Brookings: Experts - Colin I. Bradford

What Should Sustainable Development Goals Look Like?

Wed, 02 May 2012 14:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 2, 2012
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

The Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000 to encourage and monitor global social and economic developments through 2015. This frame has guided international development activities for the past decade and there is now a growing discussion on what the post-2015 international development framework should look like, and how economic, social and environmental pillars of development can be integrated.

On May 2, Global Economy and Development at Brookings hosted a discussion on the purpose of new development goals, the trade-offs in selecting specific indicators and the difficulties in integrating alternative development concepts into a single framework. The discussion also examined how events like the Rio+20 conference in Brazil can be used to advance the U.S. global development agenda. Panelists included Andrew Steer, incoming president, World Resources Institute; David Steven, nonresident fellow, Center for International Cooperation, New York University; Richard Morgan, director of Policy, United Nations Children’s Fund; and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Colin Bradford. Brookings Senior Fellow Homi Kharas, deputy director of Global Economy and Development, moderated the discussion.

Participants

Moderator

Panelists

Richard Morgan

Director of Policy
United Nations Children’s Fund

Andrew Steer

Incoming President
World Resources Institute

David Steven

Nonresident Fellow, Center for International Cooperation
New York University

World Bank Leadership Should Reflect Emerging Economies

Colin I. Bradford — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:32:00 -0400

The U.S. nominee for the World Bank presidency, South Korean-born physician Jim Yong Kim, is one of three candidates for the post, along with Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo. According to Colin Bradford, the presence of several viable candidates—from different parts of the world—for the World Bank presidency means that the entire international community could have a say in selecting the next World Bank president, rather than the U.S. nominee being automatically confirmed. This change in the nominating process, says Bradford, is good for the Bank because it reflects growing demands for representation from emerging economies.

Video

Change World Bank Nominating Process

Euro Crisis to Center Stage

Colin I. Bradford — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:47:00 -0500

Editor's Note: The National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) project reports on public perceptions of national leaders’ performance at important international events. The sixth series of commentary focuses on the Cannes G-20 Summit and discusses the ongoing euro crisis, the rising G20 profile, and the growing social mobilization around concerns with the global crisis. Read the other commentary »

OVERVIEW: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE ON THE CANNES G20 SUMMIT

Despite the euro zone crisis, the profile of the G20 was raised in many member-state capitals, and G20 leaders and media did focus on other agenda items and domestic issues.

Reporting from 13 G20 countries reveals that, through the eyes of the national media, the euro crisis “overwhelmed,” “dominated,” “totally sidetracked” or “hijacked” the Cannes G20 Summit on Thursday night through Friday afternoon, November 4-5, 2011. Only Argentina seems to have been captivated by the bilateral meeting between US President Barack Obama and their leader, President Cristina Kirschner, to such a degree that it overshadowed the global preoccupation with the Greek debt crisis and its implications for the euro zone and the global economy. As she did at other G20 summits, Cristina Kirschner found a way to project her own priorities and portray them to the Argentine public through deliberate preparation with her cabinet beforehand and in regional consultations, and this also held true at her appearance at the B20 (G20 business summit) held just before the G20.

Other Issues

G20 leaders and the national media in G20 capitals were, nonetheless, able to focus on several other G20 issues of vital interest to their publics.

Kirschner and other leaders were indeed able to project to the national media in their capitals other issues and priorities, despite the euro crisis capturing public attention around the world. The two most frequently profiled international issues in the G20 capitals surveyed here, were the financial transactions tax proposal and the G20’s work on tax havens that began in London in 2009. Among the other issues discussed was the strong focus on development by Chinese President Hu Jintao and on least-developed countries by South African President Jacob Zuma. The Financial Stability Board (FSB) action on “too big to fail” banks was highlighted by The Washington Post on Saturday morning, as well as by the Canadian media, in part because Canada’s central bank governor, Mark Carney, was named head of the FSB, replacing Mario Draghi. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was able to keep his country’s media focused on his priorities.

What was also of interest to NPGL country observers was the extent to which some G20 leaders were able to profile their domestic concerns, linking the Cannes G20 deliberations on either Europe or the on-going G20 agenda to jobs and growth at home. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper highlighted the fact that the G20 Action Plan on Growth and Jobs, which was endorsed in Cannes, corresponded exactly to the title of his government’s 2011 budget. Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff highlighted the International Labour Organization’s social initiative on the G20 agenda, likening it to her government’s domestic program of social inclusion.

