Global Governance and World Order

The Emergence of a Global Society

Three key properties define the world society: the increasing connectedness of its members; the multiplying mutual dependencies of global actors across all major areas of human concern; and the multiplicity and growing number of empowered actors engaged in defining the scope and impact of global governance.

Revolutions in communications and transportation draw the world's populations and their agents into networks of connectedness that embrace in varying degrees all global actors. Several examples illustrate this dynamic and enveloping process. In less than a generation, between 1990 and 2007, the World Bank reports that Internet use jumped from a negligible number to 700 per 1000 people. Websites and interactive cybernetworks, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, reach billions across state boundaries. Internet access is available to media outlets and blogs around the world. The rapid growth of telecommunications and such innovations as Skype parallel these upward trends in use patterns, connecting global actors into ever tighter and interwoven communication networks.

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, spending for tourism, which links most states of the world, exceeds those for energy, food products, or automobiles. Between 1995 and 2007, tourism of high- and middle- income states rose from 540 to 860 million tourists. The rapid transmission of technological know-how and scientific discovery reinforces the connectedness of the world's populations. It signals, too, the ceaseless modernization of the global society. In 2000, the Science Citation Index cited a total of 584,982 scientific papers. Although most were generated in the developed world, the findings were transmitted around the world to scientists and engineers as well as to business leaders, educators, and the interested public.

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