Understanding Global Economic Change and the Future of the Global Society

In the last six and a half decades, the world has meaningfully changed, particularly, in relation to the acknowledgement of new needs of a collective nature, such as the provision of global public goods, the correction of global externalities and the reduction of the per capita income gap among nations. A major economic and political change in the world is underway with the shifting of the economic gravity centre of the world towards Asia. Although many recognise that we live today in a globalised world, few have accepted that we urgently need to institutionalise democratic global governance, capable of producing and enforcing, among others, global economic regulations. Also, as the need for more effective global governance will progressively be felt by a growing majority of the global society, the establishment of a new democratic UN and subordinated agencies will finally emerge. After carefully analysing the financial crisis starting in the USA in 2007 and moving to the European Union, and taking into consideration the current economic globalisation without global democratic governance, this book proposes the reorganisation of the United Nations on a democratic basis which will progressively induce the disappearance of hegemonic powers, and the reorganisation of the European Union by the creation of a selective Federation by 8 to 10 current members.