On November 7, the German Historical Institute held the annual Bucerius lecture in collaboration with the Institute of European Studies, the Clausen Center for International Business and Policy, the Haas Center for Responsible Business, the Institute of International Studies, the Center for Environmental Public Policy at the Goldman School, the CITRIS Policy Lab and the Rausser College of Natural Resources. This year’s speaker was Marcel Fratzscher, President of the German Institute of Economic Research and professor of macroeconomics at Humboldt University, Berlin. The lecture was followed by a discussion led by Professor Katerina Linos of Berkeley Law.
Fratzscher began the lecture by giving an overview of current views about the future. His central claim was that pessimism prevails in the global north which is driven by the growing divide between social groups, distrust of political leaders, and decrease in social cohesion. Fratzscher’s lecture focused on three major transformations that are affecting societies globally; globalization and changing relationships between nation-states, climate change, and growing social polarization. First, Fratzscher explained how nation-states need to reshape their relationships to be based on equality while still being dependent on each other. In our globalized world, it is impossible for nation-states to function without depending on each other, but Fratzscher explained how this has led countries to develop unequal relationships with each other, particularly the West with the asymmetric dependence on China. As the trend of geopolitics seems to reveal that democracies are becoming weaker and autocracies are becoming stronger, Fratzscher thinks international relations need to be restructured to be less dependent on autocratic regimes.
Second, Fratzscher discussed climate change and its social repercussions. Fratzscher tackled disproving the myth that the West has often believed that business and governments need to be careful about taking action against climate change in order to prevent job losses. In fact, Fratzscher said, studies suggest that action should be taken more rapidly. Fratzscher also discussed how climate change affects the most underprivileged groups the most and affects the top 10% the least when they are the greatest contributors to climate change. This brought him to his final point, the social inequality is widening. Fratzscher listed income inequality, the gender pay gap, and the lack of equal opportunity as evidence of this effect. Despite this grave prognosis, Fratzscher concluded with some optimistic takeaways, emphasizing the importance of solidarity as opposed to individualism in order to work together through crises.