Carlo Pelanda

The United States is still the single most powerful country in the world but it is now too “small” to maintain its role as global governor as it has done since 1945.

The world has become too big to be governed by one power.

Current trends show that divergent regional blocks and mega-nations are forming which will weaken the governance of the global economy and its security problems, increasing the risk of destabilization over the entire planet.

In The Grand Alliance, Pelanda recommends a future alliance of the world’s largest democracies: the United States, European Union, Russia, India, and Japan.

The gradual convergence of military and economic power within these nations will produce credible global governance based on Western and technical values.

Active Democracy outlines three purposes.

The first is scientific, rationally evaluating the properties of democracy and the ability to spread it to nations of the world.

The second is informational, synthesizing the materials useful to students, scholars, and political activists to deepen the concepts of democracy and democratization.

The third is ideological, advocating global democratization in light of its usefulness and feasibility, not in the abstract.

The state was designed to guarantee the rights of individuals belonging to a population with a common culture that resides in a territory limited by borders.

The state is the sole guarantor of the rights in that territory and is therefore sovereign.

In a globalized world, where events in the territory of one nation can dramatically impact what happens in another, the role of sovereignty comes into question.

Carlo A. Pelanda (born April 17, 1951, in Tolmezzo, Italy) is an Italian professor of Political Science and Economics.

Pelanda received a Doctorate in Political Science from the University of Trieste where he specialized in Strategic Studies, International Scenarios, and Systems Theory.

He currently holds academic positions at Guglielmo Marconi University and the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (OXONIA).

He also chairs Quadrivio Group, one of the largest investment firms in Italy.

In Strategy 2028, Pelanda argues that while the decline of Italy is evident, the strength of its industrial system and the dynamism prevalent throughout its society are a concrete basis for strategic hope in reversing the decline.

He identifies four structural transformations required for this reversal:

The book introduces a systematic strategy that integrates internal reforms, of both the political architecture and economic model of Italy, with a project to strengthen Italy's external position.

Strategy 2028 is a 10-year project with milestone events that will reinforce the plan's feasibility in its early stages.

It is a national project intended to repair Italian democracy in a global scenario of reorganizing and converging democracies.

In Nova Pax, Pelanda outlines a global systemic project that aims to: (a) create an alliance structured as an economic area with growing integration among democratic nations; (b) facilitate the reorganization of national political-economic models into structures compatible with the allied economic area; (c) form this new Free Community through the expansion of the G7; and (d) revive democratic ideology and restart the process of global democratization.

The goal is to reorganize the world of “democratic capitalism” through this strategy, which combines national reforms and a new international architecture.

The model of “democratic capitalism” is facing a crisis in its ability to generate economic growth, maintain geopolitical cohesion, and project influence globally.

The realism of the project is based on the tendency of democracies to form free trade agreements, at times even with elements of a common market.

This systemic project seeks to encourage this trend and organize it as Nova Pax, a successor to Pax Americana and the foundation for a new world order.

In Europe Beyond, Pelanda recognizes that the temptation is growing among certain nations to go beyond Europe because the EU and Eurozone are seen as dysfunctional.

He argues that it would be more productive for Europe to reorganize itself with an outward focus so that it can become more useful for Europeans and the world.

This new “post-European” innovation would treat Europe not as an end, but as the means to help stabilize and improve the global system.

This extroverted posture would in turn resolve the internal defects that impair the European project today.

Pelanda argues that progress, defined as continuous improvement in the human condition, is experiencing a crisis.

Our system of democratic capitalism has proven most successful at fostering progress through the self-reinforcing virtuous cycle between freedom, capital, and technology.

He argues that the system is now weakening, and progress is slowing.

The diffusion of wealth in the democratic capitalist system is in decline.

Democracy shows signs of degeneration and its global spread is slowing or has stopped entirely.

This deterioration occurred because the large abstractions and models that drove democratic capitalism in the past have not been updated and so no longer function.

Pelanda identifies seven missions in The New Progress to help restart the virtuous cycle between freedom, capital, and technology: (a) re-launch mass capitalism through new guarantees; (b) modernize and expand the democratic revolution; (c) give a vertical architecture to the global market; (d) search for a new synthesis in moral philosophy; (e) add to the philosophy of analysis that of building; (f) rebuild confidence in technical solutions; and (g) bring about the passage from weak to strong thinking.

Pelanda argues that the Risorgimento was a national and liberal project that is now in need of reinvention.

His formula for this new national project identifies four transitions necessary to stave off crisis in the Italian national system: (a) from the de-nationalization of culture to positive patriotism; (b) from passive to active guarantees; (c) from weak to contributive sovereignty; and (d) from the horizontal to the vertical state.

Pelanda argues that the system of world governance built on U.S. dominance, the U.S. Dollar, and the Western nature of international institutions is breaking down.