Conclusion

Abstract This chapter presents the main conclusions of this book, centered around several themes: that thinking on global economic inequality has been a persistent theme in development discourse from the 1940s until the present; that global egalitarians championed both global equality norms and global equality instruments, criticizing both the highly hierarchical world political economy as well as the idea that spontaneous market forces would bring about a more equal world; that the book traces the rise and fall of major global egalitarian instruments; that these ideas remained significant even when they seemingly failed; and that the United Nations played a role in producing global inequality statistics, setting global equality norms, and enabling international political dialogue about global equality. The conclusion ends with a short discussion about the intellectual history of global inequality and global egalitarian political ideas from the financial and economic crises of 2007–2008 until the present day.