Du bon usage des fonds souverains

It is a golden object—shining, impressive, 36.8 centimeters tall, crafted from 18-carat gold and bronze. A replica of a monumental four-meter-high work of art standing in Geneva’s Ariana Park, near the United Nations Office, it bears the title Reflections and Dreams, created by Azerbaijani artists Salhab Mammadov and Ali Ibadullayev. Hands rise from the earth, supporting a globe, reaching toward eternity. ...

This essay argues that the current debate about the future of the international monetary system is not really about Gulf currencies, oil pricing, or de-dollarization in the narrow technical sense. It is about something deeper and more important: whether institutional trust can survive when geopolitical certainty is eroding.The Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman—increasingly exist in a world where the United States no longer looks ...

Driven by its mission to reflect on and analyze the major geopolitical, economic, and societal transformations shaping the contemporary world, and with a view to contributing to knowledge-sharing and disseminating the main outcomes of its research program, the Policy Center for the New South regularly publishes collective volumes addressing issues of particular importance to Morocco, Africa, and the broader Global/New South. In this spirit, the Center has recently released two volum ...

This Opinion was originally published in globalpolicyjournal.com ...

There is a story told by Václav Havel, the Czech dissident writer who later became president after the fall of communism. In his essay The Power of the Powerless, Havel describes a shopkeeper who, every morning, places a sign in his window reading: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe in it. Nor do the people around him. Yet the sign remains. ...