Change at the top

While citizens will create their own momentum for reform, there are choices that politicians can make which will respond to this movement and provide leadership through reforms that go with the grain of the changes outlined here.

This remains an unlikely course of action, given that states (for which read the politicians and civil servants who run them) will be reluctant to give up their power and control.

But in both the United States and the European Union, existing political structures can be adapted to take the first steps on the road to international revolution.

In the US, the policies of different states could become divorced from their geographical location, so that, for example, a citizen of California could opt into the policy framework of New York.

And in the EU, the blurring of sovereignty and citizenship coupled with the lack of a constitution which would hinder the development of such change could also make reform more likely.

Citizens of the EU can currently opt into different welfare systems, healthcare systems, etc, by physically moving around countries and becoming residents.

The next radical step would be to allow people to opt into these systems without physically moving.

In effect, states would compete with each other for citizens much as some currently do by offering lower corporate tax rates and other inducements in return for business relocations.

It would not just be state against state, but framework against framework. So a citizen might opt for a German healthcare framework and a Swedish education framework.

From here the potential for change is significant as the states are subject to competitive pressures which put them at the service of the people, rather than forcing citizens to be subject to state authority.

It is possible to imagine, for example, that some states with a poor record of governance might end up providing no policies at all if enough of their citizens opt for frameworks from other countries. Although a state administrative system would remain in place to physically administer the frameworks chosen by the population, in such circumstances the concept of national governance or sovereignty of any kind would be meaningless.

In effect, states would begin the transition to becoming virtual entities. This would raise questions of whether such an entity could still accurately be called a state.