Designing Global Economic Equality

Abstract This book is an intellectual history of global inequality, charting the rise and fall of ideas for global egalitarian politics—of equality by design. It traces the work of United Nations thinkers and their intellectual environments, contributing to histories of inequality, the UN, development, international relations, business in society, and neoliberalism. Drawing from sources such as development economics, UN reports, political science classics, popular management literature, and interviews with UN experts, it examines how vocabularies of global inequality evolved over time. The book argues that global economic inequality remained a persistent theme from the 1940s onward. Global egalitarians advocated both equality norms and instruments—development, redistribution, and restructuring—challenging a hierarchical global economy and the belief that markets alone would yield equality. Criticism of development intensified in the mid-1960s, and the 1970s marked the peak of efforts to design a global equality regime. These hopes unraveled in the early 1980s with the rise of market-based neoliberal policies. By the late 1990s, the failures of neoliberal globalization gave rise to “inclusive capitalism,” a more technocratic and depoliticized approach to addressing inequality. Despite setbacks, global egalitarian ideas persisted. The UN played a crucial role by producing inequality statistics, setting norms, and facilitating global dialogue. A concluding reflection on the post-2008 crisis era highlights how debates on inequality surged, yet echoed long-standing concerns. In documenting the shifting blueprints for narrowing global inequality, this book tells a story from which we may still learn.