Learning to Govern a Fragmented World

Prof. Dennis J. Snower | 15 June 2026

As the postwar multilateral order gives way to a multipolar and more contested world, global governance must adapt or risk irrelevance. The upcoming G7 summit offers a unique opportunity to champion a coalition-based approach that translates shared interests into collective action.

When G7 leaders gather in Évian on June 15, they will confront a postwar order that has run its course. The United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, and other pillars of international cooperation—all founded on the belief that universal rules could underpin global governance—delivered decades of relative stability and economic integration. But today’s world is too multipolar, too digitally interconnected, and too politically heterogeneous for broad consensus alone to serve as the primary mechanism for managing global affairs.

Read the full article published for Project Syndicate.

About the Author

Dennis J. Snower is Co-President of The New Alignment and Honorary Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity, University College London. He is the Founding President and a Fellow of the Global Solutions Initiative, Berlin; Professorial Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Oxford University; Non-resident Fellow at Brookings. Previously, he was Program Chair at The New Institute, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, and Professor of Economics at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel. Dennis J. Snower earned a BA and MA from New College, Oxford University, an MA and a PhD at Princeton University. He is an expert on labor economics, socio-economics, public policy and inflation-unemployment tradeoffs. He is currently working on a new paradigm for economics with David Sloan Wilson. He is the author of a major report on digital governance with reform with Paul Twomey.