FROM GLOBALIZATION TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE: Interdependence, Public-Private Coordination, Digital Infrastructure, and the Question of Accountable Power

This chapter examines the historical and institutional transition from postwar international cooperation toward a denser architecture of global governance shaped by states, international organizations, corporations, financial institutions, expert networks, public-private partnerships, and increasingly interoperable digital infrastructures. It traces the development of the United Nations system, Bretton Woods institutions, European integration, multistakeholder governance, the World Economic Forum, stakeholder capitalism, digital public infrastructure, biometric identity, central bank digital currencies, global health governance, artificial intelligence regulation, smart cities, and Internet of Things systems. The evidence demonstrates that significant governing capacity can emerge across borders through treaties, standards, financing, technical expertise, regulatory networks, and digital architecture without the existence of a single sovereign world government. Particular attention is given to the growing convergence of identity, payments, health data, algorithmic decision-making, and urban sensing, which can increase institutional capacities for identification, classification, permissioning, and exclusion while also serving legitimate administrative and social purposes. The chapter distinguishes carefully between documented institutional coordination, technological capability, plausible future convergence, and unsupported claims of centralized global command. Biblically, these developments are interpreted through the recurring themes of Babel, human self-exaltation, spiritual deception, political idolatry, and the prophetic prospect of future economic coercion, while avoiding premature identification of present technologies with Revelation 13. The chapter concludes that Christians must respond neither with fear nor indiscriminate suspicion, but with rigorous discernment, truthfulness, defense of conscience and human dignity, resistance to idolatrous dependence, gospel faithfulness, and readiness for the Blessed Hope of Christ's return.

Keywords: global governance; multistakeholder governance; digital identity; central bank digital currencies; artificial intelligence governance; technological convergence; biblical eschatology