Legitimacy, effectiveness and accountability are the three key points in any discussion of the Group of 20 (G20), and these two books are no different. A lack of legitimacy is the G20’s original sin, deriving from what appears to be – and indeed is – members’ arbitrary choices. We know how the G20 came about as a meeting of finance ministers after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and how the group was upgraded to a leaders’ summit in November 2008, when action was needed to backstop that year’s global financial crisis. At the same time, change was needed to recognise the role played by large, developing countries in the world economy. This story gets repeated several times in both Social Closure and International Society, and The G20 and International Relations Theory. However, both Tristen Naylor and Steven Slaughter – as well as the latter’s contributors – challenge the criterion of membership based on economic weight; among other reasons, it is inconsistently applied. If the G20 together represents approximately 85% of the world’s gross domestic product, then why are some large, developing countries excluded? Take Nigeria, for example – despite having a population of almost 200 million, the biggest economy in Africa and being large oil exporter, it is not a member of the G20.
Naylor’s useful background to Nigeria’s exclusion helps the reader understand the genesis of the group (pp. 61–63). In the late 1990s, Nigeria was identified as a candidate for membership and nearly made it into the G20, but it was eventually left out because of its domestic political context. The reason for exclusion was Nigeria’s weak commitment to the neoliberal agenda that, Naylor contends, is the definitive feature of the G20. (Like Nigeria, Malaysia – a dynamic emerging market, willing to follow the ‘Washington Consensus’ – was one of the countries selected to be in the group back in 1997 only to be dropped after rebuffing the International Monetary Fund’s advice during the Asian financial crisis.) The need for African representation in the G20 saw South Africa brought in – patently contradicting the idea that inclusion is a function of economic weight. (Interestingly, the 20th seat at the table remains reserved for Nigeria – there are currently 19 sovereign state members of the G20 plus the European Union – although it is not clear when the country will be deemed ready for membership.)
Both books argue, more or less explicitly, that the G20 is a product of the current economic order and a tool to promote, through policy co-operation, the neoliberal approach to economic policies. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, international policy action – or, perhaps, reaction – focused on avoiding ‘beggar your neighbour’ and protectionist measures to shelter domestic markets from the collapse of international trade. Back then, co-operation somehow worked, and indeed it was most effective in establishing a robust framework of financial regulations – as opposed to the pre-crisis laissez faire. However, despite the calls for a new Bretton Woods, the precedent of business as usual continued.
Indeed the G20 focused on resetting the system rather than engaging in a broad and deep debate on the interaction between global markets and nation states – unlike Bretton Woods, which was the culmination of a long process of rethinking the international economic order and establishing a system of rules to frame the post-war economy. Hence, nothing even remotely similar to a replacement for Bretton Woods came out of the global financial crisis. The return to the status quo became even clearer when the G20 turned to, and endorsed, fiscal austerity in 2010 – even if this, predictably, undermined the economic recovery and, in some cases, caused a double-dip recession. The misery that ensued in many countries, coupled with the disastrous approach to the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, is partly responsible for the current crisis surrounding traditional political systems and the rise of populism.
Efficacy over legitimacy?
If legitimacy is not the G20’s strong point, then what about effectiveness? When the G20 commissioned the UK to prepare the governance review for the Cannes summit in 2011 – a project that was then put aside because of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe – Stephen Pickford and I argued that effectiveness had been put forward to compensate for the shortfall in legitimacy, something that had worked while fighting the emergency of the global financial crisis.Footnote1 Indeed, the argument at the time posited that the state of emergency brought on by the crisis somehow justified an existing group being taken ‘off the shelf’ rather than a new one being created from scratch. In other words, effectiveness – ie, the need to backstop the crisis and support economic growth – somehow offset the legitimacy issue.
