The World Economy Is Failing. What Comes Next?
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The World Economy Is Failing. What Comes Next?
At the Emerging Political Economies Network meeting in Johannesburg, scholars, policymakers and civil society leaders asked what must be reimagined for a more equal, democratic and habitable world.
The global collaboration – the Emerging Political Economies Network – gathered to debate perhaps the central question of our time: how economies can better serve all people in a world characterised by profound inequality, ecological damage, threatened democracies and overt political polarisation.
There is a growing critique of neoliberalism, particularly from scholars from the Global South. This system, which upholds free-market capitalism and deregulation, has deepened the world’s polycrises and threatened global security. The question becomes what must be reimagined for an equal, safer and more habitable world.
Professor Imraan Valodia, Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Climate and Inequality at Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ University and the Director of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies (SCIS), hosted scholars, policymakers, civil society actors and funders from across the world who aimed to question and, hopefully, remake the roles required of theory, policy, institutions, coalitions and global rules.
“We meet at a time against the backdrop of crisis but also at a critical juncture which tells us that the economic frameworks that have shaped the past few decades are no longer sufficient to explain the world or to guide what we need to do to change it,” explained Valodia.
Universities cannot be passive bystanders
Public institutions can’t be passive bystanders because they are not only centres of scholarship but have a great responsibility to help society understand our circumstances to actually change them. Research-intensive universities in particular can create spaces for interdisciplinary thinking, collaboration and public engagement, said Professor Lynn Morris, DVC: Research and Innovation, Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½ University, in the opening speech.
Valodia presented insights from the first comprehensive G20 report on inequality, and noted that while some measures of global inequality have fallen, inequality remains extremely high. Since 2000, the world’s richest 1% have captured more than 40% of all new wealth created, while the bottom 50% have received only 1%.
“Moreover, outdated trade rules, tax systems and regulatory frameworks have allowed monopolies and concentrated power to persist. Indeed, we continue to reward wealth over work.”
Beyond the state and the market
Professor Wendy Carlin at the University College London asked what a new policy paradigm for economic justice would look like, but challenged the familiar state-market continuum that has shaped much of economic policy debate.
“Care, climate, workplace relations, social norms, corporate governance, democratic participation and community life all require a wider frame. They cannot be understood only through markets and state intervention,” said Carlin.
Her proposed governance “triangle” brings together the state, market and civil society. Economic justice won’t only be about redistribution but also about the redesign of institutions, norms, rights and relationships that shape economic life.
Building the “digital party” for new narratives
Marcos Nobre, Director of the Center for Critical Imagination at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP), asked what progressive coalitions need to do if they are to fundamentally change the current political landscape.
His central warning was that the far right has not only built ideological power; it has built digital and organisational capacity. Progressive movements, by contrast, often remain tied to older institutional forms and organisational habits.
“For new economic ideas to become policy, they require coalitions, narratives, institutions, digital capacity and democratic legitimacy,” said Nobre.
Post-neoliberal does not automatically mean progressive
Associate Professor Amr Adly from the American University in Cairo complicated the idea of a post-neoliberal order.
Free capital mobility remains largely intact. The global economy continues to depend on fossil fuels. States have become more important, but not always in ways that expand democracy or equality.
“Post-neoliberal” can mean many things. It can refer to new forms of state intervention, industrial policy, protectionism or geopolitical competition. But those shifts can also reproduce old hierarchies in new forms.
A new order, then, is not necessarily a better order. The political question is who shapes it, whose interests it serves, and whether it expands or narrows democratic and economic possibility.
Why foundations matter
Professor David Dequech from the University of Campinas brought the conversation back to the foundations of economic thinking.
Traditional economics focuses too much on the basic rewards, forgetting that laws, culture and society deeply change who we are and what we want.
“A new political economy paradigm therefore needs stronger foundations. It must make room for uncertainty, non-conformity, social norms, institutional influence and the creative capacities of people and organisations,” said Dequech.
The Global South and the limits of the financial system
Countries, particularly in the Global South, are still shaped by currency hierarchies, fiscal constraints, financial subordination and the continuing power of Bretton Woods institutions.
Vice President at the Global Fund for a New Economy, Pedro Rossi, argued that a new economy requires a new paradigm and a new way of thinking about values. It does not necessarily require a single new economic theory, but it does require moving beyond neoclassical assumptions and reducing the default faith placed in markets.
