Distinguished Speaker Seminar: Johannes F. Linn – Global Governance Reform: The Imperatives of a New Global Economic Reality

Johannes F. Linn, formerly World Bank Vice President for Europe and Central Asia and currently Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development and the Executive Director, Wolfensohn Center for Development at The Brookings Institution discussed issues of global governance reform by looking into the imperatives of a new global economic reality at a distinguished speaker seminar on 5 March 2008.

He started his lecture by noting three major points. First, the world now faces dramatic shifts in distribution of global powers and pressing global challenges. Second, international institutions established after World War II are fragile and lack legitimacy in responding to these challenges and shifts. Third, far-reaching reforms based on a new set of values are needed to create architecture of legitimate global institutions, which will be representative, relevant, and effective. Then, he raised a key question: Do we have the collective capacity and will to change or can only a global crisis bring about change? Read the Full Statement.