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 center of the world toward Asia. Although many recognize that we live in a globalized world today, few have accepted that we urgently need to institutionalize democratic global governance, capable of producing and enforcing global economic regulations. As the need for more effective global governance is progressively felt by a growing majority of the global society, the establishment of a new democratic United Nations and subordinated agencies will finally emerge. After carefully analyzing the financial crisis starting in the United States in 2007 and moving to the European Union, and taking into consideration the current economic globalization without global democratic governance, this book proposes the reorganization of the United Nations on a democratic basis, which will progressively induce the disappearance of hegemonic powers, and the reorganization of the European Union by the creation of a selective Federation by eight to ten current members.