If Mayors Ruled the World: Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities

by Benjamin R. Barber

In the face of the most perilous challenges of our time—climate change, terrorism, poverty, and trafficking of drugs, guns, and people—the nations of the world seem paralyzed. The problems are too big, too interdependent, too divisive for the nation-state. Is the nation-state, once democracy's best hope, today democratically dysfunctional? Obsolete? The answer, says Benjamin Barber in this highly provocative and original book, is yes. Cities and the mayors who run them can do and are doing a better job. Barber cites the unique qualities cities worldwide pragmatism, civic trust, participation, indifference to borders and sovereignty, and a democratic penchant for networking, creativity, innovation, and cooperation. He demonstrates how city mayors, singly and jointly, are responding to transnational problems more effectively than nation-states mired in ideological infighting and sovereign rivalries. Featuring profiles of a dozen mayors around the world—courageous, eccentric, or both at once— If Mayors Ruled the World presents a compelling new vision of governance for the coming century. Barber makes a persuasive case that the city is democracy’s best hope in a globalizing world, and great mayors are already proving that this is so.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Cities, Urban Planning, Sociology, Society, Political Science

432 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2013

About the author

American political theorist perhaps best known for his 1996 bestseller, Jihad vs. McWorld.

Reviews

[LATOYA JOVENA · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am writing a book about a mayor so I wanted to know more about their job. I'm not sure how much this book helped.

Part one was pompous and hard to follow. It seemed like the same thing was being stated over and over. I learned two things there, mayors are always in meetings or town halls interacting with their citizens. Also a mayors main goal is to solve problems not push ideologies like on the federal stage.

Part two was a list of the cities ills, things that I'm sure happen other areas, but more in cities because there are simply more people. The solution was that all cities work together because nations can't, or won't. To me it seems like a whole lot of reading to get to that.

[Russell Fox · Rating 2 out of 5]

If there is anything Benjamin Barber is, it is a booster: a booster of ideas, of concepts, particularly any idea or concept which he can present as new or revelatory or world-historical in some not-really-Hegelian-but-only-because-he-insists-its-the-dawn-not-twilight sort of way. I suppose that comes off as terribly backhanded compliment, and I'm not sure I want to apologize for that. Barber is, by any measure, a truly brilliant and expansive thinker, someone constantly making insightful connections between prevailing or emergent arguments and deepening their connection to important historical and philosophical lines of thought. The fact that he does all this in the service of a rather hedgehog-like focus on democracy, civic involvement, and public action doesn't bother me in the least, since my own preoccupations overlap with that focus to a pretty great extent. Still, there is only so much boosting of connections and revelations of new (if actually old) ideas that one can take; pretty soon, we've gotten the (essentially left communitarian, though I have no idea what label Barber would prefer these days) message: the neoliberal privatizing of public space, the capitalist professionalization of politics, the triumph of ideological packaging over pragmatic discourse, and the celebration of the corporate freedom over collective work, all spell nothing but trouble for people who seek to exercise real self-government.

In this book, Barber argues that one of the key enablers of all of the above is the principle of sovereignty which has provided a legal and philosophical-conceptual framework for the world system of states for the past 400 years. Barber is infatuated with the globalizing effects of technology, with the flow of people and ideas and goods, and how it all has, in his view, created both terrifically complicated global problems as well as the means of addressing them: but only if we can get rid of our obsession with "independence," replacing it with the "interdependence" that the world requires. Sovereignty, of course, find its most essential root in the idea of territorial independence; hence, Barber thinks state-sovereignty, while not something that will (or even probably should, given real-world security concerns) disappear, needs to be seen as the obstacle it is. And what form of human organization is best situated--historically, economically, and sociologically--to conceive itself as and actually function as an alternative to the clumsiness of sovereign, independent states? Cities, that's what. And at the top of any truly effectual city, Barber asserts, stands a pragmatic, non-ideological, profoundly cosmopolitan mayor.

