New leaders

Chief expectations officers

Bosses to watch, part I: Who are the bosses to watch in 2012?

Israel and Palestine

Legitimate questions

Will Israel and Palestine ever start talks?

Daniel Barenboim argues for a fresh approach to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians

Asia

Short-term vulnerability to the West’s economic woes is a symptom of a longer-term worry: a failure in many countries in Asia to progress from growth fuelled by their natural bounty and cheap labour to growth driven by higher productivity.

The City

Drip Drip

London will still come across as cool and cosmopolitan in 2012—but the City will have to work much harder to make anything like the handsome returns of the past

India and Pakistan

Generation exit

Time for India’s ageing and increasingly battered political leaders to eye the door

Business

Varied company

Don’t mistake a few high-profile IPOs for a revival of public companies, urges Adrian Wooldridge

Greenery

The road to Rio

The good news for green groups in 2012 is that they have a big global event on which to focus their energies: the "Rio +20" conference on sustainable development to be held in Rio de Janeiro in June. The less good news is that it's far from clear what this latest gathering will achieve.

London 2012

Going for gold

In London in 2012 artists and performers will be jockeying for space alongside the world's finest athletes as the city uses the Olympics to reaffirm its eminence as an international cultural destination

The brain

Brain work

The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. In 2012, scientists will begin to map the wiring, or "connectome", of this extraordinary object, opening up a whole new way of thinking about the brain

Sentiment analysis has a big future

Culture

African visions

The Museum for African Art, New York’s first purpose-built museum since the Guggenheim, will finally open its doors in Manhattan in late 2012

Africa

A sub-Saharan spring?

The successful uprisings of 2011 in north Africa were closely watched farther south on the continent. They have already spawned some local protest movements and are inspiring talk of more

Obituaries

The earth

Mayan calculations have led some to think the world will end on December 21st 2012. A celestial bard reports

Britain

The end of the phoney war

In the coming months, voters will start to feel the pain of austerity measures and a frantic search for growth could force George Osborne to reconsider the pacing of his plans to shrink the budget deficit. 2012 will be a turbulent year

Big Science

The year they crack cancer

With luck 2012 will be the year cancer is cracked. Not cured. Not by a long chalk. But understood systematically in ways that will bring cures much closer

Latin America

Latin America’s big tests

Several things will test Latin America's impressive progress in 2012. They include the slowing of the world economy, the conflicts that will arise in Venezuela and the diffuse and unpredictable sense of discontent growing among segments of the region's growing lower-middle class.

US election

Hopeless and changed

Mr Obama will spend much of 2012 trying to frame the election as a choice between him and his Republican opponent. His pitch will be something along the lines of, “I may not have got everything right, but this guy will get everything wrong.” That will make for an exceptionally negative campaign, totally different in tone from the uplifting talk of hope and change that Mr Obama peddled last time around.

Global economy

Two views of the future

Somebody is going to be proved wrong in 2012 and will lose a lot of money. Either the bullion market or the Treasury bond market is mistaken about the long-term inflationary outlook. The markets will reveal which is right.(3)

European elections

Le choix: Hollande or Sarkozy

A close presidential race looms in France and voters face the choice of an inexperienced Socialist candidate, Francois Hollande or the unloved incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy

Democracy

Hey, there’s still a world to run

Global leaders will be preoccupied by politics at home. That augurs ill for globalisation

China

Changing the guard

China’s Communist Party is gearing up for an unusually tough year. It will involve the most sweeping change of its top leadership in a decade, the appointment of a new chief executive in Hong Kong and elections in Taiwan that could produce a less mainland-friendly administration on the island.

Technology 2012

Virgin territory

It's hard to believe but there are still unconquered parts of the technology landscape. We look at three areas that will be fought over in 2012(2)

What won't happen

Next year, don't

The law may sometimes save an ass—and give lovers of animals in Sweden less reason to celebrate(3)

The year of sharing

Poking goes public

Facebook's flotation will excite the tech world. Watch out for the Xbookers(7)

Economics

The year of self-induced stagnation

When tomorrow's historians write about the Great Stagnation that blighted the rich world's economies in the early 21st century, 2012 is in danger of standing out as a depressing turning-point.(7)

Middle East and Africa

One year on

The wind of Arab freedom that suddenly began to billow at the beginning of 2011 will gust across the entire Arab world throughout 2012. But it will do so in patches and inconsistently.(3)

Grappling with new constitutions

What the dustmen say

The future's rubbish

Might dustmen be the people to ask about 2012? In October The World in 2012 put three questions on the year ahead to five London dustmen as well as to businesspeople around the world.(3)

Global business sentiment does not bode well

Saving the euro

How to run the euro?

When the panic has abated the euro zone must redesign its currency(2)

Italy

Ten ways to transform Italy

How can Italy get its act together? Politicians have offered plans, Europe has issued warnings and delivered advice. But planning, warning and advising are not enough. After 18 years of Silvio Berlusconi, only dreaming will do. An Italian offers his cost-free wish-list for 2012(4)

The crisis catches up with Italy and its leader

Predictions 2012

Welcome to the World in 2012

The World in 2012 explores the issues that will shape the year ahead. With a mixture of analysis with wit, journalists from The Economist join luminaries from the worlds of politics, business and science in offering forecasts for 2012, a year that will include presidential elections in America and France, the Olympic games in London and a thriving industry in doom-mongering—not least because, according to some readers of an ancient Mayan calendar, it may be humanity's last.(5)