By Wolfgang Pape

17/07/2026

 

Dr Wolfgang Pape is a lawyer, lecturer and former diplomat of the European Commission.  His research focuses on cultural diversity, democracy, stakeholder participation, European integration and interpopular approaches to global governance. He is the author of “Opening to Omnilateralism: Democratic Governance for All, from Local to Global with Stakeholders” (2021).

 

4. The Rise of Interpopular Relations

While international institutions struggle, interpopular relations flourish.

Commerce increasingly operates through global value chains. Universities create interpopular research communities across borders. NGOs cooperate beyond continents. Cities establish interlinking networks independent of national governments. Digital communication allows direct interaction among billions of individuals, transcending physical borders.

The European Union offers perhaps the most advanced example of institutionalised interpopularity. Europeans travel, study, work, marry, and conduct business across borders under common legal frameworks. Their personal relations are no longer called international in Bruxelles, as the EU increasingly calls its 27 members “states” rather than nations, due to the extensive pooling of national sovereignty at the EU level. Hence, European citizens’ activities, particularly under the four freedoms of movement of the Single Market, are most evidently to be called interpopular.

The distinction resembles that between public and private law. International relations among states are analogous to public law, regulating interactions among political authorities, for example, through treaties. Interpopular relations resemble private law, governing interactions among individuals and non-state entities, and routinely operate across jurisdictions through contracts.

The term “interpopular” captures this reality more accurately than the indiscriminate use of “international” to refer to all cross-border activities. Furthermore, the now-again increasing identification with and the use of the wording “nation” might be reduced, and even nationalism might be moderated with the help of this distinction. 

 

5. Non-Western Perspectives Beyond the Nation

The nation-state is not a universal political category. Its prominence reflects specific European historical experiences. 

The concept of the nation was imposed on the rest of the world, particularly through colonisation. The military frontiers fought over by the colonisers later often became national borders. They rarely respected natural borders, like rivers or mountains, that physically separated “natives” within potential “nations”. But they instead drew straight lines on paper, cutting apart culturally cohesive people (still seen today on political maps of Africa and Latin America). Drawn by European powers fighting for territorial gain, these artificial borders completely ignored existing linguistic and social ties, particularly the divisions agreed upon during the “Scramble for Africa” at the Berlin Conference (1884-85), with no local African leaders invited to participate. Then, these artificially divided territories sought independence and, finally, in that form, recognition as nations when accepted as members of the UN, irrespective of any clear definition of what constitutes a “nation”.  

The Arab world provides an instructive example of how the European term “nation” has been artificially imposed on existing communities. Political vocabulary traditionally distinguished among ummah, qawm, and watan. These concepts reflected religious, cultural, civic, and territorial forms of belonging that did not correspond neatly to the European nation-state. Colonial partition subsequently imposed territorial state structures upon these alternative political imaginaries.

Among East Asians, historically, the notion of the “nation” with fought-over, fixed territorial borders for “natives” hardly carries any homespun myth, as in Europe’s tradition. Classical Chinese political thought organised authority around the concept of 天下(tianxia, “all under heaven”) rather than around a system of sovereign states interacting as equals. Political legitimacy and soft power radiated outward from a civilisational centre rather than being defined by fixed territorial boundaries to be overcome. In the central case of China, one can trace a long history of a sort of statehood through administrative divisions dating back to the Shang Dynasty of the second millennium BC , the origin of the long-lasting ‘Middle Kingdom’ (i.e. 中国, still nowadays in its own and Japanese naming). Their pattern of thinking about the state has long been less as a comprehensive area-wide institution with fixed borders for those native to that territory to call it a “nation” in the European sense of the term. The Chinese mandarins of the past would not have imagined China as a “nation” in competition with other nations. Even the Great Wall of China has hardly ever served as a border between nations, but rather as a line-up of fortifications to control the movements of local tribes. Thus, Genghis Khan’s Mongols at that time could circumvent them and advance all the way to besiege the Chinese capital, present-day Beijing.

Throughout centuries, the political centre was rather radiating soft power and influence, which had diminishing impact with distance, like in the concentric pattern of Mandala, following the Confucian three principles of good governance, i.e. trust of the people, provision of sufficient food and adequate military. Commonly, for many, China is called a “nation” in the sense of European languages only recently since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, although it already gained strong statehood millennia ago, at least with its unification in 221 BC. Even its current President, Xi Jinping, avoids the term “nation” and instead promotes political programmes such as the Civilisation Initiative or the ‘Xivilising’ Mission ⅷ.

