“The global governance system which was created in 1945, and you see this from walking around the United Nations buildings in Geneva, was designed in silos: one organisation in charge of health, another in charge of trade, or in education, and so on. This approach no longer works, because all these issues are connected. If you trade products, the way you make the product involves labour issues, health issues and intellectual property issues, and an optimal governance mechanism needs to think across sectors of activity.”

“A world government isn’t going to happen, but we do need to have dynamic coordination where networks overlap, a bit like the European Union where different webs of policy-making connect at certain points, producing shared governance.”

“Designing a global governance mechanism that is more horizontal and less hierarchical, not only for states but also for firms, while challenging, has the potential to make us safer, more wealthy and less unequal.”

Professor Dupont will be exploring this challenge in the Graduate Institute’s free online course on Global Governance, starting on February 19th and open to anyone interested in learning about global governance.

LEARN MORE: Watch Cédric Dupont speaking about global governance in the video below.