KEY PLAYERS AND PROCESSES OF THE GLOBAL WORLD: MODERN TRANSFORMATIONS

The purpose of the article is to identify the main contributors to the global environment, to study the role transformation of the world’s leading countries in the connection with the recent changes on the world arena, and to analyze transformation processes of the global world. In the process of writing the article the following general research methods are used: analysis and synthesis, abstraction, induction. The application of historical and systemic approaches has led to the integrity and logic of the conducted research and the validity of the findings. It is noted that the modern methodological approach involves the calculation of integral indicators that take into account various aspects of the countries’ economic activities. However, we deny the possibility of convergence of various indicators into a single integral one. Therefore, we use an expanded set of macroeconomic indicators that take into account the aspects of demographic, poverty, and uneven distribution of income to conduct an assessment. It is determined that the United States of America and Japan stay the key players on the global arena. The European Union joined them at the beginning of the 21st century. China has become an undisputed key player, and India is rapidly strengthening its position. The Russian Federation is not left out of the attention of the world community simply because of its unpredictable and inadequate behavior in international relations. It is found out that the main factor in the further development of the global environment is, undoubtedly, the transition from the 3rd to the 4th industrial revolution, which necessitates the search for a man of his place in a fully automated and robotic production process. Environmental aspects of the countries’ economic activities remained out of the focus of the study, which, in a way, reduces the precision of the assessment. Therefore, further research of this problem should be aimed at broadening the applied assessment method by including indicators that take into account the impact of the economic activity in each country on the state of the environment.