This must be seen in the context of the limitations of the linguistic transfer of the European notion of the nation in East Asia. In order to translate “nation” into Japanese and likewise into Chinese script, the basic character 国 of the ‘(Middle) Kingdom’ is used as such with its original meaning and only pre- or postfixes are added, e.g. 国際 for international (with an edgy joint, i.e. 際どい, on the islands of Japan), 韓国 for (South) Korea (but North Korea in shorthand 北朝鮮 remains without the traditional 国, although it is also a full member of the UN 国際連合 since 1991). Furthermore, the plural of　国, namely　 国々, was used to describe the collection of some 60 provinces under the military rule of the Shogunate until the end of the 19th century, when the Meiji Government opened to the Western world and translated the European term nation into 国. 

Not surprisingly, nowadays in Japanese newspapers, the character 国 ranks high, at number 63 in frequency of usageⅺ, and even higher, at number 27, in Chinese writingⅹ. In Chinese as well as in Japanese, the symbol of a house is added, i.e. 国家, to give it the meaning of “state” in English. However, both translations as nation and state are often used interchangeably, underlining the ambivalence of their meaning. Moreover, in practice, when watching a Chinese national opera abroad and following along with the Chinese and foreign subtitles, one is struck by the fact that the same character 国 can have dozens of different English words used to convey its meaning: country, land, state, province, etc., depending on the context. This lack of terminological clarity gets even more complicated when one introduces concepts such as the member state of a union. In this sense, a member ‘state’ as in Europe (欧州) and in the USA has again a completely different sign, namely 州. A standard Japanese law dictionary/ encyclopedia defines 国 as a 国家: that is a body organised through law and is unified, but without reference to any European term (hence pre-national?). However, when defining this term itself in combination as 国家 , it immediately refers confusingly to “state, état, Staat” rather than to the elements of the nation. ⅻ

This indicates how the symbolic script conserves and continues to shape the cultural and even political patterns of understanding in East Asia and beyond in distinction from the fluctuating use of terms like “nation” in the history of alphabetical languages of Europe. It encompasses the wider China and Japan, partly still Korea despite its very elaborate and useful sound-based Hangul-writing, and in the past also Indochina, especially Vietnam. This distinguishes East Asia from Latin-America and Africa, where European tongues have dominated and radically destroyed local expressions and entire cultures after colonial conquest by Western imperialists. 

In ideogrammes, the original meaning is conserved more concretely than in phonetically written languages. The meaning remains visually alive in contrast to the dead languages of the Romans and Greeks where we must search the etymological history to better understand the original sense of a word. Hence, phonetically written languages change their meaning with their use in daily life and are clearly more prone to abstract definitions agreed upon at a specific time, compared to ideogrammes that visually present a concrete picture from the past.

A typical result of the late adoption of the euro-centric idea of the nation and its fixed borders is the fact that in spite of Vietnam’s numerous local skirmishes fighting the Chinese over centuries, it was only in 1979 that Vietnam and China went to war over their current borders, namely as nations. This, of course, is also related to the current re-emerging centrality of China (still 中国, the Middle Kingdom) and the traditional concentric structure of statehood in East Asia, onto which some East Asians now overlay a Western-inspired, negative nationalism. The almost uninterrupted influence of Chinese culture including on the script in Vietnam, can be traced back to the 2nd century BC when mass Han Chinese migration led to Chinese rule and dynastic dominance, mandala-like without clear peripheral territorial borders of today’s nations.

No major change occurred in Vietnam until the French overcame the Chinese in the Tonkin Campaign in 1885 and colonised the whole of ‘Indochina’ with a clear border separating it from China in the North. The name says it all, but it is of course widely exaggerated, as “Indochina” covers neither parts of India nor China but rather reflects the poor European knowledge of the diversity of the Southeast Asian peninsula between these two major countries. In typical fashion, a French missionary had romanised Chinese-style ideogrammes and topped his alphabet with elaborate diacritics for appropriate pronunciation. At first sight, they actually look very francophone, but the reality is more complicated. The shifting of frontiers was also less clear, with overlapping between the two, the Kingdom of Vietnam and the ‘Kingdom of the Middle’ (中国). China is now a dominant power again, and disputes in international law over its national borders have arisen in the South China Sea, not far from the Singapore Strait, where a conflict in 1604 between European powers led to a Dutchman, Hugo Grotius, becoming the “father of international law” through a case far away from the origin of the concept of the “nation”.

