The current pandemic has clearly demonstrated the need to open more direct flows of information all the way in multi-level governance from local to global (without filtering for instance by national officials; before ‘AI doctors’ connectivity, Y. N. Harari, 2018) that could have avoided trillions in economic damage and saved millions of human lives. At the global stage, the out-dated multilateral system of Westphalia that is limited to formal decisions only by the nation-states needs to open up further to non-state stakeholders and expertise of the broad civil society worldwide. On issues of climate change and the environment, de facto there is already more involvement of non-governmental actors in the discussions. However, major systemic obstacles to their inclusion emanate from the illusion of the absoluteness of the sovereignty of nations. The concept of supra-national competences balanced by subsidiarity (as partially practiced by the European Union) could serve as stepping-stone in the right direction. Here the –albeit often tedious — consensus-building voices in most cases carry the day by the quality of their conviction and pre-empt the polarisation through quantitative voting by official representations. Increasing transparency with civil society and the general public enhances the in-, through- and output-legitimacy of ‘who’, ‘how’ and ‘what’ to decide for the common good. The present practice and even various models of calculations proposed for more appropriate national representation (One-Nation-One-Vote), for example at the general Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations (e. g. by J. E. Schwartzberg, 2013), have shown the difficulties of purely quantitative decision-making by member-nations at the global level. Furthermore, the growing need for specific expertise often out of reach of national diplomats in merely ‘inter-national’ negotiations underline the urgency of a further overture of the global system towards non-state stakeholders. The crucial question then arises: who can appropriately participate as a stakeholder? In the 2001 White Paper on European Governance (partly co-authored by the undersigned), the EU Commission proposed opening its procedures to “outside civil society” in a wide definition beyond the traditional consultations with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). In the UN system, the ECOSOC/ESEC seats are differentially allocated to five regional caucuses, hardly bearing any relationship to actual power in the world nor expertise on specific issues, although it is currently in dire need for public health. Any mathematic formula of seat allocation can only temporarily reflect correctly the constant changes in our societies. The opening to non-state actors and expertise must be based rather on their relevant qualification than their territorial origin and the number of national votes supporting them. The true rationale for their inclusion should grow out of their legitimacy to participate and their efficiency to contribute to the global common good. In view of the recent developments towards more monitory democracy (John Keane, 2009) to also overcome monetary might among social media, these two criteria of legitimacy and efficiency would accord democratic agency to non-state stakeholders through mechanisms of authorisation and accountability (Terry Macdonald, 2008). Their influence and selection derive from quality (and not only quantity of national votes or of followers like ‘influencers’ on the Internet) and presumes elements of meritocracy in the process of their selection that some societies recently seem to have neglected in their quantitative elections.