There is no doubt, and both books are rather clear about this, that the G20 was at its best when playing the role of crisis committee (to paraphrase Andrew Cooper’s vivid definition, which is evoked many times in both books). And even if, ultimately, the crisis was resolved by the US through supporting domestic demand, hence driving economic recovery in the rest of the world, and through the supply of liquidity to countries in financial difficulty, then the G20 managed to put on a good show, telling the world its members were working together to stop the crisis and kick-start economic activity. It worked, and business and consumer confidence returned in the main economies in the weeks after the London summit of April 2009. It is difficult, however, to single out other moments when the G20 has lived up to its expectations.
Social Closure and International Society and The G20 and International Relations Theory both indicate informality, the lack of a secretariat, and a well-established processes as strong points of the G20. Thus, effectiveness derives from the G20’s more intimate setting, as opposed to the inclusive but more complex operations of the United Nations (UN). Indeed, the G20 is a lean, informal group – a ‘club’, as both books call it – where leaders become accustomed to each other. Familiarity and informality facilitate consensus building and decision-making.
At the same time, the G20 relies on a stable process that should help drive the discussion and deliver the outcome the chair of the year has set as the objective. By the time the leaders meet at the summit, many issues should have been ironed out through the work of the sherpas and their teams, with the final communiqué agreed in all details. Both books reckon that over the years the process that underpins the G20 work has become more robust. The agenda, too, has become more complex, spanning international macroeconomics and macro-prudential regulation, and education, international development and the environment (although increasingly less so on the last point due to the US’s June 2017 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation).
This is all good; in forming consensus around global issues, the G20 can fulfil the self-proclaimed role of ‘premier forum for international economic co-operation’ (as announced after the 2009 G20 Pittsburgh summit) or ‘global governance hub’, to use John Kirton’s definition.Footnote2 But is this enough to justify its lack of legitimacy? In other words, is consensus building a good enough outcome for a ‘club’ with murky membership rules?
Enlarging the group, which would be the fairest solution to the legitimacy issue, doesn’t look to be viable at this stage; doing so would be muddled by difficult negotiations and a great deal of horse-trading. Using interviews and published sources Naylor, in Social Closure and International Society, shows that membership of G-groups is sticky, as countries are not prepared to leave the group – not without a fight, anyway – and so expansion is the only way forward.
But what is the best way for these groups to expand? Naylor argues that
a reduction of the efficacy of the club creates an opportunity for new actors to be included or, from the perspective of the in-group, creates the necessity of revising the club’s membership, or else risks the club becoming irrelevant (p. 132).
Enhancing accountability
But ‘legitimacy by proxy’ and accountability, as Pickford and I indicate in our paper,Footnote3 can be enhanced by making G20 decision-making more transparent, setting common objectives and agreeing to be measured and judged transparently against those objectives. This will require a credible independent audit mechanism.
In addition the G20’s reach should be expanded through dialogue with non-state actors and civil society. Indeed, the G20 has extended beyond sovereign states since 2010, when the first engagement group, the Business 20, was established. Other groups followed: Labour 20, Think 20, Civil 20, Youth 20 and Women 20. This is where the G20 has been most innovative and has narrowed the gap – based on ‘the legal requirement of sovereignty’ (Naylor, p. 4) – between state and non-state actors.
Both books talk about these engagement groups, however, without fully explaining their importance as a means to expand the G20’s reach and representation beyond its ‘frozen’ membership. The engagement groups offer three distinct contributions: influencing agenda-setting; developing new perspectives; and ensuring that global issues other than macroeconomics and finance are taken seriously – a point reinforced by Susan Harris-Rimmer and Kaitlin Byrne (in Slaughter, p. 167).
As Alan Alexandroff puts it in his contribution in Slaughter’s volume:
These engagement efforts reflect the liberal aspiration to broaden the decision making of global governance to create legitimate, inclusive and transparent forms of governance to inform G20 leaders even in the context of the diverse national interests of member states (p. 30).
The ‘liberal glue’ (Naylor, p.7) that holds the G-summitry together may become less sticky. So what does the future hold?
