Don Tapscott participated in the “Global Redesign Initiative” of the World Economic Forum in Dubai. Called the Global Agenda Summit, 80 Councils composed of a dozen members each, discussed how to redesign our systems for global cooperation for the 21st century.

In his report, which makes clear that the global elite understands just as well that the neoliberal and even Westphalian system is no longer operative, he also outlines his own proposal:

“Just about everyone agreed that what we don’t need is some kind of global government or a new set of international bureaucracies piled on the existing ones.

This view is very different from other approaches that have sought to strengthen existing institutions of global governance like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund. “Such would just create ever bigger more unmanageable bureaucracies,” says Professor Schwab. Rather, the Initiative is taking a Wikinomics approach — embracing more agile, networked structures enabled by global networks for new kinds of collaboration. Here, nation states continue to play a central role but can overcome their silo thinking and behavior by sharing information better, cooperate real-time on networks and “anchoring the preparation and implementation of their decisions more deeply in the processes of interaction with interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder networks of relevant experts and actors.”

But how would this new, networked system of global cooperation work? There are many tough issues. How would these vast multi-stakeholder networks achieve legitimacy? How could they be held accountable? How would they interact with existing structures? How would participation be achieved? What should existing governments and other institutions do to embrace global networked cooperation and problem solving?

In fact stronger global governance could create a new problem. As we attempt to achieve new models of global cooperation, citizens of the world could become one or more steps removed from their governments and relegated to passive consumers. Further, the capability of the world and its citizens will not be brought to bear on solving the world’s problems. If this is not fixed there can be no legitimate, accountable and trusted global cooperation, problem solving and governance.

To address this challenge one Council in which I participated (on the Future of Governments) put forward a proposal called The Global Citizen Engagement Initiative. They argued that governments, in collaboration with other stakeholders, need to launch a new paradigm to involve the citizens of the world to co-innovate the 21st century and transformation society through mass collaboration. This is enabled by a new medium of communications; appropriate for a new generation of young people who have shown that they want to be engaged in the world; and necessary for the demands of the global economy and society.

These include ideation tools like digital brainstorms and town hall meetings: decision-making initiatives like citizen juries and deliberative polling; execution tools like policy wikis and social networks within government; and evaluation programs through mass collaboration monitoring systems to enable citizens to keep governments accountable and evaluate government performance.

The goal is not to replace existing institutions. This proposal will help them. It is not supplanting representative governance it enhances it. But additionally it enables existing institutions to unleash public value, catalyzing initiatives and unleashing human capital in the world. However leaders of current institutions will need to change their whole operating model to interact with their citizens.”