A Global Monitoring System: Appraising the Effects of Government on Human Dignity

Abstract

Policy scientists can contribute to the democratic shaping and sharing of values by promoting and participating in a global monitoring system. Such a system would be designed to appraise policy formulation and execution by major governmental actors on a worldwide basis. The proposed system would be a private, transnational organization (or series of competing organizations) consisting of policy scientists from throughout the world who would use standardized indicators to monitor governmental actions and their impacts on professed official goals and on the attainment and distribution of basic human values. Taken collectively these basic values can be summated as human dignity. Key to the mission of the global monitoring system is its cybernetic nature, i.e., it is continuous, open, visible, and self-correcting. Appraisal is the assessment of institutional performance in terms of policy processes and actual outcomes as compared to avowed goals and the fundamental values associated with human dignity. Appraisal also involves attribution of the responsibility for these policy results. In performing its appraisal mission, the global monitoring system would undertake systematic projections of the probable consequences of current trends in policy. The results of such a continuous monitoring system would be disseminated at periodic intervals to the civic and public orders throughout the world.