Abstract

Amidst multiple transnational crises, global governance has retaken center stage in academic and public debates. While previous generations of thinkers and citizens vigorously discussed the perennial idea of a world government, such proposals are nowadays often discarded quickly among scholars and practitioners. However, we know little about citizens’ present-day attitudes toward world government proposals. In a survey experiment on more than 42,000 citizens in 17 countries in the global South, North, East, and West, we find that the idea is only rejected by international majorities if it remains unspecified and if we weight countries equally. Specifications as democratic and/or focused on global issues like climate change significantly increase public support and lead overwhelming majorities worldwide to favor a global government. Support is even stronger in more populous, less free, less powerful, and/or less developed countries. The only exception is the United States where no global government specification receives majoritarian public approval, which may explain prior unwarranted extrapolations of this very specific national context to world public opinion. Overall, our findings show significant international support for fundamental transformations of global governance, and thus indicate to activists and policymakers that relevant reform efforts can build on widespread public endorsement