This book, then, is most an exploration of, and a celebration of, what makes for such mayors, and how they do the good, necessary, interdependent work of cities which they must and should. Some of Barber's observations are excellently though-provoking: the idea, for example, that all cities are essentially "bridging" organisms, inherently disposed to a kind of commercial univeralism, no matter what their size or history or physical environment, is a challenging one. Also: that the reason cities are able to serve as multicultural and adaptable bridges between groups of people far and wide is exactly because they are not "constitutional"; that is, they don't really have a defined place in any federal scheme that connects them to their surrounding states and thus to the international (a word which he thoughtfully puts a big questions mark beside) system of states, making real mutual interdependence between distant cities possible. (There are, of course, exceptions to this, where cities themselves have actual state standing, such as Singapore and Berlin, but overall his point is a strong one.)

The reason all those good ideas didn't lead me to say more than "it was okay" when reading this book is that, in all his boosting (every other chapter is a mostly rapturous portrait of some mayor, almost without except one of one of the globe's handful of massively powerful and wealthy megacities), there are basic problems which he leaves unexplored. One huge one, especially as he comes to his conclusion where he speculates about the development of a "world parliament of mayors": exactly how is it that the cities of the world are to develop an ethos of participatory, consensual, democratic action? Barber is a smart enough communitarian to know that real self-government can't ignore a sense of affection for one's own place, and a trust in it. He does, in fact, spend a great deal of time discussing how mayors can be (ideally, anyway) far more popular with their constituents than national representatives ever are, as well as how cities can and do celebrate themselves and build pride: and yet, if that popularity and pride is all ultimately a function of interdependent transactions, of the "bridging" opportunities to the next job, the next opportunity, even the next city, then whence comes the real "bonding" that democratic self-government requires. At one point Barber urges that we "strengthen the bonds with city government so that civic alienation is not an option," yet how are cities to encourage real "bonding" if they are, by Barber's own definition, inherently cosmopolitan?

Anyway, it is theoretical problems like these that prevented me from really liking and learning from Barber's exuberant celebration of (big) cities. One thing can't be denied, though: there does, in fact, seem to be a serious turn taking place in much political, philosophical, and sociological research to the particular qualities of the city in our late modern moment, and Barber is, once again, clearly riding the wave.

[Kressel Housman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bah! First abandoned book of the year! I first heard of it on the Freakonmics Radio Podcast, and I was intrigued by the thesis: that mayors accomplish much more than heads of nations because they deal with the practical realities of day-to-day living. Reality forces them to put ideologies aside. The book follows the format of one chapter outlining the author's ideas and then a profile of a mayor. Parts of the first chapter was tough to get through because much of it was theoretical and academic, but I was willing to push my way past it to get to the first profile on Mayor Michael Bloomburg. Well, guess what? The profile was mostly dry and academic, too. Some of the writing was readable, but I wish the author had done with his book what he says the mayors do: stick with the practical stuff. Theories pale in comparison.

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneven. Intriguing notion, but here it seems life a forced stretch of a concept. This book offers much to celebrate about cities working together and leading the way, but mayors will not rule the world anytime soon. Taken as a what-if, however, it is fun to imagine a world led by can-do mayors who get practical things done.

Inauguration Day lingers in a few days when a new kind of era will begin under a humorless bully of a plutocrat without experience as an officeholder who creates chaos, who insults and divides. There must be a better path for the common good. This book published four years ago.

Barber, in this book, wants to change the subject from states to cities, from ideology to problem solving. Just as neighborhoods serve as building blocks of a city, Barber writes that cities serve as building blocks of global governance.

Michael Bloomberg, the so-called mayor of the world, flirted with running for president five years ago. Bloomberg makes a good mayor although those attributes hindered his presidential ambitions, writes Barber. Bloomberg is too pragmatic, too focused on solving problems. He bridges politics and business with numbers and practical science. The mayor pursued successful outcomes rather than political legitimacy. He inaugurated bike lanes, for example, and he helped establish Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

While nation-states take forever to negotiate climate agreements, for example, cities quickly installed bike lanes and bike-sharing programs, which cut carbon and emissions.

