Skip to content
Politics & Current Affairs

The Fall of Global Governance

International institutions have been weakened by the economic crisis. Harvard’s Dani Rodik says individuals countries are once again competing economically.
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

The fault, dear Brutus, is neither in our stars nor in ourselves. Thanks to globalization, it lies in our trade partners! Self-serving as it may seem, this viewpoint is not without some merit. As economies become intertwined, decisions taken in one part of the world reverberate in other parts, often producing unintended consequences. … Many of the world economy’s troubles today originate from our unwillingness to recognize that domestic policy objectives will ultimately trump global responsibilities, no matter how much we pretend that they can be subsumed under international commitments.

Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Related

Up Next
What causes war? The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said it was merely the idea of war. Scientific American examines the evidence she offered.