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Summary Of If Mayors Ruled The World By Benjamin Barber

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In “If Mayors Ruled the World,” Benjamin Barber argues that the present-day nation-state has become obsolete in overcoming the increasingly complex and problematic hurdles that the world is currently facing (Derbyshire, 2013; Florida, 2012). Furthermore, that because citizens are more enthusiastic about participating in local government and because the municipal process is more spontaneous and less politically divisive, it is truly the mayors of local government who should be calling the shots when it comes to national and international issues such as terrorism, drugs, and poverty. Barber (2013) entertains the notion that nation-states have become too large for their own good—producing a government that is not only out of touch with the people that it represents, but a government that discourages citizens from participating in the political process. This work makes an extremely compelling argument for a bottom-up style of governing, citing numerous …show more content…

This includes Michael Bloomberg of New York, Boris Johnson of London, and Lee Kuan Yew and Tony Tan of Singapore. He notes that while these men are in control of some of the most densely populated and influential cities of the world, they manage to maintain public trust, cooperation, and are extremely effective in reaching the goals they set out to accomplish (Walters, 2013). According to Barber (2013), this is because mayors are inclined to collaboration and bipartisanship-- setting aside ethnic, religious, and racial differences to directly improve the lives of the people they govern. Mayors, unlike federal or state officials, are forced to face the real life problems of their constituents head on; hence, increasing the power of mayors and creating a “cosmopolis,” or a body of mayors to manage national and international issues, would largely eliminate national sovereignty and gridlock within and between

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