The Global Thinker Twitterati

•Alaa Al Aswany (@alaaaswany): For channeling Arab malaise — and Arab renewal.

•Mohamed ElBaradei (@ElBaradei), Wael Ghonim (@Ghonim): For defying the police state — and inspiring millions to join them.

•Razan Zaitouneh (@razanz): For speaking truth to a bloody power.

•Rached Ghannouchi (@R_Ghannouchi), Khairat El Shater (@ikhwan): For working to reconcile Islamism and democracy (we hope).

•Tawakkol Karman (@TawakkolKarman): For keeping the spirit of the Arab Spring alive against impossible odds.

•Wadah Khanfar (@khanfarw): For turning the Al Jazeera revolution into an actual one.

•Eman Al Nafjan (@Saudiwoman), Manal al-Sharif (@manal_alsharif): For putting Saudi women in the driver’s seat.

•Jean-Claude Trichet (@ecb_europa_eu): For steering the world amid crisis.

•Barack Obama (@BarackObama): For leading from behind — and showing it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

•Bill (@BillGates) and Melinda Gates (@melindagates): For putting their money where their mouth is.

•Azim Premji (@Wipro): For being the Bill Gates of India.

•Christine Lagarde (@Lagarde): For not shrinking from a crisis — or its unpopular solutions.

•Ahmet Davutoglu (@Ahmet_Davutoglu), Recep Tayyip Erdogan (@RT_Erdogan): For imagining a new role for Turkey in the world — and making it happen.

•Jack Dorsey (@jack): For changing how we do just about everything — even overthrow governments.

•Ai Weiwei (@aiww): For standing up to the Chinese Communist Party — even after it threw him in jail.

•Bill and Hillary Clinton (@ClintonTweet): For being America’s premier power couple — and showing why it matters.

•Bernard-Henri Lévy (@bernardhl): For taking on a real war this time.

•Sami Ben Gharbia (@ifikra), Daniel Domscheit-Berg (@openleaks), Alexey Navalny (@navalny): For shaping the new world of government transparency.

•David Beers (@standardpoors): For forcing a long-overdue conversation on America’s debt.

•Salam Fayyad (@SalamFayyad_pm): For forging a path between violence and surrender.

•Nouriel Roubini (@Nouriel): For doubling down on doomsaying.

•Paul Krugman (@NYTimeskrugman): For keeping the Keynesian flame alive in an age of austerity.

•Joseph Stiglitz (@joestiglitz): For questioning global markets run amok — before it was cool.

•Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma): For holding Wall Street accountable.

•Amy Chua (@amychua): For proving that even a parenting memoir can shake the world.

•Paul Ryan (@RepPaulRyan) : For putting America’s debt problem on top of the agenda.

•Robert Zoellick (@WorldBank): For looking to reinvent aid for a new era.

•Dilma Rousseff (@dilmabr): For being the powerful voice of the new Global South.

•Saskia Sassen (@SaskiaSassen): For her passionate advocacy of an urban-based society.

•Luis Moreno-Ocampo (@IntlCrimCourt): For demanding that war criminals be held accountable.

•Steven Pinker (@sapinker): For looking on the bright side.

•Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish): For his eloquent and passionate advocacy of gay rights.

•Ron Paul (@RepRonPaul, @RonPaul): For being the most influential — if not electable — figure in the Republican presidential contest.

•John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain): For finding his voice again — in support of democrats the world over.

•Mohamed El-Erian (@PIMCO): For delivering the economic tough love that a world in denial needs.

•Martin Wolf (@economistsforum): For appealing to the highest common denominator.

•Thomas Friedman (@NYTimesFriedman): For holding out hope of American renewal.

•Jens Stoltenberg (@jensstoltenberg): For meeting terror with humanity.

•Mikko Hypponen (@mikko): For helping us understand the new threats of the cyber era.

•Nancy Birdsall (@nancymbirdsall): For showing that a handout can be the best kind of leg up.

•Barry Eichengreen (@B_Eichengreen): For showing us that money isn’t everything.

•Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth): For putting the muscle back in human rights.

•Tyler Cowen (@tylercowen): For finding markets in everything.

•Joichi Ito (@Joi), Ethan Zuckerman (@EthanZ): For navigating the future of global media.

•Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK): For challenging the COINdinistas.

•Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg): For looking more right than ever on the politics of climate change.

•Lester Brown (@EarthPolicy): For calling the food crisis of 2011.

•Yoani Sánchez (@yoanisanchez): For showing that the Internet really does go everywhere, even Castro’s Cuba.

•Clay Shirky (@cshirky): For understanding the revolutionary power of social media — first.

•Jared Cohen (@JaredCohen), Alec Ross (@AlecJRoss): For trying to drag diplomacy into the 21st century.

•Pervez Hoodbhoy (@pervezhoodbhoy): For his bold secular defiance.

•Andy Sumner (@andypsumner): For finding the new "bottom billion."

•John Githongo (@johngithongo): For working to build a nation of watchdogs.

•Paul Farmer (@PIH): For reminding the world of Haiti’s continuing struggle.

•Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM): For using new tools to advocate for a new foreign policy.

•Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (@NOkonjoIweala): For returning home to clean house.

•Boris Johnson (@MayorOfLondon): For giving a kinder face to Euroskepticism.

•Mari Kuraishi (@mashenka): For crowd sourcing worldsaving.

•Arvind Subramanian (@arvindsubraman): For sounding the alarm on China’s economic ascendancy.

•Rickard Falkvinge (@Falkvinge): For taking pirates into politics.

•Teodoro Petkoff (@ConTeodoro): For standing up to Hugo Chávez.