What are the greatest recent achievements in international collaboration that you can think of? Amid the repeated failure to agree to a plastic treaty^[1], or the Security Council’s inability to contain conflicts in the Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, it is difficult to think of any. The most commonly cited examples — the eradication of smallpox (May 1980) and the protection of the ozone layer (Montreal Protocol, 1987) — date back to the cold war era. Newer initiatives, like peacekeeping missions or the Paris agreement (2015), often fell short of expectations and have largely failed to meet expectations.

Challenges of International Cooperation

Founded in 1945, the United Nations sits at the heart of the vast and complex system of international cooperation. Built for a different era, its weaknesses are increasingly hard to ignore in a multi-polar world facing global challenges.

Unfair Representation: The Security Council, the highest body of the UN with binding decision-making power, gives five states a permanent seat (the "P5") and the right to veto any resolution and any amendment to the UN Charter^[2]. The General Assembly, where every country has one vote regardless of size, has almost no powers beyond nominating the 10 non-permanent Security Council members. Similarly, voting power in the IMF and the World Bank, for instance, is weighted by financial contribution, giving wealthy countries effective veto over both institutions. Across the broader UN system, donors that earmark their voluntary contributions for specific projects shape policy in practice, regardless of the formal voting rules.

Ineffectiveness: The complexity of the total UN system is astounding: 15 specialized and 5 related UN agencies^[3] operating as separate bureaucracies, more than 40,000 active mandates serviced by around 400 intergovernmental bodies^[4] and employing about 130,000 people^[5], and spending USD 67 billion in 2024^[6]. The "Multilateral Organization Performance Assessment Network" (MOPAN), a network of donor countries to independently assess the effectiveness of UN agencies and other multilateral bodies, found that overlapping mandates, blurred functions, parallel operations of UN agencies in developing countries, and weak coordination mechanisms have created a fragmented system that increases costs, dilutes impact, and undermines coherence^[7].

Lack of Enforcement: Late mandatory contributions to the UN budgets, in particular from three of the P5, have thrown the UN into a "cash crisis"^[8]. The only sanction available within the UN for non-payment of dues is loss of voting rights after two full years of arrears, which in the case of the US would be unenforceable. The same weakness extends to international obligations more broadly. International law is by its nature fragmented and difficult to enforce, with the Paris agreement being a prime example. The institutions dedicated to international justice — the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court — are routinely ignored by powerful states. The ICJ can only hear cases where both parties consent to its jurisdiction, and its judgements depend on the Security Council for enforcement. The ICC has been able to prosecute almost no sitting officials of major states. Across the system, compliance is weak because consequences for breach are limited and easily evaded.

Paralysis: The Security Council, expected to act decisively in crises, is regularly paralyzed by the veto power of the P5. Reform proposals have been debated for decades^[9]. The current UN80 initiative is focused on reducing cost more than on structural change^[10]. In practice, the entrenched privileges of the P5, who must all consent to any charter amendment, lead to a paralyzed system that is unable to adapt.

As the UN’s own reform initiative UN80 recognizes, "the UN system has been built over time — mandate by mandate, crisis by crisis — rather than from a single blueprint"^[11]. Domains that need urgent international action — climate, the rise of AI, the risks of abuse in genetic research — are hard to forcefully and specifically address. Instead of reforming a paralyzed and extraordinarily complex system, we should envision a new integrated system of governance based on universal principles and built to adapt to a changing world.

Principles of a New International Governance System

The world's governance should be built on foundational principles that provide a framework for continuous evolution and adaptation :

Sovereign Equality: Every country in the world is invited to participate, regardless of its inner organization and governance. The sovereignty of all countries to freely choose their national policies is recognized, subject to compliance with the commitments that countries voluntarily agreed to within the House of Nations and to the exclusion of crimes against humanity, which cannot be treated as purely internal affairs.

