The interplay between economic hardship and population pressure could see a collapse of the social contract between states and their citizens, a report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) warned on Wednesday.
That failure could precipitate "a downward spiral of the global economy fuelled by protectionism, nationalism and populism", the report said.
Rising inequality in growing, youthful populations is the most significant risk to the world economy in 2012, the report said.
Existing institutions and structures that underpin global safety and prosperity may also no longer be fit for purpose, as the increasingly complex nature of the connections and dependencies between economies changes the nature of threats.
Allied to both of these fears is what the WEF calls "the dark side of connectivity" - the vulnerability of real-world assets and individuals to cyber threats.
"While significant material and human resources were required in the past to exercise political or economic influence on a global scale, borders have become permeable as power shifts from the physical to the virtual world," the report warned. "A healthy digital space is needed to ensure stability in the world economy and balance of power."
2011 saw multifaceted challenges to the status quo in the developing and industrialised worlds. The near "unthinkable" scenario of a default by a developed sovereign nation and the collapse of the European single currency became genuine possibilities as structural imbalances within the eurozone demonstrated the fragility of the EU's institutions and the inability of a fragmented policy community to find coherent responses.
The links between political and social instability and evolving means of communication were also highlighted by first the Arab Spring, which saw activism on social media feed into a wider movement for social change, and later into civil war.
In a more avaricious manifestation of a similar trend, the UK saw riots and looting that were in part organised over social media and mobile phones.
Compiled from the responses of more than 450 experts around the world, the report also identified five "centres of gravity" believed to pose the most significant systemic risks. In 2012, those were: chronic fiscal imbalances, greenhouse gas emissions, failures in global governance, unsustainable population growth and critical technological systems failure.
Earlier in the week, the think tank Chatham House warned that governments and businesses were unprepared for unforeseen "black swan" risks.