Globally, we are poised at an economic inflection point and mired in a political interregnum. As a result, business, led by institutional investors and the World Economic Forum (WEF), will take the lead in setting the standards for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, while governments struggle with what Antonio Gramsci described as a crisis of authority. “The crisis,” he said, “consists precisely in the fact that the old order is dying and the new order cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”1 These symptoms include: “open political violence, outbreaks and manifestations of mass discontent, the rise and acceptance of extreme political positions and their respective leaders, and the sudden depletion of once strong institutions.”2 Although this state of affairs in world politics is unsettling, and will remain so for some
