They can amplify and connect these efforts.
That sounds like activism, not scholarship.
It is activism. But the claim that scholarship is neutral is itself a political choice—one that has historically reproduced power hierarchies. Treating scholarship as a tool for advancing human dignity rather than merely observing its erosion is more honest about what knowledge production does.
What would this actually look like in practice?
Teaching IR in community spaces, not just universities. Building public archives of how communities understand governance. Making findings accessible and iterative, not locked behind paywalls. Asking communities what questions should be asked in the first place. Treating people as epistemic agents, not just subjects of study.