Introduction

This book emerges from the editors’ growing concerns, deep reflections, ongoing discussions and international collaborative research activity regarding socio-economic and environmental complexities at the international level and their mounting economic and political significance and pressures. We are facing uncertain and fast-evolving times defined by rising levels of war, conflict, lack of cooperation, and a sharp, inward-looking economic shift exacerbated by the continuous deterioration of our democratic systems and governing institutions. The post-World War II economic and political systems have gradually become outdated and detached from the global reality, missing opportunities to adapt and stubbornly replicating historical mistakes through the establishment of new forms of “colonialism and power dominance” seeking to gain access and control to natural resources while dictating the global economic agenda. This new “old” system shows that in an integrated global economy, there is a need to change economic and political patterns as the world’s largest emerging markets are pushing for new access to international decision-making processes as they are becoming prominent contributors to global growth and progress. The risks and unpredictability of emerging markets are also associated with potential adverse spillover effects on the global economy. The growing representation of riskier economies can become a conducive channel for the propagation of domestic shocks that can drag economic growth due to the increasing influence of the largest emerging markets, which can trigger global economic instability and challenge political stability. We are immersed in a global landscape where wealth and privilege dictate the need to safeguard and preserve the privileges enjoyed by the few to the detriment of the most vulnerable. At the same time, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable are falling deeper into a vicious cycle of marginalisation and exclusion as a result of growing economic imbalances that are now visualised within the world’s most affluent economies as internal. The scrappiness of the reshaping global economic and political order is preventing open dialogue and hindering support for developing multidimensional, collaborative, agile and adaptable working frameworks that are cognisant of the differences between the world’s most advanced and less developed economies.