A Fresh Look at Global Governance: Exploring Objective Criteria for Representation - Working Paper 160

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• Vijaya Ramachandran

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Enrique Rueda-Sabater, Vijaya Ramachandran, and Robin Kraft

02/06/2009

Today’s geopolitics are very different than those of the post–World War II era. In this new world order, what would constitute a representational and effective system of global governance?

Enrique Rueda-Sabater, senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran, and program coordinator Robin Kraft propose simple, fundamental criteria—based on global shares of GDP and population—around which global governance might be organized. They analyze the role that these criteria would assign to different countries and compare the results with key components of the system currently in place in the Bretton Woods institutions and the United Nations. They also examine the implications for membership in the G-20 and the OECD.

They find major disparities between the results of their analysis and the state of affairs today, and they point to the need for changes far more fundamental than the incremental tweaks now being considered.

Read Vijaya's blog post Spain, the G-20, and the Need for Reform of Global Governance Systems for more this subject.