Cities and their mayors are increasingly put forward as The new forces in solving major global problems. While national governments seem to fail in addressing environmental issues, poverty reduction, food production and healthcare, cities appear capable to respond much faster, more efficient and -above all- more democratically. But not everyone agrees. OMA partner and AMO director Reinier de Graaf recently added an interesting angle to the debate by arguing why Mayors should not rule the world…

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The idea of a Global Parliament of Mayors leaves one with an overwhelming sense of un-clarity, even well after the idea has gone public. What is the exact nature of this proposition? A parliament, or not a parliament? That is the basic summary of the discussion as it took place this weekend. ‘A parliament, or perhaps rather a movement…’ (Europe’s most notorious dictators have made interesting attempts in this direction…) The idea of the parliament was invented as a dialectical instrument to control power once the necessity to separate powers had been recognized: to pass, modify or reject laws proposed by Kings or governments. The central question here is: which power does this parliament control? Whose laws does or doesn’t it pass? To whom does it direct its difficult questions?

Without that question answered it remains difficult to identify a real use for the parliament other than being a self-congratulatory body, in which mayors dwell on each other’s greatness until they have moved each other to tears. If last Friday’s session in Amsterdam is anything to go by, the new parliament of mayors feels suspiciously similar to the former parliaments of Eastern Europe: an endorsement machine, with free debate as its first casualty.

Last weekend one notion was met with overwhelming consensus: the Parliament of Mayors should not be bureaucratic. But is the current, almost universal, aversion from bureaucracy really such a smart idea? In a world where institutions are weak and global agreements are increasingly precarious, it would seem that the most urgent global threat, more urgent than climate change and international migration, is that of an imminent collapse of the system itself. In that context, it is those who increasingly suffer the absence of rights secured on paper that should have our concern. To them bureaucracy might actually constitute an exhilarating prospect.

In such a context, I would not advocate a parliament of mayors to replace ‘an outdated institution such as the national parliament’ (as suggested by one of the sessions members). I would prefer to give a new relevance to the notion of subsidiarity, in which the increased importance of cities is recognized and actively crafted, but where they are integrated in a global political system that clearly recognizes which decisions should be taken at which level. Cities are free to engage and exchange at whichever level they want, but that freedom they also enjoy under the current political system, the same system that has granted them the very freedoms which have allowed them to thrive.