South Africa’s Jacob Zuma emphasized jobs as crucial to South Africa’s future, which coincided strongly with the Congress of South African Trade Unions labour leader’s meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes. U.S. President Barack Obama’s major thrust in Cannes was to support the Europeans’ efforts to resolve the euro crisis themselves as being critical to jobs and growth in the United States against a background of a U.S. job report the same day. In her appearance at the B20 meeting, Cristina Kirschner declared herself against the “anarchic financial capitalism” that had dramatically impacted people in the real economy, not just bankers and banks.

Despite the overwhelming force of events in Greece, Italy and global financial markets on the same days that the Cannes summit took place, events which riveted the world’s attention, G20 leaders and the national media in their capitals were, nonetheless, able to focus on several other G20 issues of vital interest to their publics.

Communications

The global crisis managed to create a higher profile for the G20 in many G20 capitals.

The combination of the euro crisis drama and the growing social mobilization around peoples’ concerns with the global crisis, managed to create a higher profile for the G20 in many of its capitals.

Our NPGL colleagues from China begin their commentary by saying: “the first thing that should be reported from Beijing is that China’s media have begun to pay more attention to the G20 than in the past.”

From Germany, we learn that “the Cannes event generated a higher volume of media coverage than previous G20 summits.”

“This summit had a great deal of relevance for the Argentine public,” we are told by our NPGL colleague in Buenos Aires. “After London, the summit in Cannes has received the greatest attention by the media,” she adds. “The Cannes summit was seen to have a large impact on the Argentine public.”

And in South Africa, “surprisingly, media coverage was not cynical, such as ridiculing G20’s role, which we have witnessed in the recent past. Again this probably was due to the magnitude of the issues at stake, and in that sense, probably more closely resembles the political dynamics around the London summit.”

From Tokyo, “Japanese public and media attention to the G20 meeting in Cannes was higher this time.”

But, interestingly, in contrast to massive attention to the G20 summit held in Seoul a year ago, “very little attention” was paid to the Cannes G20 Summit by the Korean media and public.

Other Leaders, Leading

In this intense context, two sets of leaders stood out visibly in most G20 capitals as the euro crisis–G20 drama unfolded: Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel battling for the core of Europe against George Papandreou and Silvio Berlosconi on the periphery. Barack Obama was given lots of space in the media in France, the United States, Mexico, Australia and South Africa, but he was seen as “marginal” in Germany, “detached” in the United Kingdom, and “not given special attention” in Canada, for example. Christine Lagarde, the new head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), seemed to be given more play in the G20 emerging market economies media, than in the G20 industrial economies of the West. Leaders were varied in the intensity of their participation in the summit and their interactions with the global and national media.

Concluding Remarks

In the end, the euro crisis took centre stage at the Cannes summit in the eyes of most of the world, but as observed through the media in G20 capitals, other issues managed to surface for public attention, and national leaders from G20 countries were able, in several cases, to project their own priorities amid the welter of events in Athens and Rome, as well as Cannes, during those two turbulent days in early November 2011. The profile of the G20 was strikingly more visible in many capitals, but serious questions were raised in Mexico and Korea, especially about the future of G20 summits.

Our NPGL colleague in Mexico noted that “the fact that no specific goals, financial commitments or timelines were set for the principal agenda items included in the communiqué was highlighted in commentaries [in Mexico] that focused on why the leaders’ level G20 is not really the ‘premier’ forum its founders proclaimed it to be and why its very existence as a global steering committee is at stake.” From Korea, we heard that “the image of the G20 leaders that prevailed in Korea was one of a confused and ineffective bunch.” The sense in Australia, however, was that the G20 is “the best option on offer.”

As Mexico prepares to take up the presidency next year, and as we look ahead to Russia and Australia’s presidency in the years ahead, it is clear that many challenges remain.

UNITED STATES

As surely was the case in other countries, the Greek debt drama, with the proposed referendum, withdrawn referendum and the vote of confidence, overshadowed and seemed to stymie action by G20 leaders in Cannes. But the competing headlines in Washington focused on the jobs report for October, which showed mixed results with public sector jobs falling significantly while private sector employment grew steadily again, and the debate in Congress between Republican and Democratic versions of a jobs bill. CNN’s John King was called upon to comment on the G20 summit from his perch in Iowa, reminding viewers that there was a seamless connection between the president’s efforts to push Europeans to deal with their debt and financial fragility, and his reelection prospects.

