Sunday, November 8, 2009

Coalition Governments of the World

Going forward, the possibility of an increased role outside of Europe for coalition politics and the politics of cohesion is perhaps borne out of Henry Kissinger’s description of the place the world finds itself in 2008. Kissinger, writing in the Economist’s World in 2009, says that the world has gone through a period in which “the absence of restraint encouraged a speculation whose growing sophistication matched its mounting lack of transparency…an unparalled period of growth followed, but also the delusion that an economic system could sustain itself via debt indefinitely.” The comment carries with it more than a suggestion that the world will not move forward without greater transparency, greater accountability and greater public influence and those things will require a different approach to the business of government and governance.

Towards the end of 2008 most global opinion leaders have emphasised a new economic order, shifts in the balance of power and the prospects for the strengthening of the still emerging countries. Few have crossed national lines and said anything about the way in which the business of government and governance and the potential for coalition politics and the politics of cohesion across traditional party lines will influence national global economic policy and development agendas.

Click the link to read  this December 2008 Newsday column.

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