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Echoing Lenin’s famous quote that “there are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen”, former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, when asked what he considered the greatest challenge for any statesman, replied: “Events, dear boy, events.” [1][1] The Economist. (1984, September 15). The Macmillan years. The Economist, 292(7365), 33–38. This remark proves undeniably prescient in light of the accelerated historical time we are living through. An era in which we move from one historical moment to the next at a pace far outstripping the course of material life [2][2] Braudel, F. (1958). Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue durée [History and the Social Sciences: The Long Duration]. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, 13(4), 725–753. Available here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27579957—rendering terms like “shock” or “crisis” almost obsolete, replaced simply by the ceaseless evolution and sequence of events.

This acceleration is giving way to a particularly visible sense of anxiety in the media: panic and sensationalism sell well—objectivity doesn’t. Likewise, the most prominent and seemingly influential forms of leadership today are not those providing clarity or reassurance to their followers, but rather those who stir and amplify anger, hate speech, and low passions.

In this context, the rise of the far right, discussed by Ricardo Sá Ferreira in his article The State Rewritten: Elite Repression, Austerity and the Revolutionary Struggle for Democracy, is bringing back dangerous patterns and behaviours that ominously recall the last century. Just as in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, where the main threat to human rights advocates and LGBTIQ activists comes from paramilitary and para-state “militias” that persistdred in the post-Bolsonaro era—eerily reminiscent of the so-called “Blackshirts” of Fascist Italy [3][3] Instituto Cultiva, Algoritmo y Política, Conversatorio con Jean Wyllys [Politics and the Algorythm: a Conversation with Jean Wyllys]. 13 de marzo de 2025, Available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYW9eEf0ZJ4—Germany is witnessing its own echoes of the 1930s. The parliamentary group of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt recently tabled a motion in the Magdeburg parliament entitled “The Wrong Path of Modernism”, demanding a “critical review” of the Bauhaus [4].[4] Bassets, Marc, La extrema derecha alemana contra la Bauhaus: “Una aberración de la modernidad” [The German Far-Right Against the Bauhaus: “An Aberration of Modernity]. El País, 4 de noviembre de 2024. Available here: https://elpais.com/cultura/2024-11-04/la-extrema-derecha-alemana-contra-la-bauhaus-una-aberracion-de-la-modernidad.html

This artistic movement was already persecuted, censored, and branded “communist” and “Bolshevik” by Hitler’s National Socialist Party (NSDAP), responsible for closing its Weimar headquarters in 1931. The fact that contemporary German far-right targets an avant-garde artistic movement once denounced by the Nazis as “degenerate art” or an “architectural sin” [5][5] Rosalía Sánchez, La extrema derecha alemana vuelve a atacar el estilo Bauhaus. ABC Cultura, 28 de octubre de 2024 [The German Far-Right Lashes the Bauhaus Once Again]. Available here: https://www.abc.es/cultura/arte/extrema-derecha-alemana-vuelve-atacar-estilo-bauhaus-20241028131754-nt.html speaks volumes about the alarming resurgence of extremist forces. Of policies rooted in religion, racial supremacy, nationalism, nativism, and populism, and which deliberately attack artistic, academic, and expressive freedoms.

This retreat into identitarianism, also analysed by José Manuel Gómez Giménez in his article Cities and Nations: From Emancipatory Forces to Global Challenges, is not only changing cities from hubs of innovation and emancipation into epicentres of inequality and social fracture; it also has a corresponding effect at the international level: states are once again clinging to their national idiosyncrasies, to the detriment of a globalism we once naively thought as firmly rooted.

A Shadow Government: Captured States and Denationalised Corporations

One of the shortcomings—by design—of the UN, which has become increasingly apparent in its current crisis of credibility, lies in the fact that it was built as a state-centric system. In today’s reality, where global economic power is increasingly exercised through states captured by corporate interests, the UN appears more outdated by the day: an outdated system that answers not to the dynamics and makeup of the contemporary world, with an outsized political and financial dependence on one single country where decisions are made in both Washington and Silicon Valley, with the latter increasingly shaping the agenda of the former.

By “shadow government”, we refer to the network of private actors—tech corporations, investment funds and consulting firms—that wield de facto power over public decision-making, without direct democratic accountability. This informal empire of vested interests has a blunt impact on multilateralism: private companies are playing an ever more prominent role in international negotiations, where they act not out of loyalty to a state or nation, but as fully denationalised entities, defending only their own particular financial interests.

