Recent mass protests in Eastern Europe deserve our attention. The Broker aims to draw lessons from such movements’ conceptions to outcomes.

The recent protest in the city of Hong Kong from the viewpoint of Valentina Mazzucato.

A major reason why less developed countries fail to develop is the structural exclusion of large segments of their population from their economic, social and political development. In my estimation, roughly three billion people—one out of every two in the developing world—face discrimination in how their governments and markets work. This institutional bias has a dramatic impact on access to education, security and the rule of law, and to opportunities to advance.

The eyes of the world are on emerging powers. Generally, we consider these to be countries, but other powers are emerging: the world’s megacities.

Most international peacebuilding interventions, large and small, make the mistake of interfering so much that they end up undermining the ability of the local system to self-organize. For peace consolidation to be self-sustainable it has to be the result of a home-grown, bottom-up and context-specific process.

What was a relentless military dictatorship only a few years ago is now an applauded ‘democracy’. But not everybody is joining in with the clapping.