Evidently, while the notion of the nation is based upon mainly Western history and values, it has been petrified through colonisation and predominance over centuries as a primary unit of law. However, in the meantime, many of its particularly nationalist adherents are withdrawing even from the “inter”-national aspects of Westphalianism by increasingly walling themselves off from other nations.

Recognising the non-European traditions does not imply rejecting the nation. Rather, it demonstrates that alternative forms of political organisation have existed and may continue to offer insights for future governance arrangements beyond the nation. The increasingly obvious gaps in the present Western-centred global governance grow even wider with new developments, such as China's expansion of volumetric statecraft beyond traditional two-dimensional geo-territorial control [8]. 

 

6. From Multilateralism to Omnilateralism

The limitations of multilateralism of nations and its frequent failures underscore the need for a broader concept: omnilateralism[9].

Derived from the Latin omnibus (“for all and by all”) and inspired by Kant’s notion of ‘allseitiger Wille’ (omnilateral will),[10] omnilateralism seeks to expand participation in governance beyond national governments alone. It calls for the inclusion of legitimate stakeholders from civil society, academia, business, local authorities, and other organised communities.

Omnilateralism rests on two complementary principles.

First, it seeks wider cultural inclusion. Global governance remains heavily shaped by Western assumptions and institutions established after 1945, such as the United Nations. A more legitimate system would draw more upon experiences and traditions from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world.

Second, it seeks wider stakeholder inclusion. The governance of global commons increasingly requires actors beyond nation-states. Climate governance already illustrates this trend. Thousands of NGOs, scientific institutions, businesses, and local governments participate alongside states in the Conference of the Parties (COP) process. Similarly, Internet governance relies heavily on multi-stakeholder arrangements involving governments, technical communities, corporations and civil society.
Such developments suggest that the future of governance may not be exclusively intergovernmental, and the current Secretary-General of the UN -- on multiple occasions -- has pointed out the need for wider inclusion in its decision-making.[11]

 

7. From Votes to Voices

One of the most significant implications of interpopular governance concerns democratic legitimacy, which would be enhanced through more qualitative deliberation. 

Traditional international institutions are organised around votes. Yet votes among nation-states often fail to reflect either population size or stakeholder relevance. Nauru and China each hold one vote in the UN General Assembly despite enormous differences in population (about 1:145,000).[12]

Interpopular governance introduces a complementary principle: voices.

The influence of small island states -- facing environmental extinction -- in climate negotiations demonstrates that qualitative concerns may outweigh quantitative power. Likewise, youth movements, such as Fridays for Future, have shaped public debate despite lacking formal voting rights. Their legitimacy derives from the relevance of their stake in future outcomes.

This shift from votes to voices does not replace representative democracy. Rather, with qualitatively higher input from knowledgeable stakeholders, it supplements the quantitative filter of representatives’ votes (e.g. at COP mainly based on their narrow national interests). Expertise, accountability, transparency, and holding of future stakes become additional sources of legitimacy. The challenge is to create mechanisms that amplify informed voices without allowing wealth or technological power to dominate public discourse.[13]

This concern is rightly emphasised by critics of multistakeholder governance, who warn that powerful corporations may capture supposedly participatory institutions. The solution is not the exclusion of all stakeholders, but rather robust criteria for accreditation, transparency, and accountability to ensure their legitimacy.[14]

 

8. The European Union as a Laboratory

The European Union provides the most advanced practical experiment in moving beyond strict Westphalian logic, without precedent in history.

European integration did not abolish nations. Instead, it pooled selected aspects of sovereignty at the EU level and created supranational institutions capable of addressing common concerns. EU Citizens have gained rights independent of national governments, while the European Parliament introduced direct representation beyond the nation-state.

Robert Schuman’s creation of the European Coal and Steel Community transformed industries once associated with warfare into instruments of cooperation in the public interest. A comparable transformation -- for instance of data cloud infrastructures -- may now be required at the global level to address the multitude of crises that concern us all and require omnilateral governance.

The EU demonstrates that sovereignty is not necessarily indivisible. Political authority can and should be distributed across multiple levels of governance -- as practised in some federal systems -- while strengthening democratic legitimacy. In this sense, Europe may serve not as a universal model but as a stepping-stone towards more inclusive forms of global governance.

 

9. Conclusion: Towards an Interpopular Future

The twenty-first century confronts humanity with a fundamental governance challenge. Political institutions remain organised around allegedly sovereign nations, while economic, technological, environmental, and social realities increasingly transcend national borders and require common rules and their enforcement.

