Synopses & Reviews
The UN, World Bank, and the IMF were all created in a post-war world radically different from today's. It is becoming increasingly apparent that these global structures are struggling to cope with the challenges faced by the globalized, interconnected world of the twenty-first century.
Rapid global integration and urbanization together with game-changing leaps that have globalized technology, communications, mobility, and business, all bring profound advantages, but they also bring systemic risks that are only just being identified and understood. Many of the biggest challenges today's world faces spill over national
boundaries: climate change, finance, pandemics, cyber security, and migration. And the hard truth is that our global governing bodies--created in the 1940s--are simply not up to the task of managing such risks.
As a former Vice President of the World Bank, and head of the multi-disciplinary Oxford Martin School of Oxford University, Ian Goldin is in a superb position to provide new perspectives and approaches to our world order. He explores whether the answer is to reform the existing structures or to consider a new and radical way of tackling inherent failings.
In this groundbreaking work, he sets out the nature of the problems and the various approaches to global governance, highlights the challenges that we are to overcome, and considers a roadmap for the future.
Review
"Ian Goldin has been in the kitchen, at a senior level, of national and international policymaking. It is a messy place. But, as he argues clearly and convincingly, our ability to co-operate across nations is crucial to the stability and growth of our economies. It is crucial too for the protection of our environment and reducing the grave risks of climate change. The necessary co-operation will not be easy but Goldin sets out clear principles and sketches out real possibilities. The world should listen."--Lord Nicholas Stern
Review
"Goldin brings a wealth of experience as a practitioner with a variety of international organizations along with solid academic credentials to this thoughtful and clearly written study of global governance... this thoughtful, well-informed work provides very helpful guidance through the crowded terrain of global governance issues today... Highly recommended." --CHOICE
Synopsis
With rapid globalization, the world is more deeply interconnected than ever before. While this has its advantages, it also brings with it systemic risks that are only just being identified and understood. Rapid urbanization, together with technological leaps, such as the Internet, mean that we are now physically and virtually closer than ever in humanity's history.
We face a number of international challenges - climate change, pandemics, cyber security, and migration - which spill over national boundaries. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the UN, the IMF, the World Bank - bodies created in a very different world, more than 60 years ago - are inadequate for the task of managing such risk in the 21st century.
Ian Goldin explores whether the answer is to reform the existing structures, or to consider a new and radical approach. By setting out the nature of the problems and the various approaches to global governance, Goldin highlights the challenges that we are to overcome and considers a road map for the future.
About the Author
Ian Goldin,
Professor, Director of the Oxford Martin School, University of OxfordProfessor Ian Goldin is the Director of the Oxford University's Oxford Martin School, Oxford University Professor of Globalisation and Development and Professorial Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. From 2001 to 2006 he was at the World Bank, first as Director of Policy and then as Vice President. He has published over fifty articles and fifteen books, including iGlobalisation for Development: Meeting New Challengesr (OUP, 2012) and iExceptional People: How Migration Shaped our World and Will Define our Futurer (PUP, 2011).
Table of Contents
List of acronyms and abbreviations
1. New Global Governance Challenges
2. Reconciling global, national, and local interests
3. Rethinking Reform: nations, networks and knowledge
4. The Power of One: The role of individuals
5. What can be done?
Bibliography