system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
What is the next form of governance beyond nation-states?

Right now, the world is divided into nation-states yet this was not always the case. 

Before this, the world was ruled mostly by monarchies and their colonies. There was a time when city-states held a lot of power. Before that, feudal states held sway in much of the world. 

Way back there were empires which arose, held power, then fell. 

Is anyone writing about what the next phase might look like? Ideas?
gpt
There was a push of this type of inquiry in the 60s, with neofunctionalists like Ersnt B. Haas, for instance his book "Beyond the Nation State". The argument of neofunctionalists is largely that while states create international/regional organizations, those organizations bureaucracies take on a life of their own and expand their functions and powers; the assumption further is that these organizations are more effective and efficient than wars and conflict for solving disputes and thus states will continue to surrender powers upwards.

More contemporary work on international integration exists, and much of it focused on the emergence of the European Union...but that has been called into question by the various challenges facing the EU the past decade or so. Intergovernmentalism is the other major strain of thought there, and while still advocating for regional-level integration between states, tends to assume states retrain more power and control over these arrangements than a functionalist would.