There is an increasing glocalization of governance — global standards and regulations adapted to local specifics, as well as local developments triggering global regulations.

• Local governments organised at global level (e.g. the Global Parliament of Mayors and Covenant of Mayors) are overpassing national and international policies to accelerate policy responses, foster resource mobilisation and better engage local stakeholders.
• The role of cities in global governance is challenging a more centralized nation state governance vision (Sturner and Bandel, 2019). 
• Local governments could engage actively in international cooperation and world politics, and act in a more agile way. Cities have been active in a number of policy areas, such as environment, climate change, energy, migrations (Sturner and Bandel, 2019). 
• Cities could rise as powers and spaces for influence. 
• As transnationalisation is accelerating, a global citizenry is emerging.
• The scope and spectrum of authority and governance is broadening beyond the state-centric and policy-making realms.
• The Shared Power Principle characterized by subsidiarity, collaborative and participatory working, distributed leadership and continuous learning could improve governments' effectiveness and legitimacy. 

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• Power distribution in multilevel government, and the combination of local, regional, national and supranational levels, could be put on the political agenda and its legitimacy enforced or increased.
• Emphasis could be put on collaboration among government, citizens and businesses. 
• Despite an apparent expansion and diversification of democracy, the long-term democratization process has stalled over the past 13 years, with declines in freedom observed in all world regions, reports Freedom House. Freedom in the World 2019 notes that overall, since 2006 -- when the decline began -- 116 countries experienced a net decline, and only 63 have experienced a net improvement. Of the 195 countries assessed in 2018, 86 were rated free, 59 partly free, and 50 (encompassing 37% of the world's population--over 2.8 billion people) not free. | Related Megatrends:​ Inequalities; Geopower
• Despite of signals of re-nationalisation and the rise of authoritarian regimes, the trend towards transnationalisation and multi-actor governance is likely to continue.
• With the evolution of the IoT, wearable computers, autonomous vehicles, and brain-computer interfaces, cyber security will become increasingly important. The potential 'disruptive' use of some new technologies could impact some civil liberties and trigger new policies to minimise risks. 
• India -- the world's largest democracy -- has 600 million youth (50% of the country's 1.25 billion people) under 25 years old; 65% of its population is 35 or younger. Their capacity and needs will have considerable impact on shaping the country's future and poltentially influence world's democracy. | Related Megatrends: Geopower; Education
• Over the past quarter-century across the world, satisfaction with democracy has fallen, and dissatisfaction risen. 2019 represents the highest level of democratic discontent on record since 1995.
• The more democratic governments appear to be failing to address problems of public accountability, raising living standards, economic governance, migration or climate change, the greater the degree to which citizens perceive that their institutions are not delivering results and loosing legitimacy. 
• While in the 1990s, around two-thirds of the citizens of Europe, North America, Northeast Asia and Australasia felt satisfied with democracy in their countries, today a majority feel dissatisfied.
• Almost two-thirds of Asians are satisfied with the performance of democracy in their countries, compared to just two-fifths of individuals elsewhere. 
• High-income democracies as Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, representing at the same time a small minority of individuals, experience high democratic satisfaction all-time. | Related Megatrends:​ Inequalities

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Increasing global connectedness will continue to foster the interaction among non-state actors beyond states capacity to control it, thus challenging in several ways traditional governance.

• The growing role of non-state actors is changing the political, security, economic, and social environments. | Related Megatrends: Security; Migration
• The role of social movements, especially the “networked” ones, has increased (e.g. gilets jaunes, climate marches, #MeToo, etc)
• New actors – digital communities, transnational institutions, multinational corporations, civil society organizations and the social media platforms – are impacting all levels of governance and add new layers of rules and expectations to the population at large. | Related Megatrends: Technology; Inequalities
• The role of corporations for social change is increasing, with 64% of people globally expecting CEOs to lead and 84% expecting CEOs to influence policy debates on social issues, according to 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer. 
• The massive economic growth of several big digital companies could led to an imbalance of power relations. 
• With nearly 10,000 companies from some 160 countries being members of the UN Global Compact, supporting the Sustainable Development Goals, corporate responsibility is becoming an important driver of social change and governance.
• The millennials and generation Z confidence in political leaders is rather low, as revealed by The Deloitte Global Millennial Survey 2019. Some 73% of those surveyed consider that political leaders are failing to have a positive impact on the world and about 45%  do not trust them as sources of reliable information. Distrust in traditional media is also rather high, with 43% considering that the mass media is having a negative impact on the world, and 27% having no trust at all in the media as sources of reliable and accurate information. NGOs and not-for-profits ranked highest in terms of both societal impact and sources of reliable information.
  | Related Megatrends: Security; Technology; Inequalities
• Blockchain technology is another new governance system, an engine of automated self-regulation for communities, markets and society. | Related Megatrends: Technology

