Berggruen Institute

The Berggruen Institute is a global center for ideas, research, and policy based in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 2010 by Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels, it works in response to what it calls the “great transformations” of the 21^st century: upheavals in our economic systems, in democracy, in the global political order, and in what it means to be human. Its goal is to develop foundational ideas that reshape political and social institutions in response to these great transformations. The Institute brings thinkers and practitioners together from across cultures, disciplines, and political boundaries to brainstorm, develop, and promote long-term answers to the profound challenges facing the planet today.

History

The Institute originated in a series of meetings held by Berggruen and Gardels with groups of academics, business leaders, and political veterans in California in 2010 to discuss the economic and political stresses brought on by the global financial crisis. Topics included income inequality, decreasing standards of living, and increasing diseconomies of scale for businesses, and the perception of failing political institutions in and among Western democracies. The Institute was founded to further explore the concepts developed from these early conversations, which also led to the 2012 publication of Berggruen’s first book: Intelligent Governance for the 21^st Century: A Middle Way Between West and East.

Initiatives of the Institute’s first several years include the 21^st Century Council, which gathered former heads of state, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders together to discuss the challenges of global governance in a multipolar era; the Council on the Future of Europe, which sponsored town hall meetings and seminars from 2012-2015 to discuss the possibility of further political unification in Europe; and the Think Long Committee for California, which supported initiatives to reform governance of the US’ largest state, including the SB1253 Ballot Initiative Transparency Act.

Berggruen Institute Programs

Since 2017, the Institute’s work has evolved to focus on four core program areas based on what it calls the “great transformations” shaping the world: the Future of Capitalism, the Future of Democracy, Future Humans, and the Planetary.

The Future of Capitalism

The Future of Capitalism aims to develop new institutional designs for more prosperous and equal post-neoliberal economies. Topics of research include public finance, industrial policy, and “predistribution.” Some of its policy proposals include a data dependence tax on large technology firms; a framework for a National Investment Authority by Dr. Saule Omarova; measures to encourage cooperative worker ownership and management of digital “gig economy” platforms; and suggestions for a system of Universal Basic Capital. The program has suggested “mutualism” as a guiding framework for understanding these post-neoliberal economic arrangements. Dr. Yakov Feygin leads the program as Associate Director.

The Future of Democracy

The Future of Democracy seeks to reinvigorate democracy by pursuing new institutions of democratic deliberation. This work has evolved from the Institute’s advocacy for reforms to the ballot initiative process in California. Much of the program’s work involves organizing deliberative assemblies or related forms of participatory democracy in an effort to facilitate what it calls “participation without populism.” Initiatives of the Future of Democracy program include the Youth Environment Service (YES) campaign, which holds youth deliberative assemblies on climate change and advocates for youth service programs around the world; and Sense LA, which pioneers a new model for deliberative democracy in Los Angeles called a “creative assembly.” The Future of Democracy program is led by Nathan Gardels and Dawn Nakagawa, Executive Vice President of the Berggruen Institute.

Future Humans

The Future Humans program aims to explore and promote discussion of the scientific, philosophical, and other conceptual changes to what it means to be human as technology and scientific understanding evolve. Future Humans works on concepts similar to the Transformations of the Human, a project incubated within the Berggruen Institute from 2018 until 2021, which is now an independent school supported by the Institute and Board Member Reid Hoffman. The Future Humans program organized “What Will Life Become?”, a conference and symposium in April, 2022.

The Planetary

The Planetary has evolved out of the Geopolitics and Globalization program and responds to the fact that many problems around the world are beyond the scope of the nation-state to solve. It has both philosophical and pragmatic orientations: both to understand the conceptual implications of this idea, and to develop institutional designs for successful global governance in the future. In June of 2022 the Planetary program launched the 2022 Berggruen Governance Index in partnership with UCLA, a quantitative assessment of quality of life, governance, and democracy in 134 nations worldwide.

The Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture

The million-dollar prize is granted annually to a thinker whose ideas have a broad impact on molding human self-understanding and the growth of humanity, as determined by an independent panel. The first Berggruen Prize was awarded to Charles Taylor in 2016. Subsequent winners include Onora O’Neill, Martha Nussbaum, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Paul Farmer, and Peter Singer.

Noema Magazine

The Institute is the publisher of Noema, a digital and print magazine launched in 2020. Noema publishes longform contributions from a wide variety of experts and practitioners on philosophy, culture, capitalism, technology, climate change, and other topics. The magazine is published online and annually in print. The magazine is led by Nathan Gardels as editor in chief and Kathleen Miles as executive editor.

Berggruen Institute Fellowship

In partnership with the University of Southern California Dornsife Center on Science, Technology and Public Life (STPL), the Berggruen Fellowships offer scholars and practitioners flexible periods of work and study in both the United States and China. Berggruen Fellows deliver and produce lectures, books, scholarly workshops, colloquia, and academic articles throughout their fellowships. Berggruen Fellows work in relation to one or more of the Institute’s programmatic themes: the Future of Capitalism, the Future of Democracy, the Planetary, and Future Humans.

Global Hubs

Berggruen Institute Los Angeles

The Berggruen Institute headquarters is based in Los Angeles, California.

It is planning a new site envisioned as a “scholars’ campus” in the Santa Monica Mountains. Architects led by Herzog & de Meuron and Gensler have created a design for the site. In 2020, landscape architect Mia Lehrer joined the project team.

Casa dei Tre Oci

In 2021, the Berggruen Institute announced Casa dei Tre Oci an historic palazzo in Venice, Italy, as its new center for European activity. The site will house an international program of summits, workshops, symposia, and exhibitions.

Berggruen China Center

The Berggruen Institute established a research center at Peking University in Beijing in 2018. The China Center’s work focuses on the philosophical and conceptual implications of frontier technologies such as AI and gene editing. In 2021 the China Center produced four books: Intelligence and Wisdom: Artificial Intelligence Meets Chinese Philosophers, which was also translated into English, All under Heaven: The Tianxia System for a Possible World Order, Out of the Anthropocene: Philosophical Musings on the Relationship between Humanity and Nature, and lastly, Social Robots: Boundaries, Potential, Challenges. Bing Song is the Director of the Berggruen China Center.

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