Americans elected a big-city mayor, Grover Cleveland from Buffalo, in 1888. Maybe we need to try doing that again. Tim Kaine, Hillary’s running mate, served as a mayor, governor and senator. He is one of thirty people in our history to have served in those three positions. Jacques Chirac, a recent president of France, served as the mayor of Paris before rising to the top.

But the central idea here collapses when Barber imagines a cumbersome global parliament of mayors. This world assembly of cities would include megacities, of course, but also cities of fifty thousand, he writes.

Barber writes that his book builds on earlier urban voices, such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, Edward Glaeser and Richard Florida. From there, Barber applied their work to establishing a global democratic governance where cities become the prime actors.

Interesting ideas here as well as a good celebration of the urban world and what it can achieve. Three and a half stars, rounding up.

This book may pair well with The Metropolitan Revolution: How Cities and Metros Are Fixing Our Broken Politics and Fragile Economy.

The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, a five-star book by Michael Shermer, likes the concept of Barber's book. Shermer's mention of it moved the title off my to-read shelf.

[Danial Hume · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bought the book thinking that the thesis was interesting and although I still do believe it, Barber does a bad job in presenting this message out in his book. The few pros I could give is an interesting thesis with good explanations with evidence backing his analysis but this an exception not the rule.

The one star rating is due to the repetitive, banal contents of the book and how he expands the subject he's explaining (that does not add much to the point he is making). Also, some parts of his writing can come off as esoteric to some people. Parts of his writing also comes off as pure opinion rather than analysis cum evidence.

[Travis Junkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a lot of good and interesting ideas in this book and I would be interested in reading more books on similar topics, however, this author went out of his way to needlessly complicate every sentence. If you asked him to write instructions on how to make a sandwich he would give you a 40 page dissertation on how to select bread.

[Przemysław Garczyński (3telnik.pl) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo nietypowa wizja polityczna, której - po lekturze - jak najbardziej kibicuję!

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, cities were facing a great deal of challenges. A handful of mayors such as Bloomberg stepped up to remake the cities to do better and improve the experience of citizens. The author of this book took a few exceptional cities and extrapolated that to be some inevitable future.

Yet his analyses were quite bad in retrospect. While cities could deal with stochastic terrorism in a way that nations didn't, they were politically incapable of dealing with future challenges. Trump and populist forces created a starker divide between cities and the nation, but those fractured relationships only caused local issues to grow worse: NIMBYism led to growing inequality and housing crises which are now impacting even smaller cities.

COVID was a test case for how these festering political issues became more apparent. As it turns out we aren't actually just a handful of cities lining the land but nations. You can't stop disease through some bright city on a hill. It requires the power and monetary capacity of a nation-state to deal with it. This means the 2010s were in fact a milquetoast era where we really had no major problems.

We're returning to a world of big power competition. Kyiv might be a great city, but it cannot defend itself on its own. It cannot protect its countryside on its own. Politically, cities like Moscow and Kyiv and Beijing and DC are all very different and collaboration is going to necessarily be filtered through geopolitical lenses.

The last chapter of this book covers a "congress of mayors" and tries to define a haphazard structure for how it could work, but comes across as deeply unconvicing.

Overall, it's a book that was meant for a brief window of time. The author writes flowery language rather than simple prose. I cannot recommend it as a good indicator of the future.

[Jaap · Rating 2 out of 5]

Benjamin Barber argues in this book that states as we know them will not bring peace and true democracy at a global scale. In the ages since Thomas Hobbes, Hugo de Groot and Immanuel Kant we have never reached global consensus and the United Nations have never been united at all. The only organisations that span the world on a truly global scale are large companies, banks (and NGO's) and none of them have anything to do with democracy.

