The author is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution  in  Washington,  DC.  He  specialises  in  international  economics,  monetary  economics  and  macroeconomic policy. He was previously Director of the International Finance Division of the Federal Reserve Board. The  book  draws  attention  to  the  need  for  different  countries  to  strike  a  balance  between  local  autonomy  and  external  openness.  All  this  while  avoiding the extremes of limited localism and borderless  globalism. 

According  to  the  author,  today  there  are  many  sources  of  conflict  that  challenge  our world, and to overcome them, collective action has become increasingly necessary. Bryant lists several crises, such as climate change, mass migration or  the  COVID-19  pandemic,  to  which  he  believes  that  the  joint  response  of  national  governments  is  far  from  effective.  Bryant  also  highlights  the  extremes  of  the  overly  conservative  patriotic  and  cosmopolitan  vision,  which  contrast  sharply  with  each  other  and  which  preclude  the  possibility  of  cooperation. According  to  Bryant,  if  common  coordination  and  cooperation  across  national  borders  is  not  achieved  in  the  future,  it  could  become  very  problematic  to  tackle  crises.  For  this  reason,  a  set  of  rules  and  regulations  should  be  developed  that  would provide a suitable platform for international communities to develop the possibility of collective governance.

Meszár Tárik – The author is a researcher at the Eurasia Center of John von Neumann University