“Markets alone cannot solve democratic, ecological or social problems. A new economic paradigm must therefore take seriously participation, democratic decision-making and the interdependence between countries,” said Rossi.
The green imperative sharpened this discussion. No country has historically developed while fully respecting ecological limits. Yet developing countries are now being asked to transform under conditions of debt, unequal finance and global pressure.
Clean energy, class relations and capitalist development
Dr Trissia Wijaya from the University of Melbourne reframed the clean energy transition and detailed how it underpins class relations and capitalist development.
The question is not only whether countries decarbonise, but how they do so, who finances the transition, who profits from it, who controls the infrastructure, and what new dependencies are created.
If green transitions are financed primarily through private capital and global financial markets, they may reproduce older patterns of financial subordination.
From one hierarchy to another?
Senior economist at the United Nations, Dr Ricardo Gottschalk, asked whether the existing global financial system can deliver fairer development space.
“A shift in global power does not automatically change the rules of the system. The question is whether new arrangements can create fairer tax systems, more equitable financial structures and greater policy space for countries in the Global South,” said Gottschalk.
Law, power and legal colonialism
Professor Katharina Pistor at Columbia University Law School explored how private law travels globally, allowing capital to move across borders while many countries remain rule-takers rather than rule-makers. Dominant legal jurisdictions, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, continue to shape global contracts, assets and transactions.
The point is that markets are not natural or neutral. They are built through legal systems, contracts, property rights, regulations and enforcement mechanisms.
Judge Norman Manoim, President of South Africa’s Competition Commission, explained that in South Africa’s Constitution, competition law and courts create some room to challenge concentrated economic power. The legal architecture must hold economic practice up to constitutional commitments to social justice.
The real futures of work
Whether current debates about technology, automation and productivity are asking the right questions was central to the EPE’s discussions.
Professor Suresh Naidu at Columbia University’s School of Law raised a fundamental question about labour and production: do economies still need people for production, and under what conditions are humans treated as scarce or abundant?
Professor Laura Juárez González at El Colegio de México foregrounded the gendered dimensions of work, noting that women often face lower-quality employment, care responsibilities, safety concerns, violence and legal non-recognition as workers. Their movement into informal or precarious work cannot simply be read as individual choice or optimisation.
“Labour markets are not only shaped by wages and productivity but often by care, safety, law, social expectations and unequal power,” she said.
Land is not merely a tradeable asset
Meanwhile, the question of economic power surfaced in discussions around land and the politics of financialisation. Professor Michael Ralph from Howard University, Professor Gustav Peebles from Stockholm University and Acting Constitutional Court Justice Tembeka Ngcukaitobi SC linked land to the wider themes of the meeting.
Ralph argued that modern banking and property frameworks perpetuate inequality because land is considered a tradeable asset, forcing developing nations to surrender control of their natural resources to satisfy international lenders. This logic of financialisation strips nations of true economic sovereignty.
Applying this directly to South Africa, Advocate Ngcukaitobi argued that relying on free-market financial solutions to fix land inequality is flawed. Local banks prioritise a steady monthly income and employment over a title deed alone, so handing poor people land papers will not magically unlock wealth or access to capital. This creates a paradox where a legal title is worth very little within a rigged banking system. However, Advocate Ngcukaitobi asserts that land itself remains invaluable outside of this. The government must aggressively deploy Section 25 of the Constitution to bypass commercial market forces entirely. Instead of treating land as financial collateral for banks, it must be transferred directly to the poor as a physical resource. This direct possession provides immediate shelter, agricultural potential and spatial security to disrupt systemic poverty at its root.
African innovation and the need for vision
Stacey-Leigh Joseph, Deputy Director at SCIS, spoke about Africa not only being a consumer of ideas and innovation, but an originator of them.
“With the world’s youngest population, high levels of inequality, intense urban pressures and large informal systems, African contexts are already generating forms of adaptation, survival and innovation. Johannesburg, for example, is not a polished model city, but a quintessential African city: unequal, improvised, difficult, creative and alive with informal systems through which people make life possible. Innovation, in this framing, is then also social, institutional and political, and not only technological,” said Joseph.
Dr Ruth Castel-Branco, senior researcher at SCIS, extended this by warning that technology does not arrive on neutral ground. It maps onto older extractive economies, labour markets and social relations. The assumption that industrialisation automatically produces better employment or working conditions must be questioned.
“We have the evidence, but we now seriously need a change in vision,” said Castel-Branco.