ABSTRACT
This article is part of the transnational research endeavour known as the World Order Models Project (WOMP). The WOMP was created in the early 1960s by a few United States citizens who wanted to address the theme of war prevention within formal academic environments. Nevertheless, it became apparent that the question of war prevention could not be studied in isolation from four other problems that humankind faces and which transcend the nation-state system: poverty, social injustice, environmental decay and alienation. The concrete task then was to develop an analytic framework that would provide intellectual tools for coping with these five problems. This conclusion was reached by a group of social scientists from different parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, that gathered under the auspices of the Institute for World Order to study these issues from a regional perspective in order to enrich the global approach.
