I WILL begin by making two predictions and then offer four suggestions. The predictions are aimed at those who are bewildered by the changes that are occurring in what can loosely be labelled the global economic and social order. The suggestions are for Pakistan’s current policymakers to consider.

The two — the predictions and suggestions — are connected. Islamabad is struggling to deal with a crisis that has roots that go beyond the way the affairs of the state were managed by a series of administrations that governed the country over several decades. The crisis is also linked to the changes that are taking place in the way the world is currently organised.

Let me start with the two predictions. The first concerns the economic problems that have engulfed the globe. They started in the US in the summer of 2007, spread to Europe a year later and then began to lap at the shores of Asia and Latin America. There have been many economic crises before. What distinguishes the present one from all those that occurred in the last half century are its depth and reach. This crisis has interrupted a sustained period of economic prosperity that affected both the citizens of the developed world and billions of people living in developing countries.

Between 2000 and 2007, the world economy grew at a rate faster than experienced in nearly four decades. Income per person across the globe increased at 3.2 per cent a year, the fastest rate in world history. The percentage of the world’s population living in absolute poverty — those with incomes of less than $1 a day — declined from 40 per cent in 1981 to 18 per cent in 2004.

What brought about this remarkable change was an economic model that placed private enterprise at the front of the economy, pushing the state to the back. The change also depended on the forces unleashed by what came to be called globalisation. This was the process that freed capital to flow across national frontiers, allowed trade among nations to be relatively unrestrained, and reshaped industrial processes so that final products were put together from parts and components made in different parts of the world.

My first prediction is that a fundamental change will occur in this model before calm returns to the global economy. While the process of globalisation will continue, the state will step forward and take a position at the front of the economy. Governments across the globe will increase their oversight of the economy, bringing regulation to the parts of the economy that had known little constraint.

The second prediction concerns the distribution of power among the leading economies in the world. The system that was invented after the conclusion of the Second World War will be reshaped. The 44 countries that met in 1944 at Bretton Woods initially created two institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, now called the World Bank. Fifty years later the world added the World Trade Organisation which was to be the third leg of the stool on which the global economy was to rest. While the IMF and the World Bank added new functions to their original mandate, and increased the number of countries that were their members, policymaking and decision-making powers remained with the rich nations, in particular the US.

That will change but it will not happen quickly since those who have power find it hard to give up even a little bit of it. That said, the process will begin with the summit forced upon Washington by Europe, in particular France, to be held on Nov 15. This gathering will take place only 11 days after the US will have elected a new president. The winner of that election will have a larger presence at the conference than the lame-duck George W. Bush. The president-elect will go to the meeting with ideas of his own and is likely to be more receptive to change than those who currently govern from Washington.

Having made these two predictions — that a new model of economic management will take shape as the world begins to find a solution to the current economic crisis and that a major realignment is likely to happen in power-sharing among the large economies of the world — I have four suggestions for Islamabad’s policymakers to adjust Pakistan to this new environment.

First, Islamabad must figure out the implication of the new economic order for its own position in the world; second, it should seek a niche for itself in the new system; third, it should strengthen the state to manage its own economy; and, fourth, it should seek closer partnerships with some of the nations that will gain more power in the new structure. I will deal in turn with each of those four suggestions.

As the new administration settles down in Islamabad, the responsibility for analysing the shape of the international economic order and its implication for Pakistan should be given to the Planning Commission. As I have written before, it is unfortunate that the commission was sidelined by previous administrations. This happened in particular during the period of President Pervez Musharraf when all economic powers were first usurped by the Ministry of Finance and later by the prime minister’s secretariat. There is an urgent need to restore a balance in economic policymaking and one way of achieving that would be to assign most analytical functions to the commission. Understanding the emerging economic order should be one of these assignments.

Pakistan’s indifferent economic performance over the last two to three decades has pushed it to the margins of international economic discourse. It will not be represented at the Nov 15 meeting and will have to accommodate itself to whatever structure finally emerges. However, it should seek to enter the system by cultivating strong working relations with the countries that will gain in the anticipated redistribution of economic power.

The obvious partners are China and the oil-producing countries in the Middle East. While there are good working relations with these countries, it is important to give them an institutional base. The Planning Commission and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should establish economic wings that focus on particular countries. The foreign affairs ministry should develop the capacity to undertake economic diplomacy as one of its more important tasks. For analysis it should turn to the Planning Commission.Finally, Pakistan must not fall behind in strengthening the state to play a more productive role in economic management. This was another area that was neglected during the Musharraf period. I will pick up this subject in greater detail next week.

GIVEN the drama of our last two presidential elections, most of us Americans are much too cautious to prognosticate prematurely. Nevertheless, I can’t stifle a fizzy little hiccup of joy at the prospect of something like our own Nelson Mandela moment.

By this, I do not mean to say that the election of Barack Obama would launch us into some sort of ‘post-race’ utopia — it is naive to think that the urgently worrisome accumulations of racial inequality, ghetto isolation, horrendous rates of incarceration, or economic disparity will evaporate overnight.

As one marker of progress, however, the election of Obama would be hugely significant. It would surely count as something like a toehold on the proverbial mountaintop for which Martin Luther King so longed.

I had just turned 12 when Martin Luther King delivered his searing ‘I have a dream’ speech at the March on Washington. I remember weeping in front of the television. Who could fail to be moved? Things were changing.

Nevertheless, these events put political pressure on President Johnson, as well as on Congress, to sign and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In the years since, various aspects of those foundational moments have been re-fought, in new settings, with differing facts and faces. As more blacks moved to the urban north, ‘inner cities’ became the battle ground. Blacks were appointed to cabinet-level posts, military commands and the Supreme Court.

Today, there are hundreds of black mayors in all parts of the United States, including the Deep South. And as the demographics of the United States have changed.

And while there are moments when a Democratic partisan such as me wonders if it it’s the kind of victory that turns winning into losing, there has even sufficient diversity to herald the first conservative Republican African Americans in high places, like Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

So while there is still much to be achieved, what is exciting about Obama’s ascendancy is that it has been so unequivocally positive, so uplifting, so ... happy. When I think of the long slow progress of the modern Civil Rights movement, with its innumerable marches, murders, and martyrs, I can think of few victories that simultaneously had the potential for such genuine, uncompromised rejoicing as the vision of — dare I really say it? — President Barack Obama.

The writer is a professor of law at Columbia University, New York.

— The Guardian, London