Toward a New World Order: Conceiving The New Alignment

Dennis Snower

No 21670, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: The erosion of the postwar international order has exposed a growing gap between the scale of contemporary global challenges and the capacity of existing governance arrangements to address them. This paper argues that the central challenge of global policymaking is no longer how to secure universal agreement among all major powers, but how to organize effective cooperation under conditions of fragmentation and partial non-cooperation. It proposes The New Alignment, a framework for “state-enabled polycentric governance†based on goal alignment, capacity alignment, and policy alignment. By orienting cooperation toward human flourishing through Solidarity, Agency, material Gain, and Environmental sustainability (SAGE), the framework provides a practical foundation for coalition-based collective action. The paper argues that future global governance will increasingly depend on Pivotal Power Coalitions operating within a broader polycentric system, enabling governments, businesses, international organizations, and civil society to coordinate around shared challenges. The New Alignment offers a pathway for transforming fragmented interdependence into cooperative pluralism and thereby provides a framework for effective global policymaking in the twenty-first century.

Keywords: New world order; human flourishing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 D78 F02 F50 F53 F55 H77 O1 O19 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21670 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21670

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP21670

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CEPR ().