Major tech companies illustrate this relative loss of state power in the international arena especially well. We call our present age the “information era” in part because the world’s ten most powerful companies are all in the information technology sector: Apple, Meta, Google… It is also worth noting that these companies are disproportionately based in the United States (US).

This “information hegemony” dominating our societies at the speed of light represents a kind of global shadow government; for it is multinational corporations, billionaires, and an entirely new class of lobbies and international players who truly call the shots on the planet today. A telling example of this phenomenon is the fact that, a year and a half before the UN even began negotiations on the Digital Compact, Microsoft had already established a special office in New York dedicated to lobbying the European Union (EU) and its envoys, with the aim of preventing any form of regulation or governance over data [7].[7] Reuters. (2023, May 30). Microsoft lobbied UN for ‘privileged’ role in global digital pact, sources say. Available here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-lobbied-un-privileged-role-global-digital-pact-sources-say-2023-05-30/

However, it is not only major tech firms and new platforms that pose a threat to modern democracies: traditional media outlets—the so-called mass media—often operate outside of democratic checks and balances. In her article Between the People and Power: The Role of the Media in Ecuadorian Democracy, Kruskaya Rojas illustrates how some operators of mass media act in clear collusion with both political and financial powers, behaving as “militant media”: partisan, biased, and far removed from the principles of neutrality, impartiality, and ethics they are meant to uphold. There are indeed countries, such as Ecuador, where the legal framework explicitly prohibits direct ties between financial, media and political power. Nevertheless, as long as political and social actors continue to reap greater rewards by operating outside the rules than by following them, it will remain extremely difficult to guarantee the separation of powers in today’s democracies, so thoroughly shaped and saturated by the communication industry. The right to communication thus emerges as one of the most urgent democratic imperatives of our time.

Rentationalising information, therefore, becomes a crucial step if we are to have a genuine conversation about democracy, as well as about multilateralism. Otherwise, so long as attending the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos is deemed more important than showing up at the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change or of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), those of us with good intentions will remain confined to enacting a kind of simulacrum of multilateralism and international relations, while the real decision-makers gather in the room next door, deciding the fate of our planet.

A New Leadership for the Global South

In addition to private actors and international capital, another factor appears to be increasingly shaping global events: geopolitics, even affecting countries that seem disinterested in it. In a context where the Global North is becoming ever more defensive, the Global South is still trialling—and sometimes failing—to navigate as a bloc. While the West grows increasingly forceful in clinging to what it perceives as its dominant position in the global economy and politics—to keep exporting and imposing what it portrays as “universal values” onto the rest of the world—the main leaders of the South still do not show as much unity and decisiveness as the urgency of the cause would require at climate summits and in major global negotiations.

In his article Civil Disobedience in the Face of Capitalist Expansion and War Regimes, Tom Kucharz exposes through extensive data that most current international conflicts and tensions have an ecological dimension. One striking example of this increasingly evident link between geopolitics and environmental issues is the entire supply chain of raw materials extracted from the Global South, which ultimately end up in the ports, factories and shops of China, the European Union (EU) and the US. This process brings about the destruction of millions of hectares of virgin forest and the displacement of tens of thousands of people in the South. To put it bluntly, the material consumption of the Global North—especially that of the wealthiest states and their capital cities—is not only responsible for vast geological dysfunctions on our planet, but is also fuelling militarisation and political violence in countries throughout the South.

To unlock the still dormant geopolitical potential of the South, it may be useful to revisit the legacy of historic leaders of global solidarity, such as Prime Minister Mahathir and President Julius Nyerere, who were visionary in their assertion that developing countries must collectively defend their common interests.

When fifty years ago, the leaders of Latin America, Africa, and Asia put forward a roadmap known as the “New International Economic Order,” [8][8] United Nations [UN]. (1974). Resolution 3201 (S-VI): Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order. United Nations General Assembly. Available here: https://undocs.org/es/A/RES/S-6/3201 it marked the first and only time in the history of multilateralism that the Global South set the agenda—forcing the North to respond. Henry Kissinger and other prominent Western figures had to react to a narrative driven from the South, possible thanks to strong leadership and a compelling narrative. One that argued the rules of the game had been designed by and for the interests of advanced economies.

Today, this same logic plays out in the architecture of global finance: from climate finance mechanisms to trade agreements, the rules continue to be shaped in the financial centres of the North, to facilitate the plundering of value from the South. Hence, this is a narrative and a momentum we must all reclaim, for the circumstances remain unchanged fifty years on: if we are to ensure progress for the exploited parts of the global economy, we must change the rules of the game. To that end, the unity and strength of the Global South are indispensable.

