The G20 meeting in Seoul will be held on November 11-12, 2010. Korea is the first Asian country to host the summit and the spotlight will be on Seoul and Asia. Korea’s participation in the G20, along with Japan, China, India, Indonesia and Australia, is a recognition of the shift in economic weight towards Asia. In the lead up this page will present the latest analysis and comment.
Guest Author: Il SaKong, Chair Korea Summit Coordinating Committee
Since its inception in the mid-1970s, the G7 acted as if it were the informal global steering committee for global economic and financial issues. But over the last couple of decades many considered the G7 lacked political legitimacy because it did not include the major emerging players in the world economy. These critics rightly claimed that although the G7 was only an informal global steering committee, it needed to reflect the shift in global economic power that has taken place over recent decades.
Last November, in the midst of the unprecedented global financial and economic crisis, the G20 Summit—instead of G7—was held in Washington. Read the rest of this entry »
Guest Author: Barry Eichengreen
One of the least unanticipated but potentially most momentous consequences of the Great Global Credit Crisis of 2008 is the coup staged by the Group of Twenty.
The G20 has seized power from the G7/8 as the steering committee for the world economy. If you didn’t believe this before, just compare the attention garnered by the G20 summit last November with the muted response to the G7 finance ministers’ meeting in February in Rome.
R.I.P, G7
No one contemplating global financial reform thinks that the task can still be organised, much less executed, within the cosy confines of the G7. No one who seeks to reform the IMF and the World Bank thinks that the solution can still be hashed out by the G7. No one who is serious about coordinating a global monetary and fiscal response to the deepest recession since World War II thinks that this is something that the G7 can engineer. Whether the task is developing ideas, reaching consensus on their desirability, or moving from ideas to implementation, the G20 – which has working groups active in all these areas – is where the action is.
Author: Hadi Soesastro, CSIS, Indonesia
East Asian members of the G20 must participate strategically in this emerging global forum. They need to make sure that the G20 can produce policies and actions that will help bring the global economy out of the current crisis as soon as possible. Existing international institutions have been helpless in dealing with the issues the world now confronts and are in dire need of major reforms. There is now no better forum than G20. Essentially, it will act as a ‘steering committee for the world economy’, as Barry Eichengreen aptly said of the G20, and this forum should now replace the G7 or G8 for good.
Yet the G20 is still very fragile. In part, this is due to its ad hoc nature. But it also suffers from problems of legitimacy in respect of how its membership is being determined. The problem has deepened with the inclusion of a few additional participants at the coming London Summit: why they and not others? The European members of the G20 are facing the greatest challenge from fellow Europeans on this issue although the EU already has a seat at the table.
Author: Andrew Elek
The financial crisis of some of the world’s richest economies has catalysed a long-overdue transformation in the oversight of global affairs. The November 15, 2008 summit was the first where emerging economic giants discussed problems and potential solutions as equal participants with the industrial leaders.
In a substantial communiqué, there was consensus on a wide range of issues which need to be addressed to speed recovery from the crisis and to make it possible to sustain global improvements in living standards in the longer term.
Importantly, the meeting also overcame the resistance to reforming the governance of the IMF and the World Bank. With adequate representation from emerging economies, it may become possible to boost the resources of the IMF to deal with future crises. The hope is that the IMF will achieve the legitimacy needed to offer advice to strong as well as weak economies, with some expectation of it being heeded.
Author: Ramesh Thakur, University of Waterloo
There is a serious problem at the centre of the world order. It cannot hold if the power and influence embedded in international institutions is seriously out of alignment with the distribution of power in the real world.
The importance of Brazil, China, India and other countries lies in their future economic potential that is already being translated into present political weight. We are seeing a major global rebalancing of economic, political and even moral relations between the West and the rest. Read the rest of this entry »
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
The Toronto meeting of G20 leaders on June 26-27 was a stop on the road to Seoul. Leaders took a few significant steps forward but not enough has yet been accomplished to avoid another crisis and there is danger of renewed complacency. Much, therefore, is riding on the work that leads to decisions in Seoul.
Among its accomplishments, the Toronto meeting was a deadline that elicited progress on the key objective of restoring strong, sustainable, and balanced world growth. Read the rest of this entry »
Author: Pradumna B. Rana, RSIS, Singapore
The G20 summit is a process that is evolving and no one can predict exactly where it will end up. The group was self appointed the ‘premier forum for international economic cooperation’ and there remain important questions related to membership and agenda that need to be addressed. In Pittsburgh, US President Barack Obama announced that the G20 would replace the G8. Two G20 summits are planned for this year — in Toronto and Seoul in November. While the Toronto summit will take stock of the implementation of exit strategies from the expansionary macroeconomic policies, the Seoul summit has selected two additional longer term issues for discussion — financial safety nets to better insulate emerging markets from systemic instability, and actions to close the development gap, especially for the poorest. Issues related to climate change could also be addressed at the G20 summit.
So how should Asia respond? Read the rest of this entry »
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
The G20 meeting this weekend in Canada has a heavy agenda and high expectations. Leaders face a serious challenge to demonstrate determination to follow through on the September 2009 Pittsburgh summit’s framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth.
Prior to that June 26-27 meeting Canada also chose to host a G8 side show. Its challenge is to avoid any appearance of being an executive committee meeting before the G20. Read the rest of this entry »
