In a recent book on world-order proposals, Hidemi Suganami defines domestic analogy as follows: “presumptive reasoning which holds that there are certain similarities between domestic and international phenomena; that, in particular, the conditions of order within states are similar to those of order between them; and that therefore those institutions which sustain order domestically should be reproduced at the international level”

Through the domestic analogy reasoning one can conclude that world order is associated with a governable system where relations among the constituent units are managed through peaceful means.

we can discern two definitions of world order- two closely related, yet, distinguishable definitions. The first one is the absence of war or the absence of coercion. We will call this order “order in narrow sense.” This is also peace in negative sense. The second is a much broader definition of order; that is, social order, where the relations among the units at the international level are managed peacefully, where the claims to specific rights and privileges are solved through peaceful and objective procedures, and where repression and coercion are absent at both the national and international levels.

In sustaining order in its pluralistic society, the American government’s role has been the political management of relations among its constituent units through peaceful means.

World-order proposals can be classified under the two grand theories of international relations. Under the Realist school, the most prominent proposal has been the classical balance of power theory. Idealist school, undoubtedly, has been more productive relative to the Realist school and produced proposals such as collective security, world government, legalism, functionalism, and cosmopolitanism

It is an old idea in political theory that one authority can and should sustain order at the global level. Pax Romana and Pax Britannica, for example, are known as eras of relative peace and order in world history that was provided by a single power- the hegemon. We see the reemergence of this idea especially after the Second World War in the theory of world government.

Reves rejected the internationalist approach to order and criticized the systems of both the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN). He was convinced that “at the present stage of industrial development, there can be no freedom under the system of sovereign nation-states”

In fact, looking from a broader historical perspective, Reves thought that war has occurred wherever and whenever political units of equal sovereignty have faced each other. The solution to the problem of war, then, would be “integrating the warring units into a higher sovereignty.” This higher sovereignty, or world government, would be provided with legislative, judicial, and executive powers, as the result being “a legal order within which all peoples may enjoy equal security, equal obligation and equal rights under law.”

In Politics Among Nations, Morgenthau wrote as follows: “There is no shirking the conclusion that in no period of modern history was civilization more in need of permanent peace and hence, of a world state”.

Similarly, Georg Schwarzenberger has argued that “the federal world state is the only complete alternative to world power politics”

Cord Meyer, another prominent world governmentalist, has argued that the nation-state was responsible for two world wars within a generation. “As long as the inhabitants of the earth prefer to live as members of sovereign states,” he wrote, “the catastrophe of war will remain the ultimate means of settling their disputes and of protecting their rights and very existence”. Meyer did not observe any change in politicians’ basic approach to world order after the Second World War, and therefore argued that national economies were still in the service of war machine and continued to deprive individuals of their autonomy.

Meyer urged that peace-through-power reasoning is wrong and that the internationalist approach, which fails to transform this reasoning, should be discarded. Meyer’s “plan for survival” was turning the UN system into a world government. In this new system he suggested that “the power to legislate should be given to the General Assembly.

From a liberal perspective, however, world government may not be a sound proposal to world order. Its argument that the individual will enjoy freedom under a world government is dubious

In an attempt to explain world government approach criticisms, let us elaborate on the domestic analogy of the world governmentalists. We can in fact single out three major flaws in their analogy: a) order is the product of the sheer existence of government; b) order is the product of the monopoly of power; c) order is the product of the enforcement of law on individuals.

The concept of legalism refers to a world-order approach that considers international law as the exclusive means to sustaining and promoting world order.

One proponent of legalism has been Hans Kelsen. In Peace Through Law, which was published toward the end of the Second World War, Kelsen argued that if the big powers were satisfied in their territorial claims, then following the war they could agree on a legalistic scheme for order. For the endproduct of that scheme, he stated that “it is quite possible that the idea of a universal World Federal State will be realized. Obviously, [however] at first only an international union of states, not a federal state could be set up. That means that the solution of the problem of a durable peace can be sought only within the framework of international law.”

From a pragmatic perspective, one should ask the question what this world order, if realized at all, would mean for the individual’s life and for the nations’ future. Pragmatism looks at the consequences (to the “fruits”) of a certain rule for action. Imagine a world where individuals and other entities in the world would act only according to the rules established by an authority. This would not be an order at all for peoples who would like to live in a world where they feel free so as to pursue their own truths, beliefs, and dreams.

Functionalism, as another Idealist proposal for world order, argues for the organization of international cooperation not along the line of territoriality but of specific social and economic activities. It stresses cooperative nature of world politics rather than international conflicts and, as such, addresses the problem of war and peace indirectly. The assumption here is that cooperation in economic and social activities would gradually help states to achieve mutual understanding and solve their differences, that is, cooperation in nonpolitical issues would “spill over” to political issues.

One ardent supporter of functionalism has been David Mitrany. In his authoritative work, A Working Peace System, Mitrany argues that the world has become so “closely interrelated,” that one issue in one part of the world has been affecting other peoples living in other parts of the world. This suggests in fact that human beings have become “one indivisible community”

Neofunctionalism, one version of functionalism, has been mainly applied to the European integration process. Since the mid-1950s, scholars looking at the European example have argued that in fact the application of functional theory at the regional level may eventually create a peaceful world. If each region in the world were peaceful, then, we would have perpetual peace at the global level. Neofunctionalism as such has been introduced as the idea of “peace in parts.”

More than any other scholar, Ernst B. Haas deserves to be known as the founding father of neofunctionalism. Haas has developed the idea of regional integration through functional cooperation on ‘nonpolitical’ issues, which would in fact lead to further integration in the geographical area concerned.

Functionalism has been criticized because it assumes that war is the result of economic and social backwardness. According to the functionalist reasoning, the problem of war and peace may be solved by the indirect approach of first solving economic and social problems through functional cooperation among governments. However, “the recent history of the world clearly fails to confirm the existence of a direct correlation between national economic backwardness and aggressiveness; it was advanced Germans, not primitive Africans, who shattered world peace in 1939”.

Starting with the early 1970s some world-order scholars have come to be known as cosmopolitanists. These scholars have had such common views on international relations:

Collective security is a partially centralized system in that the possession of power remains diffused among states, but at the same time the use of force in the system is regulated by a central agency such as an international organization with a universal membership. In fact, “collective security is the name given by the planners of a new world order after World War I to the system for maintenance of international peace that they intended as a replacement for the system commonly known as the balance of power”

There are two ideas on the balance of power as a system that deserve attention. First, the balance of power is a “fallback system” of international relations; in a multistate system, unless an alternate system is established for the management of power, it is natural for states to take care of their own security. Put differently, “the balance system is the natural international system in the sense that it does not have to be contrived. In the absence of a different system, states fall back on this one” (Claude, 1990: 35).

Secondly, “the contemporary balance of power system is by no means a mere duplicate of systems which have existed in the past”