Filed under: Comment | Tags: China, financial crisis, G20, Gordon Brown, London Summit, Obama
Andrew F. Cooper CIGI Associate Director and Distinguished Fellow
Gregory Chin CIGI Senior Fellow
As the first hosts of the G20 leaders’ meetings, the US and the UK have coordinated the summit agenda, and set a tone for the meetings. The leadership from Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama has, in some ways, yeilded positive results. However, it has arguably come at the expense of a genuine recognition that the world has significantly changed and that the Atlantic condominium is no longer enough, even to set the base for the broader discussions.
A narrow focus on disagreements in response measures to the fast evolving global economic crisis between the Anglo countries and the Continental countries distracts from the critical task of building the new and broader international consensus that is needed at this time for collective crisis management measures and collective stimulus package to emerge from London. Continued overemphasis of trans-Atlantic views and contestation is crowding out ideas and proposals from key emerging actors in the global system.
The take-away message is that the success or failure of the G20 will be determined not just by the details of new re-regulation and stimuli packages. Outstanding issues of institutional architectural reform that allow for effective and legitimate global macro-coordination are also crucial for building the new international governance consensus that is needed for the future. There is much to the done in rebuilding the institutional framework of global governance. The G20 can be an important start for this process. But the very notion of a G20 means that the world is no longer that of 1945 or 1975 – when a narrow band of countries could produce the ideas and architecture that mattered.
The world in 2009 is dramatically different. The traditional powers can no longer dictate to the supplicants. At the same time, the exact ordering in the new international hierarchy is not clear cut, Some countries in the G20 have been included not because of their contribution potential to the system but because of their potential to impair or destabilize the system (think Argentina and Turkey). Even as we have gotten used to talking about a G20 or G8+5, we are seeing signs of the coming of age of a new G5 of emerging powers, not to mention a new G2 of the United States and China.
The G20 London Summit will be remembered for its delivery of results (or lacktherof) and moblization of participating countries, despite their diversity. As the leaders begin to converge in London, this blog intends to trace what is happening inside and around the G20, and the broader context of issues and contestation shaping the core discussions.
Tomorrow we will detail the key challenges that the G20 London Summit faces in terms of brokering new international political consensus, including what we are hearing on the ground in London.
Disclaimer: This blog is solely intended to spur discussion, while the opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of CIGI, Chatham House or their respective Boards of Directors.
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G20 London 2009 
[…] regulators were still played up the real agenda was playing out in other ways. As predicted by CIGI blogs in the past the trans-Atlantic tensions should increasingly be seen as the side show. The main game […]
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