Christian Olaf Christiansen

Designing Global Economic Equality is an intellectual history of global inequality: a story of the rise and fall of ideas for global egalitarian politics, or global equality by design. Tracing the writings of United Nations thinkers and their intellectual environments, it contributes to historiographies on inequality, the UN, development, international relations theory, business in society, and neoliberalism. Drawing on sources from development economics, political science, and international relations to UN reports, newspaper articles, management literature, and interviews with contemporary UN experts, it investigates how vocabularies of global inequality shifted over time. The book finds that from the 1940s onward, global economic inequality remained a persistent theme. Global egalitarians not only championed equality norms but also concrete instruments-especially development, redistribution, and restructuring-while remaining critical of both global economic hierarchies and the belief that markets alone would ensure equality. The 1970s marked the high point of efforts to design a global equality regime, only to see these hopes dismantled in the early 1980s with the rise of neoliberal globalization. By the late 1990s, the failure of these policies paved the way for “inclusive capitalism,” a depoliticized approach to inequality. Yet global egalitarian ideas endured, and the UN continued to produce inequality statistics, set global norms, and foster international dialogue. In the wake of the 2007-2008 crises, as inequality debates re-emerged with force, familiar themes and warnings resurfaced. Offering a history of widening gaps and efforts to close them, this book tells a story from which we may still learn.

Designing Global Economic Equality is an intellectual history of global inequality: a story of the rise and fall of ideas for global egalitarian politics, or global equality by design. Tracing the writings of United Nations thinkers and their intellectual environments, it contributes to historiographies on inequality, the UN, development, international relations theory, business in society, and neoliberalism. Drawing on sources from development economics, political science, and international relations to UN reports, newspaper articles, management literature, and interviews with contemporary UN experts, it investigates how vocabularies of global inequality shifted over time. The book finds that from the 1940s onward, global economic inequality remained a persistent theme. Global egalitarians not only championed equality norms but also concrete instruments-especially development, redistribution, and restructuring-while remaining critical of both global economic hierarchies and the belief that markets alone would ensure equality. The 1970s marked the high point of efforts to design a global equality regime, only to see these hopes dismantled in the early 1980s with the rise of neoliberal globalization. By the late 1990s, the failure of these policies paved the way for “inclusive capitalism,” a depoliticized approach to inequality. Yet global egalitarian ideas endured, and the UN continued to produce inequality statistics, set global norms, and foster international dialogue. In the wake of the 2007-2008 crises, as inequality debates re-emerged with force, familiar themes and warnings resurfaced. Offering a history of widening gaps and efforts to close them, this book tells a story from which we may still learn.

Breaking new ground in the intellectual history of economic and social human rights, Christian Olaf Christiansen traces their justification from the outset of World War II until the present day. Featuring a series of fascinating thinkers, from political scientists to Popes, this is the first book to comprehensively map the key arguments made in defense of human rights and how they connect to ideas of social and redistributive justice. Christiansen traces this intellectual history from a first phase devoted to internationalizing these rights, a second phase of their unprecedented legitimacy deployed to criticize global inequality, to a third phase of a continued quest to secure their legitimacy once and for all. Engaging with the newest scholarship and building a bridge to political philosophy as well as global inequality studies, it facilitates a much-needed novel and nuanced history of rights-rights we should still consider defending today.

Økonomi. Et emne der er omgærdet af stor ærefrygt. For stor ærefrygt. For selvom økonomerne er blevet vor kriseramte tids orakler, er økonomisk tænkning for alle. Økonomi er ikke bare tal og tabeller, vismænd og matematiske algoritmer. Det er levet liv. Det er praksisser og forestillinger og kultur. Det er gode idéer – og det er dårlige idéer. Økonomi trænger sig konstant på i vores hverdag. Hvad har værdi og under hvilke omstændigheder? Hvorfor giver vi rask væk et halvt hundrede kroner for en café latte fra Starbucks, men irriteres over at give meget mere end 25 kroner for et pund frikadellefars? Pengene og livet er en samling sjove, kloge og oplysende fortællinger om pengenes idé- og kulturhistorie gennem fire århundreder, der sætter spot på de myter, der omgiver vores økonomiske liv. Bogen giver med sine mange både historiske og højaktuelle fortællinger – med titler som ’Kartoflens politiske økonomi’, ’Goldman Sachs er Gud’ og ’Steen Bocians krystalkugle’ – intellektuel ammunition til den, der gerne vil udfordre tidens økonomiske ”sandheder”.