Conceptualizing Planetary Public Policy

Philipp Müller on the emergence of planetary public policy. His guest entry on our blog explains how planetary public policy can be understood according to three different dimensions. 

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In 2010, it seems obvious that public policy needs to have a planetary focus. Planetary public policy combines 

(a) an acceptance of global problems (climate change, trafficking of humans, drugs, weapons, etc.), with  

(b) an appreciation for comparative learning in responses to local problems (e.g. issues of birth control, slum dwelling, public transportation, crisis management are similar in kind in very different environments), and 

(c) an acceptance of inter-civilizational differences and a platform allowing these differences to be voiced. 

It is a simple doctrine, but remember territorial sovereignty, the doctrine that has been guiding our thinking and doing for the last 300 years is just as simple. Simple grammars allow for surprisingly complex frameworks.

Looking back…

The doctrine of territorial sovereignty developed as part of the transformation of the medieval system in Europe into the modern state system, a process that is linked to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

The emergence of the concept of sovereignty was developed in analogy to the Roman civil law concept of private property. Both emphasizing exclusive rights concentrated in a single holder, in contrast to the medieval system of diffuse and many-layered political and economic rights. 

1. Within the state, sovereignty signified the rise of the monarch to absolute prominence over rival feudal claimants such as the aristocracy, the papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire. 
2. Internationally, sovereignty served as the basis for the anarchic nature of the international system and for its ground rules like the exchanges of recognition on the basis of legal equality, diplomacy, and international law.

This led to two binary distinctions, namely between inside-and-outside and between state-and-society. From these simple distinctions our complex modern societies developed.

However, with globalization we moved into a world where somehow these two basic binaries of territorial sovereignty are broken. We are moving into a world where states are not self-reliant in terms of economic production anymore, and neither are they in terms of security. The most basic question you can ask yourself, are you wearing clothing that’s made in just one country, right now? Even Lederhosen, the typical Bavarian dress, all of them, are produced in India.

What we are missing is a unifying doctrine that allows us to understand, explain, predict, and prescribe policy in such a world. Territorial sovereignty has lost its grip over us, but planetary public policy is only slowly emerging. A focus on global issues, local-comparable problems, and the inter-civilizational platform, can be seen as the basis of such a doctrine - no public policy thinker can ignore it in the 21st Century.

Read more about this and other planetary issues on 

Philipp Müller’s blog Shaping Network Society