The Trump effect
Compared with the G7, the G20 has been less stormy and has so far fared relatively well without any obvious rupture – no storming out of meetings, no tweets branding an ally as ‘meek and mild’, and no refusals to sign the final communiqué. This is perhaps because the two most recent chairs – Argentina’s Mauricio Macri and Japan’s Shinzo Abe – have managed to develop a cordial personal relationship with Trump.
That was not the case, however, for Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose bad chemistry with Trump somehow twisted the G20 under that country’s leadership in an unexpected direction, a point stressed by Harris-Rimmer and Byrne. Not being able to engage in a meaningful way with Trump, Merkel turned to his daughter Ivanka and to the Women 20, then a recently formed engagement group, and found common ground among supporters of women’s empowerment. The Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative that was established at the Hamburg summit in 2017 became a tangible outcome of Germany’s G20 presidency; controversial items such as international trade, on which it was difficult to engage the US administration, were somehow avoided. (As Alexandroff observes, the language of the Hamburg communiqué on fighting protectionism, for example, was more nuanced than in communiqués past (Slaughter, p. 32)).
Broadening the dialogue by expanding the agenda and bringing in non-state actors such as the engagement groups has created more flexibility and a menu of options for consensus building. Drafting the communiqué – a key tool in the G20 process, as Naylor reminds us – remains an exercise riddled with problems. But the G20, because its members are not a like-minded group, are more used to long drafting sessions to smooth out differences and disagreements than the G7. According to some participants, the drafting sessions have become more burdensome as officials attempt to anticipate the issues that could trigger Trump’s reaction. It is, however, unlikely that the G20 summit will descend into an open confrontation between the US president and the chair of the year, as happened at the G7 Charlevoix summit in Canada in 2018, prompting the 2019 chair, France’s Emmanuel Macron, to decide against releasing the final communiqué, which was replaced by a succinct G7 Declaration.Footnote4
So flexibility, diversity and outreach may help the G20 weather the current non-cooperative, deals-oriented and bilateralism-prone approach engendered by the US administration. But will it remain relevant?
Tom Chouder puts it unambiguously in his contribution to Slaughter’s volume: the G20 will remain fit for purpose if it can revamp the growth of the global economy – and, in so doing, perpetuate the neoliberal model (p. 153). Other contributors are less sanguine, but all share the point that the G20 springs out of the unconditional and unquestionable support for globalisation – a model that is now in crisis. If the G20 is to remain relevant, it will have to address the conundrum of economic growth and try to coalesce consensus around key principles and fundamental rules. As things stand, it is difficult to see this happening any time soon.
Both Social Closure and International Society and The G20 and International Relations Theory are informative, interesting books that contribute to the debate on the G20. But they are written for a specialist audience, which may detract from their appeal to a public of practitioners. Naylor’s is the most coherent in terms structure and argument. Inevitably, The G20 and International Relations Theory is affected by being a collection of essays: edited books are problematic, mainly because each contribution is written as a free-standing piece, hence repetition is inevitable (though not unavoidable). Perhaps a short section at the beginning of Slaughter’s volume with some definitions and the history of the G20 would have spared the reader the repetition of that information in more or less each chapter. As for sources, Naylor’s book is based on an impressive list of interviews, most of which were conducted in 2012–2013. Among interviewees, Canadians seem to be overrepresented. A broader sample, by country and organisation, and a fresher round of interviews would have added more credibility to the sources, if not broadened the discussion.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Subacchi P & S Pickford, ‘Legitimacy vs effectiveness for the G20: A dynamic approach to global economic governance’, 2011, Chatham House Briefing Paper.
2 Kirton JJ, G20 Governance for a Globalised World. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate Publishing, 2013.
3 Subacchi P & S Pickford, op cit.
4 G7 Leaders’ Declaration, 26 August 2019, accessed 13 October 2019 <https://www.elysee.fr/en/g7/2019/08/26/g7-leaders-declaration>.