There is no doubt that in Washington, Athens was more visible than Cannes, and that the G20 summit took a back seat to the euro crisis. The Financial Times opined that the “forum’s high ambitions delivered meager results” as a headline. This certainly is borne out by the communiqué, which indeed did not push forward the specifics of the G20 agenda.

President Obama made his position extremely clear in his actions and words at Cannes, that he regarded the euro crisis as a European problem and the solutions were within Europe’s grasp and did not require outside support for the moment — a geopolitical strategy, which revealed his conviction that Europe is pivotal for the United States economically and strategically, keeping China and Asia more in the background. The fact that the Cannes summit put out an Action Plan on Growth and Jobs and the interdependence of the United States and Europe is the centerpiece for global growth, linked well to his domestic agenda of recovery and employment.

Other Issues

Importantly, the G20 summit approved an FSB report, making public for the first time a list of 29 “too big to fail” banks that would be subject to more vigorous FSB oversight and higher capital requirements, in order to protect taxpayers from bailing out failed banks. This is a highly significant G20 accomplishment, following directly from the seminal London G20 Summit in April 2009, at which the expanded FSB was established, incorporating all G20 countries into what was a highly euro-centric predecessor, and carrying forward the London G20 priority on strengthening national andglobal mechanisms for financial oversight, supervision and regulation. Interestingly, only The Washington Post carried this story as part of its G20 coverage — no articles on this G20 action appeared in The New York Times or the Financial Times.

Communications

President Obama’s press conference at the conclusion of the Cannes G20 Summit was carried live on CNN late on the morning of November 4, with wide CNN commentary afterward, linking Obama’s thrust in Europe with his domestic economic and political agenda. The Washington Post on November 5 grasped the strategic point of the president in an editorial: “Cannes heat: President Obama delivers the right message to Europe.” The Post argued, based on Obama’s remarks in Cannes, that “even if we [the United States] had the money to rescue the euro, it’s not clear that we should make such an investment, unless and until Europe itself had exhausted its resources, which it has not yet done… if the Europeans mean it when they say that the fate of their union itself depends on saving the euro, they will find a way.”

So, whereas the G20 profile receded in the face of the euro avalanche, US global interests were projected clearly and forcefully by the American president to European leaders and to the US public, from his participation in the Cannes G20 Summit. The link between US domestic political imperatives and a global strategic thrust was forged and made visible by Obama’s presence in Cannes.

Other Leaders, Leading

The image of the G20 leaders that prevailed in the US media from the Cannes G20 Summit was predominantly Obama with European leaders, not with Asian leaders or leaders from other parts of the world represented in the G20 grouping. Even The Washington Post editorial contained a photo nested into the editorial itself of Obama, Merkel, Sarkozy and Cameron talking in an animated fashion with the G20 France imprimatur in the background. This was clearly consistent with the dominance of the euro crisis in the meeting itself, and with Obama’s strategic focus and message. In other G20 summits, Obama with Hu Jintao in London, or Berlusconi thrusting himself between Obama and Medvedev in Pittsburgh, were memorable images. In Washington, the West was shown at Cannes as being front and centre stage, with The New York Times carrying an amusing and insightful portrait of the relationship between Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Authors

Colin I. Bradford

Publication: NPGL Soundings

Image Source: Â© Thierry Roge / Reuters

Eurozone Crisis an Opportunity for G-20 Leaders in Cannes

Colin I. Bradford — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 10:18:00 -0400

Leaders from the world’s largest economies are gathering in Cannes, France for the second round of G-20 talks this year. The most pressing issue on the agenda is the ongoing sovereign debt crisis that is still looming despite a plan to help stabilize the fiscal free fall in Greece. The call from all quarters is for leaders to hammer out an action plan that spurs global growth, promotes investment and facilitates trade. Nonresident Senior Fellow Colin Bradford says dealing with the eurozone debt crisis presents an opportunity for leaders to make a serious commitment to a serious problem.

Video

01 bradford g20

Averting the Threat of a New Global Crisis

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Publication: The G-20 Cannes Summit 2011: Is the Global Recovery Now in Danger?

Global Leadership in Transition : Making the G20 More Effective and Responsive

Colin I. Bradford and Wonhyuk Lim, eds. — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press with the Korean Development Institute 2011 353pp.

Global Leadership in Transition calls for innovations that "institutionalize" or consolidate the G20, helping to make it the global economy’s steering committee. The emergence of the G20 as the world’s premier forum for international economic cooperation presents an opportunity to improve economic summitry and make global leadership more responsive and effective, a major improvement over the G8 era.

