This year three of the permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, France and Russia – are holding elections, while a fourth, China, is embarking on its once-in-a-decade leadership transition. All over the world governments are having to deal with an increasingly volatile public opinion.
Last year the Arab people rose up. The same wave, less powerful but still unpredictable, is now spreading. There is no new revolutionary ideology behind this wave. What we have now is a digital culture which means that new ideas – such as the Occupy movement’s ‘We are the 99 per cent’ – take off globally.