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• Transnational organised crime is estimated as having a budget twice larger than all military budgets combined. How much influence and governing power could non-state actors buy?
  | Related Megatrends: Security
• Worldwide corruption, associated with increased income distribution and governance influence, is estimate at 1 trillion per year (mainly including only bribery), while the world black market value is estimated at $1.81 trillion.
  | Related Megatrends: Geopower
• With the evolution of the IoT, wearable computers, autonomous vehicles, and brain-computer interfaces, cyber security will become increasingly important. Data need to be encrypted at all levels; quantum cryptography seems to be the best answer known so far.
• Quantum cryptography is an emerging security technology (already demonstrated in June 2017 by China). 
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Geopower; Security
• Global-scale quantum Internet is increasingly possible.
• Collection (and concentration) of biometric data would make possible hacking humans and other living organism and is increasing the risks of digital warfare, targeted-attacks, and dictatorships (as well as re-engineering nature).
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Geopower; Governance
• Even tough Hybrid Threats (HT) have dominated the security landscape in Europe for long, they are currently repackaged and empowered by new tools, concepts and technologies targeting vulnerabilities in several domains in an unprecedented manner. 
• The effectiveness of HT in undermining public trust in democratic institutions, challenging the core values of societies, gaining geopolitical influence and power, and affecting the decision-making capability are increasing.
• Hybrid actors could achieve the desired objectives without full escalation. Such “under the radar” activities make it difficult to detect and design counteracts.

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• Digital oligarchy is the fastest growing consolidation of power, as the leading companies try to gain monopoly over the technologies they control. Outside of China, the Internet world is dominated by a handful of USA companies. | Related Megatrends: Technology; Work; Governance; Geopower
• The number of influential technology companies is expected to shrink from 70 in 2017 to 30 by 2030 and possibly 10 by 2050, increasing the digital oligarchy. 
• Over 95% of all bitcoins in circulation are owned by about 4% of the market (1% of the addresses control 50% of the entire market). | Related Megatrends: Technology; Work
• High concentration of R&D activity: the top 2,000 R&D corporations worldwide have their headquarters in just a few countries (mainly USA, Japan and China), own about 75% of global ICT-related patents, 55% of ICT-related designs and 75% of the IP5 patent families related to AI, and about 70% of their total R&D spending is concentrated in the top 200 firms. | Related Megatrends: Technology; Inequalities; Geopower; Security
• China has the top two of the 500 most powerful supercomputers, Sunway TaihuLight and Tianhe-2 (MilkyWay-2), of 93 petaflops and 33.9 petaflops respectively, followed by Switzerland, then 3 in the USA, 2 in Japan, and next 2 also USA being the top 10. However, the U.S.A. might regain its top spot with a Department of Energy funding to six companies for the development of the world’s first exascale supercomputer (processing a quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) calculations per second).
• EU is developing 8 supercomputers to be operational at mid-2020. They will be hosted at eight centres across the EU. Three of them, precursor to exascale machines (capable of executing more than 150 million billion calculations per second) will be among the top 5 supercomputers of the world. The other 5 will be petascale machines (capable of executing at least 4 Petaflops, or 4 million billion operations per second).
  | Related Megatrends: Geopower; Inequalities; Security
• China accounts for 44% of worldwide M2M (machine-to-machine) sim card subscriptions – three times the share of the USA.
  ​| Related Megatrends: Inequalities; Geopower; Security
• China aims to become world leader in science and innovation by 2050. In 2017, China's R&D spneding of about $378.6 billion (PPP) accounted for 21% of total world R&D expenditure, with the rate of R&D investment growth significantly exceeding that of the U.S. and the EU.
• China plans to be world leader in AI by 2030. Its R&D intensity might match that of OECD by 2020.
  | Related Megatrends: Geopower; Security; Inequalities;
  Governance

