Nicolas Berggruen is co-founder of the Berggruen Institute, an organization dedicated to working with thinkers across cultures and disciplines to address some of the biggest political and cultural questions in our rapidly changing world. Through the Berggruen Institute, he is the publisher of Noema, formerly the WorldPost, a digital and print publication dedicated to exploring global issues.

‍In 2012, Nicolas and Institute co-founder Nathan Gardels published Intelligent Governance for the 21st Century: A Middle Way Between West and East. The book’s central argument is that populism and short-term thinking have hindered the progress of Western democracies, while many authoritarian Eastern nations, China in particular, would benefit from strengthening their meritocratic systems with the popular legitimacy that is typical of Western governments. In 2019, they published Renovating Democracy: Governing in the Age of Globalization and Digital Capitalism, expanding on their alternate framework for governance with three novel ideas: participation without populism, universal basic capital and positive nationalism.