In opposition to that Barber expects that the future of true democratic globalisation lies in the close cooperation of cities. He argues that cities encounter the most important challenges and solve real problems. More than 50 percent of the world population lives in cities and therefore a global parliament of cities is the only means of achieving actual results in the direction of world peace.

I found the reasoning in the book interesting but not convincing at all. To rely on mayors as the core of democratic cooperation seems an over simplification to me. Not only are many mayors not chosen in a democratic process at all (not even in Holland, my home country) but I shudder at the thought of trusting clowns like Boris Johnson and what is the democratic value of the election of Michael Bloomberg who can easily spend 80 million dollars on his reelection campaign hiring complete crowds of supporters in New York ?

[Rasmus Dahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interessant and thought provoking book.

Even though the book, in my opinion, does not convince me that a global parliament of mayors is a good idea, there are many well argued insights in the book.

Especially the chapters on what characteristics a good mayor should have (chapter 4), and the chapter in what role cities play in important policy areas like security, environment and education (chapter 7) are second to none.

A parliament of mayors would probably inherit many of the challenges and problems that other international organizations have, and this is one of the issues I have with the book. I can see how the world would be different if the same modus operandi of mayors in cities were used internationally, but there are major differences and huge diversity between cities, that makes it unlikely to happen.

The major output of the book is therefore, in my view, that more emphasis, understanding, recognition and, one could hope, respect of cities role in modern society should be developed by the national parliaments.

[M- S__ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has an interesting premise that I'm not even sure I disagree with: decentralizing international decision making. But Barber never really makes his argument.

He wanders off every other chapter to fellate some neolib mayor for a single initiative that had a short term positive effect on their city. His reverence for for NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg in particular is just embarrassing.

At first I thought these brief little bios were meant to punctuate the arguments he was making in the more serious chapter, but about halfway through this book, it dawned on me that Barber hadn't really made any points at all. He just sort of sets up the obstacles to his solutions and leaves it to the secret mayor magic to figure out how to get past them.

I like the conversation this book starts. It's a shame Barber was content to just walk away from it.

[Adam Zabell · Rating 2 out of 5]

tl;dr - they already are as long as you consider "soft power" to be powerful

Caveat: I read this as an audiobook, so what I gleaned is different than if I'd read it.

This book read like a college Senior Humanities Thesis, complete with repetition of favorite phrases, talking forever while saying nothing, namedropping authors you think your reader thinks will give you credibility, repetition of favorite phrases, and a slavish devotion to the worldview of Western Europeans. What the author ultimately fails to acknowledge is that their premise -- that Mayors are elected locally but rule globally only through consensus and use of social capital -- is little more than a repackaging of the 19th century philosophy of Anarchism. Which is fine, but then the author needs to admit this book is less about "mayoral rule of the world" and more about "wishing everybody could just get along."

[Carlos · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book was full of interesting discussions its approach to its central claim was too circuitous. Barber spends a lot more time defending his claim that mayors should rule the world than in proposing how this would work. He also defers talking about the how to the last chapter in a way that prevents him from addressing the objections the reader may have towards his proposed method rather than the abstract idea of mayors ruling the world. While this in no way prevents the reader from enjoying the thoughtful discussions regarding the basic problems of cities, especially in the developing world, it does leave the reader skeptical that Barber’s proposed method could ever be put to practice.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

An interesting alternative to today's organization around the national state made crap by the intervention of Barber. "Democracy is in deep crisis" and Barber just happen to know who is the benevolent despot ready to regulate your life. Or, a shallow, alarmist, well fed middle class mind dreaming about the same Philosopher King all other shallow alarmist well fed middle class minds have dreamed in the last Millennia.

[Myles]

I live in a city that not long ago rid itself of a terrible mayor, Rob Ford, and still has the memory of an almost equally silly mayor, Mel Lastman.

The complaint of this book is that because national governments lack the will to engage effectively in issues of global concern we need yet another level of government to act for them.

Not necessarily to fix the governments we have.