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• When social media is becoming one of the most powerful tools for shaping peoples' choices, being an "influencer" is at the reach of anyone.
• The number of social media users worldwide grew from just under 1 billion in 2010 to 2.8 billion in 2017 and passed 3 billion users in 2018. Facebook expects to have 5 billion users by 2030. 
  | Related Megatrends: ​Technology; Geopower;  Security
• The possibility of buying millions of "followers" for social media platforms is undermining credibility, impacting the decisions of an increasingly confused citizenry.  
  | Related Megatrends: Security; Technology; Geopower
• About 52% of the world—some 3.9 billion people—are now connected to the Internet.
• Mobile broadband penetration in OECD countries reached 99%. 
  | Related Megatrends: Technology
• The privacy paradox is intensifying, as the relation between maintaining privacy while "volunteering" increasing amount of private data online becomes more complicated. This sets a significant media literacy challenge for children as well as for educators.
  | Related Megatrends: ​Education; Geopower;  Security

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• Globalisation of all sectors — economic, security, information, technological development, etc.— together with increased mobility and solidarity of the population worldwide are accelerating the spread and implementation of democratic values and structures, but are also adding new governing structures around the world.
• Artificial Intelligence is bringing many benefits to our society, including greater inclusion and access to information, goods and services. Nevertheless, it also carries significant risks, such as disintegration of individual privacy, controlling and monitoring citizens, lack of agency and control, increasing threats to cybersecurity, prolonged social disorder, and many others, challenging governance and democracy. 
• AI and big data could be used for more efficient policymaking. The use of AI could help citizens make better-informed decisions.
• Citizen participation, algorithms and data considered together could allow reflection on how to use technology for good to empower citizens and share power. 
• If technological development becomes more participatory and democratic, it could also become more socially robust and in accordance to citizen needs and public values.
• About 66% of the people in the world have a mobile phone; over 50% have smart phones. The continued development and proliferation of smart phone apps are putting state-of-the-art AI systems in the palm of many hands globally;
• Smartphones are increasingly seen as weapons of mass manipulation. | Related Megatrends: Security
• Low-cost computers are replacing high-cost weapons as an instrument of power in asymmetrical cyber and information warfare. Information security has to address a wide and diverse range of "enemies"—from the “geek in the back room” to criminal organizations and governments. 
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Geopower; Security
• Collective intelligence systems and education should be used to counter disinformation and to increase the citizens' capacity to understand what matters.
  | Related Megatrends: Technology

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• As "fake news" proliferate, disinformation threatens democracy and efficient governance.
• There is empirical evidence that false news are spreading significantly "faster, deeper, and more broadly" than the true ones. An MIT study found that the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to 1,000 - 100,000 people, whereas the true ones rarely reached more than 1,000 people.
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Inequalities; Security
• Low-cost computers are replacing high-cost weapons as an instrument of power in asymmetrical cyber and information warfare. Information security has to address a wide and diverse range of "enemies"—from the “geek in the back room” to criminal organizations and governments. 
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Geopower; Security
• Smartphones are increasingly seen as weapons of mass manipulation. | Related Megatrends: Security
• An estimated 66% of links to popular websites shared on tweeter are generated by automated accounts.
  | Related Megatrends: Technology; Inequalities; Security
• As of 2017, more advertising money is spent on Internet than on television, and half of all Internet traffic is via mobile phones. 
  | Related Megatrends:Technology; Consumerism
• The merger of main Chinese state media (China Central Television (CCTV), China Radio International and China National Radio) into one "Voice of China" is consolidating Chinese state media power and the message it wants to disseminate, but is questioning even more democracy. | Related Megatrends: Expanding influence of East and South

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