World thinkers 2015: the results

Prospect asked readers to select their favourites from a list of the world’s leading thinkers. The results are in

by Prospect Team / March 25, 2015 / Leave a comment

Our top five thinkers: from left, Russell Brand, Naomi Klein, Thomas Piketty, Yanis Varoufakis and Paul Krugman. © David Fisher/Rex, Mars Jerome/JDD/SIPA/Rex, Ben Cawthra/Rex, P Anastasselis/Rex

With nearly 3,000 votes cast, the results of Prospect’s world thinkers 2015 poll are now in. Voters came to the Prospect website in large numbers through Twitter and Facebook, and from many countries around the world.

The top 10 of last year’s poll was dominated by thinkers—including the winner, economist and philosopher Amartya Sen—whose work focused on the social, political and environmental challenges posed by economic growth in the developing world. However, Sen and others, notably the economists Raghuram Rajan and Kaushik Basu, are absent from this year’s list, which rewards impact over the past 12 months. In their place in the top 10 are thinkers who are wrestling, in different ways, with the dysfunctions of what some persist in calling the “developed world.”

2014 was Thomas Piketty’s year—as of January 2015, his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century had sold a remarkable 1.5m copies worldwide in several languages—and this is reflected in the French economist’s position at the top of our list. The past year has also been one in which anxieties about the economic, social and political costs of inequality have moved up the political agenda.

Several of the other thinkers in the top 10—particularly Yanis Varoufakis, Naomi Klein, Paul Krugman and Russell Brand (whose inclusion on the original list of 50 attracted considerable media coverage, some of it even favourable)—share similar concerns. It is striking, too, that they are all, broadly speaking, on the political left. One economist who has spoken out against Piketty and in defence of the “1 per cent,” the American Greg Mankiw, came near the bottom of the poll.

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Comments

SpinningHugo (@SpinningHugo)
March 25, 2015 at 10:35
Russell Brand number 4. Jürgen Habermas number 7. You just destroyed the credibility of this poll, past and present, and Prospect.
1. scott
  April 6, 2015 at 15:02
  This is a pure joke sheet right? Did it say April Fools at the top? This list is a whose who of a progressive leftist elite that George Orwell would be terrified of.
Gerry
March 26, 2015 at 14:59
Proves what I thought was happening at Prospect - dumbing down to compete with the Daily Mail, etc...
LMFAO
March 26, 2015 at 15:01
Brand a world thinker, speechless!! - which fool put this list together?
rdbrewer
March 26, 2015 at 15:57
What a ridiculous joke.
sh1990
March 26, 2015 at 16:43
arundhati roy..wow...what a joke this list is!!
inamar
March 26, 2015 at 21:59
I mean, honestly, no Noam Chomsky??
levinson
March 26, 2015 at 22:25
Russell Brand is #4. RUSSELL. BRAND. Prospect, if you want us to stop taking you seriously, just say so. No need to work your way around having to say that with this kind of nonsense. And that pustule Rebecca Solnit made the list? Why? Is this list in the business of legitimizing hysterical ranting, now?
oreste assereto
March 27, 2015 at 00:18
I have read 4 of the first 5 thinkers. Is it a coincidence , but these 5 writers can be cinsidered on th left?
Rob74
March 27, 2015 at 01:34
If this is the best the left can do then things have got very bad indeed.
JPeron
March 27, 2015 at 02:56
Never heard of this magazine. Now I know why. What a joke. Brand is a moron, but unlike Piketty I suspect people have actually read something he wrote. Piketty was a table book, bought by chic pseudo-intellectuals for their coffee table, meant to impress friends, but never be read.
martin mcdonagh
March 27, 2015 at 16:34
This poll is much too influenced by whose been in the news recently and far to ill informed about academia worldwide. Poor show
dottiedig
March 27, 2015 at 22:26
Those of you just coming here to verbalize your supposed 'utter shock and disappointment' at Russell being on this list might want to take a look at what he's had to say lately. Not his stand up routines, but the things he's saying in his You Tube channel and in his book. He actually makes a great deal of sense and completely deserves his place on this list. I'd love to see any of you top the work he is presently doing for the common folks.
IANDE
March 28, 2015 at 08:13
Glad that at least the commentators are showing sense.
TSIH
March 28, 2015 at 08:44
A courageous and inspired list. The detractors are supporters of the status quo.
oil painting
April 27, 2015 at 09:53
This survey is really too successful friends, directly reflects some of the problems