[Laurent Franckx · Rating 1 out of 5]

I started reading the book but soon had the feeling that whenever an idea could be expressed in 1 page, Barber used 10. That really put me off, honestly. It is probably a sacrilege to write this, but if someone can give me a good executive summary, I'll read it.

[Denton Holland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting premise, well researched, but not very readable. And, in Dallas where I live, the plutocracy that furnishes our mayors has yet to find one who can fill the potholes or quell the infestation of shared bikes.

[Neil Cochrane · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fundamentally interesting premise and some good arguments, buried in a bloated, repetitive execution.

[X · Rating 2 out of 5]

Waffly.

[Danielle Mintzlaff · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe my alderman would like it.

[Lene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive repetitive repetitive. Needs serious editing. Read chapter 12, if you are interested in the core idea of mr. Barber.

[Hugo Demets · Rating 2 out of 5]

Benjamin Barber is van beroep een politiek theoreticus, en dat merk je ook aan zijn boek. Hierin vraagt hij zich af hoe de wereld er zou uitzien als burgemeesters de wereldproblemen zouden oplossen. De auteur betoogt dat burgemeesters veel pragmatischer en nauwelijks ideologisch zijn ingesteld, en daardoor veel beter in staat zijn om de huidige kopzorgen van de wereld, zoals klimaatopwarming, armoede en terrorisme, aan te pakken. Hij promoot in zijn boek het idee van een wereldwijd burgemeestersparlement, dat in de praktijk al opgepikt en uitgewerkt werd door een aantal burgemeensters, zoals die van New York, Amsterdam en Seoul.

De natiestaten, die zo’n 400 jaar geleden ontstonden, waren toen nuttig om hun burgers veiligheid en een rechtssysteem te geven, maar zijn nu lam geslagen door de ideologieën van hun leiders en hebben voor Benjamin Barber afgedaan. Idem dito voor de supranationale instellingen, die in de realiteit niet boven de staten staan, maar verlamd worden doordat de staten in die instellingen allemaal hun eigenbelang nastreven. Naties willen allemaal hun eigen ding doen, terwijl burgemeesters en hun steden actief ervaringen en best practices uitwisselen.

Toen ik het boek begon te lezen had ik direct twee bedenkingen. Kunnen burgemeesters juist zo pragmatisch zijn omdat de natiestaten het “moeilijke” werk (zoals economisch beleid en defensie) grotendeels uit hun handen neemt? En, stel je een wereld van alleen stadstaten voor: zou het niet kunnen gebeuren dat die steden elkaar met oorlogen gaan bevechten als burgemeesters machtshonger krijgen, zoals in de Noord-Italiaanse steden in de Renaissance?

Bovendien verwacht Benjamin Barber wel een erg idealistische houding van de burgemeesters in zo’n wereldparlement: ze zouden daar niet de belangen van hun eigen stad mogen verdedigen, maar eerder initiatieven moeten nemen omdat ze vertegenwoordigers zijn van de stedelijke inwoners van de hele planeet.

In België heeft men al een aantal burgemeestersparlementen – de regionale parlementen, om precies te zijn. Burgemeesters tonen daar keer op keer dat ze eerder hun eigen belangen dan de belangen van alle inwoners van hun gewest verdedigen, en ik geloof niet echt dat in het parlement dat Barber voorstelt, het anders zou worden. Bovendien werken steden al vaak samen in informele, internationale steden verbanden, die in het boek zelf worden vernoemd. Ik kreeg de indruk dat Barber die wil formaliseren, enkel omdat hij de hoop op oplossingen van de wereldproblemen heeft verloren, als die oplossingen van de natiestaten moeten komen. Volgens mij zijn er andere methoden om het cynisme bij de burgers weg te halen en hun weer hoop te geven, dan door de creatie van nog een nieuw instituut.

