From indirect to direct rule? Transnational policy planning bodies and global governance in the COVID crisis

Abstract

The origins of contemporary supra-national power go back to the second British Empire, which, unlike the first, faced organized labor as a potential revolutionary force. The formation of the Rhodes–Milner Group was meant to better manage the formation of the public mood, and the Boer War in South Africa demanded close integration of imperial affairs. A central figure in the Rhodes–Milner Group, Lord Esher, was also the architect of the Committee of Imperial Defense, created to take up the latter task. Esher's idea of a secretariat confidentially preparing solutions to issues of the day before they emerged in the public domain was introduced into the structure of international organizations after World War I and the Russian Revolution. Escher also laid the foundations of today's model of transnational politics in which groups such as Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission and many others, shape certain areas of consensus before the public is allowed to make its voice heard. In this process, the circumvention of democracy has assumed the nature of an outright assault on it. In the process the World Economic Forum, formally joining forces with the United Nations, has become the most visible supranational body applying direct rule.