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Democracy in Crisis
Jan Oberg

Democratic Global Governance with UN Reforms: Toward the Future Multipolar World

通过联合国改革实现全球民主治理： 面向未来的多极世界

Jan Oberg

January 8, 2025

Last year, I was asked by the prestigious “China Investment” Magazine in Beijing to write a longer analysis of my own choice. It would become the cover story in the first 2025 issue. While I have written several things before (a) for China Investment, it was the first time that I could freely choose. I feel honoured by the trust in extended by the editorial board.

Since China relies heavily on long-range thinking and visions, I thought it would be interesting to write something within the field of future research—which I explain in the introduction to the analysis—about how I could envisage a future world with global governance and a reformed United Nations.

I think it is urgently necessary to focus much less on the past and focus much more on the future. No one can drive to a goal by only looking in the rear mirror… And social science is indeed about the future – and about what C. Wright Mills called the ‘sociological imagination’ and making good, precise predictions. It is also about using intuition and experience to foresee what could come outside, or in addition to, mere extrapolation.

Humanity’s future is doomed – yes, doomed – if we spend 98% of our time and energy on the past and the present – and if we adhere to the totally outdated idea that the future must be an extrapolation of them. We have to create a better, more peaceful world, and that takes imagination (and will often be met with the narrow-minded response that this or that idea is not realistic).

面向未来的多极世界Download

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China Investment 12•2024
Democratic Global Governance with UN Reforms: Toward the Future Multipolar World

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