Conclusions: Defending the Plurality of Existence

The North continues to behave as though its emperor were not naked, yet progressive sectors in developed countries are increasingly frustrated and paralysed. This presents an opportunity for the Global South: to harness that discontent, moving beyond Western frameworks, which, as María Navarro points out in her article “We Were Plundered, yet We Owned Nothing”, still boil down democratic processes to Rawlsian parameters, placing deliberation solely within the confines of the state and its institutions.

In this vein, and as María Olympia Conceição also argues in her piece Ideas for the Decolonisation of Brazilian Political Participation, it is essential to recognise that Kantian philosophy provided a moral justification for colonialism by defining an ethnic “other” as eligible for expropriation, exploitation and domination. Decolonising the principles of the recent Global Bauhaus, as the author contends, does not mean simply deconstructing imperialism, but acknowledging the colonial roots of the Anthropocene and ending the imposition of a singular and homogeneous idea of humanity, which denies the diversity of habits and ways of life. Ultimately, it means recognising the very plurality of existence.

Throughout this volume, we have referred to “polycrisis” as the multifaceted convergence of economic instability, political degeneration, social fragmentation, and ecological degradation that has led us to this point in time—a moment in which the global political and economic management of ecological collapse will undoubtedly be the ultimate test for multilateralism. Little does it matter who wins or loses hypothetical hegemonic contests if the most certain existential challenge humanity faces can only be addressed through a deep sense of unity and practice of cooperation.

The science is unequivocal: without immediate and radical cuts in CO₂ emissions, the world is headed towards a relative warming of over 2.7°C [9][9] IPCC. (2023). AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 (Cap. 3, p. 52). Available here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/—a threshold beyond which current models for predicting and understanding natural disasters will become obsolete. In the face of a political response model where grandiose climate rhetoric consistently amounts to empty talk, where the commitment to hydrocarbon production is doubled down—exhausting the remaining carbon budget [10][10] UNEP. (2023). Production Gap Report 2023: Phasing down or phasing up?. Available here: https://productiongap.org/2023report/—while environmental activists are criminalised, pretending to keep the 1.5° target alive is, put simply, a fable.

In the face of this challenge, the Global South is to grapple with the dilemma of its own fragmentation. The built-in structural weakness of many of its members, together with their growing vulnerability to the climate crisis, makes it increasingly difficult for the G77 to return to even an aspirational common agenda [11].[11] Khan, M., & Robinson, S. A. (2023). The G77 in the Paris Agreement: Unity and fractures in climate diplomacy. International Environmental Agreements, 23(1), 89-107. Yet this is fast becoming a historical inevitability: current models of climate finance based on debt are not only useless and historically unjust, but in their present form, they exacerbate the structural position of many of these nations. The financialisation of climate development thus reproduces extractive logic in new guises: Northern capital gains access to Southern markets and resources masquerading as “climate action”, while local populations bear the social and environmental brunt of this apparent “consortium operation”.

This does not mean the South should stop demanding that an increasingly unstable Global North honour its commitments, especially as the climate narrative there faces mounting opposition from reactionary populists and denialists. On the contrary, the South must remain present in multilateral forums, exploring all possible avenues for coordination and collective leverage, while holding fast to the existing frameworks and normatives that still carry weight, such as the principle of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities.

Emerging multipolarity and multilateralism offer a historic opportunity to rebalance global power, but their success will require coordination, resilience, and a decisive break with inherited structures of domination. The future of the global order will depend largely on the South’s ability to forge strategic alliances, safeguard ecosystem stability, strengthen its democracies, and resist the geopolitical pressures of the status quo. Another urgent task is the development of alternative financial mechanisms aimed at reversing the absurd reality in which transnational capital has turned public international law into its personal privilege.

These are our current battles which will carry into the future. Battles in which the Global South has the chance to lead. By strengthening the role of national and regional development banks and reigniting the cooperative ambition of bodies such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the African Union (AU), the South can mobilise the human, intellectual and material resources needed to rethink its production models and enhance its capacities in all areas. The South possesses not only demographic and economic dynamism but also the necessary institutional experience. From South-South cooperation mechanisms to regional development banks, there already exist sufficient tools to build an alternative financial architecture—one that prioritises the needs of people and nature over capital returns.

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