Risk and opportunity are inherent to change. At the global level, change is currently manifest in the emergence of more explicit geopolitical competition and increased risk of conflict.
It can be seen in the challenges to established trade relationships and greater disorder in global economic governance. Hitherto robust international norms, institutions, alliances and regimes are under pressure.
The global political scene features the advance of authoritarian systems, the rise of assertive identity politics and polarization within established democracies.
All of these trends pose risks to security, prosperity and to the basic policy coordination needed to address the shared interests and vulnerabilities that arise from inescapable interdependencies.
But change also provides the requirement and opportunity for innovation. Among the questions at issue are: whether and where transnational civil society can develop forms of cooperation that compensate for state rivalry; how the technological revolution can be mobilized to address international policy challenges; how best practices in governance might be reconceived to better respond to domestic demands and external exigencies; and how the international system can find a way to accommodate different political systems to ensure peace and shared prosperity.
