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.
Industry Reviews
`Divided Nations is an absolutely remarkable book, which provides fresh and particularly useful theoretical as well as necessarily practical insights given the present challenges facing humanity.'
Jean-Claude Trichet, former president of the European Central Bank and current chairman and CEO of the Group of Thirty.
`Goldin is dead right. This could be the best century ever. Or the worst. As we shrink inexorably into a global village, the biggest challenge is how we manage global village governance. Goldin offers clear-headed analysis and practical, pragmatic solutions. A must-read.'
Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, and author of The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World
`Ian Goldin stylishly describes the Gordian knot of international governance and makes some sensible suggestions on how it might be cut.'
Mark Malloch-Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-General
`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.'
Nicholas Stern
`Ian Goldin stylishly describes the Gordian knot of international governance and makes some sensible suggestions on how it might be cut.'
Mark Malloch-Brown, former UN Deputy Secretary-General
`Goldin offers clear-headed analysis and practical, pragmatic solutions. A must-read.'
Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, and author of The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World
`At a time when, as Ian Goldin argues, global politics is gridlocked, we need greater international co-operation than ever before - and the institutions to sustain it - in order to cope with the sort of problems from economic imbalances to the environment which individual nation states cannot overcome on their own. Ian Goldin shows why this is imperative and how it could be done.'
Lord Chris Patten, Chancellor, University of Oxford
