Global Policy publishes GG2022 article on new thinking for global governance

GPPi Project Manager Joel Sandhu and GPPi Fellow Johannes Gabriel published an article on 12 October 2012 for the online edition of the journal Global Policy. In their piece, titled New Thinking for Global Governance Needed, the authors argue that global public policy has fallen short in addressing some of the most pressing challenges of our time. To turn this around, policymakers need to adopt a future-oriented approach towards global public policy, not a crisis-driven one.

This article is part of a series associated with the Global Governance 2022 (GG2022) program, which in 2012 – 2013 gathers 24 fellows – eight each from Germany, China and the United States – for three dialogue sessions that focus on the possible futures of global governance and how international institutions can prepare for challenges and risks in an uncertain future. The fellows form three working groups that focus on either global cyber security governance, global energy governance or global development governance.

GG2022 is collaborating with Global Policy to publish a series of columns on the journal’s online platform. During the program, Global Policy will host the GG2022 publications, including the final reports of the three working groups and short post-session summaries from each of the three working groups following the dialogue sessions in Berlin, Beijing and Washington, DC. Global Policy is an innovative and interdisciplinary journal bringing together world class academics and leading practitioners to analyze both public and private solutions to global problems and issues.

The article that Sandhu and Gabriel have written is the first column in the series. The authors write that thinking in terms of scenarios and complexity makes the difference between a crisis-driven and a future-oriented approach towards global public policy. To preserve global public goods in the long run and to design strong global institutions, the approach to policy thinking needs new and different perspectives instead of sticking to old paradigms. Integrating scenario approaches and complexity into our strategic thinking could lead to a deeper and broadly shared understanding of challenges in an increasingly interdependent world. Gabriel and Sandhu also point out that such an approach is not about guessing what the next crisis will be or predicting the future. It is about being able to tell different stories of the future that will invariably end up surprising us.

The GG2022 program is conducted in collaboration with the Hertie School of Governance, Tsinghua University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, The Brookings Institution and Fudan University. The program is generously supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Transatlantic Program of the German Government (ERP Grant administered by the German Ministry for Economics and Technology).

To learn more about the 24 GG2022 fellows and to access all of the GG2022 publications, please visit the GG022 site.