De welbelezen auteur herhaalt zichzelf keer op keer, 400 pagina’s lang. Van zijn boodschap kan je véél sneller kennis nemen door het bekijken van een TED-talk, waarin hij exact dezelfde ideeën op een kwartier uitlegt. De interludia in zijn boek zijn twaalf portretten van burgemeesters, jammer genoeg niet heel diepgravend, maar die overtuigend aantonen dat verkozenen die zeer pragmatisch handelen om problemen echt op te lossen, veel succesvoller zijn en veel meer gedaan krijgen dan de politici die hun handelen laten voortvloeien uit een ideologie.

[Kayla A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this book with high hopes, as municipal government is one of my passions and my biggest dream is to be mayor of my hometown (don't laugh). Yet a lot of this book is premised on the ideal that states are no longer capable of conducting policy, and that cities can do it much better-- and while I do agree that there are some areas in which local government is much more effective than national, I suppose I have not completely given up on the state.

The whole idea of "mayors ruling the world" is just a little bit far-fetched, or at least it is in the way Barber presents it, so that the book seemed more like a fanciful ideal than a plausible political theory. The writing was often repetitive and droning. However, this book has one redeeming aspect; between major chapters would be a short biography on an interesting (or peculiar) mayor. Reading about the various mayors from around the world and the work they have done was the only enjoyable experience of this book, and I wish the profiles had been more in depth (or the book had been simply profiles of awesome mayors without all that "ruling the world" stuff thrown in).

[Charles Denison IV · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many interesting observations about how Mayors are more effective at solving society's common issues than politicians at the state or national levels. They are forced to deal with the day to day realities of life and therefore must come up with solutions. In addition, unlike state and national leaders, they are free to work together with each other since they are not bound by issues regarding state and national sovereignty. I agree with the book's premise, however the book was far too long. I enjoyed the mayor profiles, but the discussion around a possible Global Parliament of Mayors was very long winded and very repetitive.

[Florian Bieber · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea is good and the point about mayors getting things done is a nice story, but the book is repetitive and bloated. Furthermore, the author is not sufficiently critical of authoritarian practicies (i.e. Singapur) and in his "post-ideological" getting things done approach, democracy, accountability seems to matter less. He also ignores the problems of transferring this larger scale. The reason mayors can get more things done is often because they operate within states that set laws and have the larger debates au lieu of the city. If this framework were not to be there, these debates would have to be held at the city level.

[Julian Haigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather wordy survey of the place of cities in development and the important place they may provide in overcoming the limits of Westphalian sovereignty. The profiles of 6 world-class mayors was a nice addition. Over and again, Barber emphasizes that the decentralized, and cooperative focus of city governance places it perfectly to overcome some of the world's most intractable problems like global warming. If you're interested it's worth a quick look over but the intellectual level seems more challenging than substantial, making it an effort to read.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd actually like to give this book 2.5 stars but was feeling generous. This book is not very organized and repeats itself often. The most interesting part of the book is actually the mayor profiles he does for various cities.

It feels like he sort of half researched his topic and tried to finish it with a rally, but it doesn't make a lot of sense. I'd only read this if you're really into politics, and even then feel free to skim.

[Alex Csicsek · Rating 2 out of 5]

A confused discussion about the importance of cities in the era of globalisation concludes with a call for some sort of ill-defined UN-esque network of cities.

The only chapter I enjoyed reading was The Land of Lost Content: Virtue and Vice in the Life of the City, which explored perceptions and characterisations of the urban throughout human history.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great topic as cities are gaining power while the world urbanizes and nation states start to lose their relevance in an increasingly connected world. I liked the idea of a world congress of mayors and think this will happen....as the basics are in place now. That said I found Benjamin Barber difficult to read - the same problem with Jihad vs. McWorld.

[Kyle Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Barber has an odd fascination with Michael Bloomberg, yet sees cities as the key to democratic participation in the 21st century. The disconnect between the flourishing prose and his preferred leadership style / governing coalition of business elites -- which are wholly unresponsive to the general public -- makes the book untenable.