In 1953, he founded the World Government of World Citizens. The demand for its documents proved so brisk that he established the service authority the next year.

More than half a million world passports have been issued, though there are no statistics on the number of people who have successfully crossed borders with them. A half-dozen countries — Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Mauritania, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia — have formally recognized the passport. More than 150 others have honored it on occasion, according to the service authority.

Fees for the passport range from $45 (valid for three years) to $400 (for 15 years). The passport has text in seven languages, including Esperanto, the artificial international language.

Carrying world passport No. 1, Mr. Davis spent decades spreading his message, slipping across borders, stowing away on ships, sweet-talking officials, or wearing them down, until they let him in. The newspapers charted his comings and goings:

1949: “Garry Davis Arrested in Paris”; 1953: “Garry Davis Held Again: Arrested When He Camps Out Near Buckingham Palace”; 1957: “France Expels Garry Davis”; 1979: U.S. Court Rules ‘World Citizen’ Davis Is an Alien and Rejects His Passport; 1984: “Japan Expels American ‘World Citizen’ ”; 1987: “ ‘World Citizen’ Announces Presidential Bid.” (It was the United States presidency this time.)

In 1986, Mr. Davis ran for mayor of Washington, receiving 585 votes.

Mr. Davis was arrested dozens of times, usually for attempting to enter a country without official papers. He had canny ways of circumventing authority.

In the 1950s, when France was trying to deport him, he conspicuously shoplifted items from a Paris department store. (His haul, United Press reported, was “$47 worth of peach-colored lace panties, black-silk brassieres, black garter belts, lace petticoats and pink slips.”) He made certain he was arrested.

As a result of his arrest, Mr. Davis was legally enjoined from leaving the country.

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In old age, Mr. Davis was far from idle. Last year, he had a world passport delivered to Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Just weeks before he died, Mr. Davis had a world passport sent, via Russian authorities, to Mr. Snowden, the fugitive former national security contractor accused of violating espionage laws, whose United States passport was revoked in June.

Mr. Snowden could not be reached for comment.