The origin of Global Leadership in Transition—which contains contributions from three dozen top experts from all over the world—was a Brookings seminar on issues surrounding the 2010 Seoul G20 summit. That grew into a further conference in Washington and eventually a major symposium in Seoul.

“Key contributors to this volume were well ahead of their time in advocating summit meetings of G20 leaders. In this book, they now offer a rich smorgasbord of creative ideas for transforming the G20 from a crisis-management committee to a steering group for the international system that deserves the attention of those who wish to shape the future of global governance.”—C. Randall Henning, American University and the Peterson Institute

Contributors: Alan Beattie, Financial Times; Thomas Bernes, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI); Sergio Bitar, former Chilean minister of public works; Paul Blustein, Brookings Institution and CIGI; Barry Carin, CIGI and University of Victoria; Andrew F. Cooper, CIGI and University of Waterloo; Kemal Derviş, Brookings; Paul Heinbecker, CIGI and Laurier University Centre for Global Relations; Oh-Seok Hyun, Korea Development Institute (KDI); Jomo Kwame Sundaram, United Nations; Homi Kharas, Brookings; Hyeon Wook Kim, KDI; Sungmin Kim, Bank of Korea; John Kirton, University of Toronto; Johannes Linn, Brookings and Emerging Markets Forum; Pedro Malan, Itau Unibanco; Thomas Mann, Brookings; Paul Martin, former prime minister of Canada; Simon Maxwell, Overseas Development Institute and Climate and Development Knowledge Network; Jacques Mistral, Institut Français des Relations Internationales; Victor Murinde, University of Birmingham (UK); Pier Carlo Padoan, OECD Paris; Yung Chul Park, Korea University; Stewart Patrick, Council on Foreign Relations; Il SaKong, Presidential Committee for the G20 Summit; Wendy R. Sherman, Albright Stonebridge Group; Gordon Smith, Centre for Global Studies and CIGI; Bruce Stokes, German Marshall Fund; Ngaire Woods, Oxford Blavatnik School of Government; Lan Xue, Tsinghua University (Beijing); Yanbing Zhang, Tsinghua University.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Colin I. Bradford

Wonhyuk Lim

Wonhyuk Lim is director of policy research at the Center for International Development within the Korea Development Institute. He was with the Presidential Transition Committee and the Presidential Committee on Northeast Asia after the 2002 election in Korea. A former fellow with Brookings’s Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, he has written extensively on development and corporate governance issues.

Downloads

Ordering Information:

{9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-2145-1, $29.95 Order
{B98DCBB0-3580-4D55-ABD4-AB91E00585E6}, 978-0-8157-2146-8, $29.95 Order

UNITED STATES — The Global Rebalancing and Growth Strategy Debate

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:20:00 -0400

Publication: Think Tank 20: Macroeconomic Policy Interdependence and the G-20

Shifting Balance of Power: Has the U.S. Become the Largest Minority Shareholder in the Global Order?

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:00:00 -0400

Event Information

March 15, 2011
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

While the future impact of rising powers such as Brazil, Russia, India and China is uncertain and the shifting political landscape in the Arab world is still playing out, the influence of these emerging nations is a central fact of geopolitics.

Already the global financial crisis, the Copenhagen climate negotiations, and the debate over Iran sanctions have illustrated the potential, the pitfalls, and above all the centrality of the relationship between American power and the influence of these rising actors and developing democracies.

In a new paper, Senior Fellow Bruce Jones, director of the Managing Global Order Project at Brookings, argues the greatest risk lies not in a single peer competitor but in the erosion of cooperation on issues vital to U.S. interests and a stable world order. U.S. power is indispensible for that purpose but not sufficient. No longer the CEO of Free World Inc., the United States is now the largest minority shareholder in Global Order LLC.

On March 15, the Brookings Institution and Foreign Policy magazine hosted the launch of Bruce Jones’s paper "Largest Minority Shareholder in Global Order LLC: The Changing Balance of Influence and U.S. Strategy." Panelists explored the prospects for cooperation on global finance and transnational threats; the need for new investments in global economic and energy diplomacy; and the case for new crisis management tools to help de-escalate inevitable tensions with emerging powers.

Susan Glasser, editor in chief of Foreign Policy, moderated the discussion. After the presentations, panelists took audience questions.

Video

Audio

Shifting Balance of Power: Has the U.S. Become the Largest Minority Shareholder in the Global Order?