Fair Representation: Voting power between nations that vary vastly in size needs to be balanced between the current UN — one vote per country meaning that Iceland and China have the same influence — and pure population-based voting, in which China and India alone make up over a third of the votes while the 100 smallest countries combined have less than 1% of the votes^[12]. A known alternative is the Penrose method^[13], which is theoretically designed in a way to assign equal influence to all voters by assigning each country a vote linked to the square root of its population^[14]. More important than the theoretical justification is the fact that the square-root approach strikes a simple and respectful balance of voting powers between nations (e.g. China would obtain approx. 12x the votes of Switzerland).

Separation of Concerns: Each domain of cooperation is handled by an independent unit with a clearly defined mandate and mission. This separation of concerns enables clarity of purpose, focused governance, efficiency, and accountability. It also makes the system resilient: dysfunction in one area does not contaminate others, and reforms and enhancements can be applied surgically rather than requiring system-wide consensus.

Selective Integration: Cooperation is organized through a principle of subsidiarity: countries integrate at the level they choose, when they choose, and only in the domains they choose. Deeper levels of cooperation build on the mechanisms and infrastructure established by lower ones, creating a natural progression from basic technical cooperation toward deeper political and security integration.

The House of Nations

We imagine the system to be a house composed of many chambers that are organized into wings, all of which rest on a common foundation. The system is explicitly designed to be adaptive, by building in the mechanisms to extend and modify the house layout over time. All existing international organizations and treaties should be integrated into or replaced by the House of Nations as it is gradually constructed and takes over responsibility for additional aspects of international cooperation.

Chambers of the House

Each chamber in the House of Nations is a self-contained governance unit defined by:

• A clearly delimited, universal mission and scope.

• Defined dependencies on other chambers that countries must be compliant members of as a pre-condition ("leading chambers")

• Its own budget, funded by its members proportionally to each country’s Gross Domestic Product of the previous year, in order to ensure fairness and clarity

• An operational agency to carry out its mandate, which can be very limited or substantive, depending on the mandate

• Its own assembly, using the square-root population weighting, with defined powers and governance

• Compliance requirements and a monitoring mechanism

• An overall strategy developed and approved by its members to implement and further its mission

The Compliance Cascade

As in a large house, where you have to pass through some chambers before you can reach a specific chamber at the end of a wing, the units of the House of Nations depend on each other in a way that is logical and defined. The chambers that must be passed before a member can enter a given chamber are called their "leading" chambers. A country found in breach of a chamber’s rules & commitments has membership suspended not only within that chamber, but in all chambers that depend on the breached one. This is the Compliance Cascade, which enforces compliance with lower levels of cooperation to maintain access to higher levels of integration.

The Compliance Cascade replaces large parts of international law by a structured, transparent, and proportional system that is subject to oversight by the international community.

The Foundation

The Foundation is a special chamber and the only one with no conditions or dependencies. All countries of the Earth are free to join the Foundation as the entry point to the House of Nations. All other chambers rest on the Foundation, which provides the procedural rules and infrastructure necessary for the entire House. Its responsibilities include:

• Defining the House' system itself: how chambers are created, amended, merged, or dissolved, how their dependencies are declared and validated, how voting is carried out, how disputes are resolved, and what acts constitute crimes against humanity.

• Approving the mission and scope of every chamber before it becomes operational, ensuring it is clearly defined, non-overlapping with existing chambers, and consistent with the system's principles.

• Updating the mission and dependencies of chambers as the overall House layout evolves.

• Operating the dispute resolution mechanism (see below).

• By super-majority, deciding on cases of crimes against humanity, such as genocide and ethical cleansing. If a country is found to be guilty of such crimes, its membership is in the Foundation is suspended, effectively excluding it from the international scene until readmitted.

The fact that the Foundation must approve all chambers and their missions ensures that the layout of the House of Nations is decided jointly and not shaped by closed circles of aligned countries. The coherence and functioning of the entire system rests on the Foundation.

The Foundation has three agencies that ensure the smooth operation of the House:

• The Secretary: Its role is to coordinate all proceedings, to act as a neutral administrator, and to provide secretary and record keeping services for all chambers and their respective assemblies. Disputes and complaints need to be raised with the Secretary, and the Secretary will release the official gazette of the House.

