How many Gs are there in ‘global governance’ after the crisis? The perspectives of the ‘marginal majority’ of the world's states

The G20 summit has recently emerged as the dominant agency of global governance. It claims that its economic weight and broad membership give it a high degree of legitimacy and influence over the management of the global economy and financial system. But the G20 still excludes from membership some 150 other countries, all of which have interests at stake within the contours of contemporary global governance. In the financial arena these excluded countries contributed significantly to the alternative agenda for dealing with the global financial crisis proposed by the United Nations conference that met in June 2009. In the trade arena they engaged extensively in a variety of coalitions within the World Trade Organization during the so‐called Doha Round and played a part in preventing a deal emerging that was unsatisfactory from their perspective. Questions are raised about the legitimacy of the G20 by the active presence of so many other country voices outside its remit and it can be expected that the excluded ‘G150’ will increasingly explore different ways to engage with the members of the G20 over the next few years.     

The G8 in a changing global economic order

The G8 has rather crept up on our consciousness as an agency of global governance. It was brought into being in 1975 in order to give western leadership to the global political economy at a time of uncertainty and drew Russia into its activities in order to demonstrate and symbolize the triumph of western capitalist liberal democracy over its rival Soviet system. In that sense the G8 constitutes the club of the winners of late twentieth century history. But it has long been beset by problems of legitimacy and efficiency. Some of the leaders of the current G8 states also recognize that global politics has moved on a long way since the settlements of 1945 and 1989 and increasingly acknowledge the need to address that changing reality. They recognize that some other powerful countries have grown up and that it is now in the interests of the dominant countries to accommodate a limited number of these new powers within the structure and norms of the contemporary governance of globalization. In this spirit the G8 has lately sought to incorporate Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa into its affairs, dealing with them as ‘outreach’ partners within a process that has been dubbed the ‘G8 + 5’. For their part, these early twenty‐iirst‐century winners will have to show that they are willing to work within the framework of western leadership. That is what the ‘G8 + 5’ process is testing out. Only when, and if, these tests are passed will the formation of a G13 become a politically realistic possibility.     

Blair,Brown and the Gleneagles agenda: making poverty history,or confronting the global politics of unequal development?

In a series of speeches, statements and interviews in early 2005 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown set out an ambitious agenda of global development change for the UK's Presidency of the G8. The Gleneagles summit, held in July of that year, did make a number of significant policy commitments in the areas of trade, finance and the environment. But, with the passage of time and as the details were worked out, many of these turned out to be much less far-reaching than the claims initially made by the two politicians. The Gleneagles agenda could never, in fact, have worked to 'make poverty history', because such an achievement was simply not within the compass of the G8 to deliver. The global politics of development is not animated by what the 'North' is or is not willing to do for the 'South'. It is instead worked out within the context of a global politics of unequal development that neither Blair nor Brown appear to comprehend.