Transcript

Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

20110315_global_order

Participants

Moderator

Susan Glasser

Editor in Chief
Foreign Policy

Panelists

Multiple Vantage Points on the Seoul G-20 Summit

Colin I. Bradford — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 11:47:00 -0500

Editor’s Note: The National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) project reports on public perceptions of national leaders’ performance at important international events. This fifth installation of the NPGL Soundings provides insight on the issues facing leaders at the Seoul G-20 Summit and the coverage they received in their respective national media. Read the other commentary »

The fifth G-20 Summit held in Seoul seems to show signs of a gradual maturing of the process and the forum as a mechanism for communication among leaders and a means of connecting leaders and finance ministers with their national publics, judging from National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) country commentaries. These growing strengths — looking from the G-20 capitals toward the Seoul summit contrasted with looking from the summit toward the countries — seemed particularly impressive at this Seoul summit, which was characterized by the most intense policy conflicts yet at a G-20 meeting.

Policy Conflicts and the Trajectory of G-20 Summits

The responses to the first question — “Did coverage seem to threaten or enhance the viability of G-20 summits?” — seemed to indicate that, despite the conflicts over external imbalances and currency policies, these issues did not threaten the viability of the G-20 summits as much as one might have expected. Given the focus of the NPGL project on national leadership, what is interesting about this positive result is that the coverage in the media was not just of the debate itself, but the portrayal of their national leader at the summit.

With the exception of an excellent and balanced article on Saturday, November 13 in The Washington Post by Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson, the coverage in Washington and in the Financial Times would lead readers to conclude that the Seoul G-20 Summit was less successful than anticipated, and did not enhance the viability of G-20 summits as much as the Koreans hoped it would.

“Agreements did not have to be worked out,” Andrew Cooper wrote, quoting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “this month or next month in order to avert [a] cataclysm…I’m confident we will make progress over time.”

Olaf Corry reported from London that UK Prime Minister David Cameron was quoted in The Guardian as saying that rebalancing “is being discussed in a proper multilateral way without resort to tit-for-tat measures and selfish policies.”

U.S. President Barack Obama said in his press conference that “in each of these successive summits we’ve made real progress.”

Lan Xue and Yanbing Zhang wrote that Chinese President Hu Jintao “highlighted the importance of (the) framework (for strong, sustainable and balanced growth) and also pointed out that it should be further improved,” a far cry from a rejection of it.

“In contrast to previous summits,” Peter Draper reported from Johannesburg, “President Zuma’s interventions did receive some press coverage at home…To judge from this coverage, he seems to have played his cards reasonably well and to have been visible.”

Melisa Deciancio commented from Buenos Aires that ”Cristina Fernandez’s contribution to the G-20 summits has always been substantive…She has also called the members of the (G-20) to work together, cooperate and avoid entering into conflict in relation to the ongoing currency war between China and the U.S.”

“Both (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel and (finance minister) Schaeuble spent considerable effort to explain the positive aspects of summit agreements and praised the ‘spirit of cooperation,’” reported Thomas Fues from Germany.

In each of the cases above, the leader offered a positive interpretation of the Seoul G-20 Summit and the G-20 summit process even in the context of intense policy disputes, which constrained the practical agreements that could have been reached, especially on the global economic adjustment issues. This optimistic stance indicates a forward movement by G-20 leaders on a metric of global leadership in Seoul that the four previous NPGL “Soundings” had found to be wanting at previous summits.

In some countries, the problem continued with the press focusing on the shortcomings and failures of the Seoul G-20 Summit, including the coverage in the influential Financial Times. G-20 leaders were, however, more aggressive in pushing against the media’s interpretation of weakness and failures at the G-20, advancing an alternative narrative that focused on the gradual progress being made and stronger relationships developing with each G-20 summit experience. Leaders now need to assure that the G-20 “framework” and the “mutual assessment process” (MAP) of peer review that goes with it, are able to deliver a credible way forward for global economic adjustment by the time of the French G-20 Summit in November 2011.

Global Economic Adjustment as a Visible Theme

With regard to question two — “How was the rebalancing issue dealt with?”— the common thread running through each of the country commentaries is reflected in Olaf Corry’s comment that “explicit mention of the G-20’s formal ‘framework for strong, sustainable and balance growth’ is very sparse in UK public debate, but the themes it highlights definitely shine through.” The one exception may have been the explicit, detailed understanding of the issue conveyed by Schneider and Wilson in their Washington Post article titled “G-20 nations agree to agree; Pledge to heed common rules; but economic standards have yet to be met.” (See U.S. country commentary.)