• The Office: The Office provides the common infrastructure services to all chambers and agencies, such as HR, IT, Facility Management, and Procurement. The objective of the Office is to ensure coherence, efficiency, and alignment. No chamber is allowed to operate its own infrastructure.

• The Audit Bureau: The mission of the Audit Bureau is to provide annual assessment of all existing chambers regarding the effective and efficient achievement of their respective missions, as well as of all agencies, including the Secretary and the Office. It ensures accountability and transparency, which can only be achieved by independent oversight. The Audit Bureau is accountable to the Foundation and can also be entrusted with special missions, including independent assessments in compliance dispute questions.

The cost of the foundation and its agencies is attributed to the dependent chambers, making the Foundation free-of-charge for its members to allow all countries to join without prejudice.

Dispute resolution

A modular system stands or falls on the credibility of its dispute resolution. Disagreements will arise in three main forms:

1. Between members within a chamber: This must be resolved by the internal governance and voting mechanism of that chamber. If no resolution can be reached, the Foundation must update the chamber's governance system accordingly.

2. Between chambers (e.g., over scope or dependency): Establishing the responsibilities of each chamber is the direct responsibility of the Foundation as the governing body of these inter-chamber-relationships. Any area of ambiguity must be addressed by an update to the respective chambers' missions.

3. Over a country's compliance with a chamber's requirements: Compliance disputes are first and foremost the responsibility of the compliance mechanism defined within each chamber. If a member believes to be unjustly disqualified, the Foundation may charge the Audit Bureau with an independent assessment and, on that basis, will take the final decision.

Examples

The precise layout of the House of Nations will have to be determined by experts and political scientists. In practice, the House will likely factor into largely independent wings, each of which focused on a specific challenge of our times. There are many possible ways to building the different wings of the House and indeed, its layout should change over time as the circumstances evolve.

Minimal Example: Standards

Domains of apolitical technical cooperation are the area where the current UN system shines. The main objective for the House of Nations is to clearly establish these domains as corridors in the House that are pre-conditions of most specialized wings.

Example: Trade in Goods

This example focuses on trade in goods to illustrate the dependency structure. Extensions to free-trade agreements or carbon accounting are possible on top.

Example: Peace and Security

The Peace domain is structured as a graduated sequence from minimal commitment (Non-Aggression) through operational transparency (Military Transparency, Arms Control) to material protection (Mutual Defense Assistance). Each step is a deeper commitment that unlocks more valuable forms of cooperation. A central Military Monitoring Chamber provides verification for all the others.

Example: Justice and Rights

Rights and justice are structured leading from minimal universal commitments (Basic Rights) to deeper forms of cooperation (Extradition). The International Criminal Court is deliberately not duplicated as such a mechanism of prosecuting individuals is both unrealistic and highly political.

The Political Path

All nations, except the P5, have an inherent interest to create a new system that re-balances power and ensures better outcomes. France and the UK have defended their permanent seats but have also positioned themselves as champions of multilateralism, and might in the right circumstances accept a new system that brings tangible benefits.

China is actively advocating reform to the UN system, including through its 2025 Global Governance Initiative^[15]. If it can be convinced to join a new system, that might only leave the US and Russia as bystanders and remaining defenders of an abandoned system that no longer serves any purpose.

1. Talks on global plastic pollution treaty adjourn without consensus

2. Article 108 of the Charter of the UN charter

3. List of specialized agencies of the United Nations

4. A mandate for change

5. ICSC booklet

6. Total revenue of the UN system

7. Multilateral Effectiveness in a Shifting Landscape

8. UN at 80: Funding challenges at the United Nations

9. Reform of the United Nations Security Council

10. Financial Collapse is Forcing Radical United Nations Restructuring

11. Shifting paradigms: United to Deliver

12. List of countries and dependencies by population

13. Penrose method

14. Penrose assumes that, within each country, each citizen’s influence over political decisions scales with 1/√(population), i.e. the larger a country’s population, the less individual influence per person on the country’s policies. Therefore, if countries’ voting power in the global governance system is scaled by √(population), every person on earth would obtain approximately the same influence over global decisions.

15. Concept Paper on the Global Governance Initiative