The distinction between international and interpopular relations helps clarify this tension. International relations remain necessary. Nation-states continue to exercise authority, provide security, and maintain legal order at their level. Yet they no longer constitute the entirety of political life, which is increasingly perceived as multi-level; from local, provincial, and national to regional and even global.

Interpopular relations now shape global society more profoundly than diplomatic relations shape international politics.

As a concrete example of European integration to learn from for the evolution of global governance, Robert Schuman’s creation of the European Coal and Steel Community should give food for thought. The ECSC transformed industries once associated with warfare into instruments of cooperation in the public interest under public law. A comparable transformation -- for instance of outer space and data cloud infrastructures into public governance -- may now be required at the global level to address the multitude of crises that concern us all and require omnilateral governance.

The task ahead is therefore not to abolish nations but to relativise and complement them, in particular in global decision-making. A broader omnilateral framework can incorporate legitimate stakeholders, non-Western perspectives, and people-to-people networks into global governance. Such a framework would better reflect the opening words of the UN Charter by bringing governance closer to “the peoples” in whose name it is exercised, in terms of democracy.

The future may thus belong neither to a multipolarity of isolated nation-states nor to one world government, but to a layered system of alliances under interpopular omnilateralism: governance increasingly conducted for and by all.

 

 

Endnotes:

[1] United Nations, Charter of the United Nations, Preamble, San Francisco, 26 June 1945: “We the Peoples of the United Nations …” 

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter/full-text 

On the continuing significance of the phrase “We the Peoples”, see United Nations, “The UN Charter: A Living Document for Peace, Justice and Global Cooperation”, 2025

[2] Debora Mackenzie, End of Nations: Is There an Alternative to Countries?, New Scientist, 3 September 2014 

https://www.newscientist.com/author/debora-mackenzie/ 

[3] Hugo Grotius, Mare Liberum, Leiden, 1609 

[4]  Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, New York: Crown Publishers, 2012

[5]  Acemoglu and Robinson define “inclusive institutions” as institutions that distribute political and economic power broadly throughout society and thereby facilitate prosperity; ibidem, p. 70-96

[6]  Rana Dasgupta, After Nations, London: Canongate, 2026

[7]  Thomas Wagner, Wege aus der Gewalt: Über neue Formen politischen Zusammenlebens, Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2025, p. 99

[8] Nadine Godehardt, Zhang Xin, China’s Emergence as Volumetric State, SWP Comment 2026/C 22, 12.06.2026

https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/chinas-emergence-as-a-volumetric-state

[9] Wolfgang Pape, Opening to Omnilateralism: Democratic governance for all, from local to global with stakeholders 汎地球主義　全边主義, AuthorHouse UK, Bloomington, 2021

www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/720631-opening-to-omnilateralism 

[10] Immanuel Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, Ein philosophischer Entwurf, Königsberg, 1795, p. 33

[11] António Guterres has repeatedly called for broader participation of civil society and stakeholders in global governance. See United Nations, Our Common Agenda, New York, 2021

https://www.un.org/en/common-agenda 

[12] Joseph E. Schwartzberg, Transforming the United Nations System, Tokyo, 2013, p. 7

[13] John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy, London: Simon & Schuster, 2009, especially the concept of “monitory democracy” with civil society, p. 585, 708

[14] Terry Macdonald, Global Stakeholder Democracy: Power and Representation Beyond Liberal States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 163

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Barber, Benjamin R., 2013, If Mayors Ruled the World ‒ Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities, Yale, University Press

Berggruen, Nicolas, and Gardels, Nathan, 2013, Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century, Cambridge, Polity Press

de Tocqueville, Alexis, 1835, De la Démocratie en Amérique, Paris

Kissinger, Henry, 2014, World Order - Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History, London, Allen Lane Penguin Books

Needham, Joseph, 1954, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 1, Introductory Orientations, Cambridge, University Press

Pape, Wolfgang, 2014, Is the ‘American lake’ drying up in the China Sea? In: Foreign Policy, CEPS Commentaries, 31 July 2014, 

http://www.ceps.be/book/%E2%80%98american-lake%E2%80%99-drying-china-sea  

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NB: The article’s author encourages the wider use of the terms ‘interpopular’ and ‘people’, and the reduction of ‘international’ and ‘nation’ to their original, limited meanings, in order to moderate nationalism that is still leading to wars worldwide. He will freely send a digital copy of his 2021 book “Opening to Omnilateralism” upon request to [email protected]