The G-20 framework and the MAP may not have received much visibility or coverage from the media, but the intensity of the currency wars, the debate about U.S. quantitative easing (QE 2) and the differences over current account targets were all widely covered, and the message communicated to most publics was that global imbalances are a real problem for all countries and a concerted global economic adjustment is essential. The G-20 leaders will, therefore, have to do far more than simply explain the process to their publics; they need to continue to push each other and their economic officials to reach agreement on a path forward by the time of the French summit in November of 2011.

The difficulty of reaching agreement is reflected in a comment by Ryozo Hayashi of Japan who wrote, “Therefore, it sounds wise to let these countries (the U.S. and China) keep their current policy paths with a political commitment to avoid a currency war and for the G-20 to agree to develop economic indicators. It may become urgent or it may become irrelevant as the situation develops. Given the difficulty of establishing agreed economic indicators, the time element would be important.”

Leadership at Summits and Its Linkages to Domestic Political Support

What emerged more clearly at this summit than in previous G-20 summits was the degree to which the role of individual countries and their leaders (or finance ministers) in G-20 processes had domestic political valence in their home countries.

“The amount of attention devoted by the media to this summit was considerably more than previous ones,” wrote Andres Rozental, “partially because the Calderón administration will host the G-20 in 2012 and Mexico is now part of the G-20 ‘troika.’”

Thomas Fues commented that “The media also appreciatively noted that Germany had been asked to co-chair the G-20 working group on the international currency system, tasked with formulating policy proposals” for the French G-20 Summit.

In South Africa, Peter Draper also found that the press paid attention to the fact that it co-chairs the G-20 working group on development with South Korea, and “the importance of this group’s work to the future of the G-20.”

“In terms of summit diplomacy,” wrote Andrew Cooper, “Harper’s main success was in gaining the role for Canada as one of the co-chairs (with India, supported by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]) with respect to the process of working out a set of economic indicators that all members of the G-20 could use as guideposts for a stable global economy.”

This is all evidence that G-20 activities now generate positive repercussions in domestic public opinion.
Other dimensions of linkages between international committee positions assumed at G-20 summits and domestic political capital are beginning to emerge as the G-20 matures.

In South Africa, Finance Minister Gordhan’s strong criticism of U.S. QE2 in the international press seems “to have added to his growing reputation at home” commented Peter Draper.

German Finance Minister Schaeuble’s criticism of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s move as “clueless,” “forced Merkel to reiterate unswerving support of her key official” at the Seoul summit, Thomas Fues noted.

Cristina Fernandez has consistently and adroitly used her substantive policy positions at G-20 summits to buttress her position at home. Argentina is head of the G77, so Argentine support for development increases its status as a leader of the South and her domestic prestige. Argentine discontent with the IMF has been legend since the 1990s; support of President Fernandez for the G-20 framework and MAP process arises as an alternative to the IMF article IV exercise, which most Argentines are against, reported Melisa Deciancio.

Conclusion

Despite media attention being riveted on the showdown between the United States, Germany and China on currency manipulation and external imbalances at the Seoul G-20 Summit, leaders defended the G-20 processes for working through these issues over time, rather than emphasizing the failure to reach agreement at Seoul. The leaders and their finance ministers found that taking an aggressive stance on key issues paid dividends in terms of their domestic political support.

Explicit efforts by leaders to link international policies to domestic politics is a positive step forward for G-20 summits toward a greater engagement between leaders and their publics. NPGL observers have been watching this dimension of G-20 summitry in London, Pittsburgh, Toronto and now Seoul. (See: www.cigionline.org; Papers; “Soundings”)

The challenge going forward will be finding a way to align the global economic adjustment policy with domestic political linkages in a consistent and reinforcing manner, that will allow for policy convergence rather than the divergence manifested at the Seoul G-20 Summit.

Authors

Colin I. Bradford

Publication: NPGL Soundings, November 2010

Did Media Coverage Enhance or Threaten the Viability of the G-20 Summit?

Colin I. Bradford — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 13:19:00 -0500

The week before the Seoul G-20 Summit was one in which the main newspapers read in Washington (The New York Times, The Washington Post and Financial Times) all focused their primary attention on the “currency war,” global imbalances, the debate on quantitative easing (QE 2), the struggle over whether there would be numerate current account targets or only words, and the US-China relationship. As early as Wednesday, November 10, The Washington Post front-page headline read: “Fed move at home trails U.S. to Seoul; Backlash from Europe; Obstacles emerge for key goals at G-20 economic summit.” By Thursday, November 11, things had gotten worse. “Deep fractures hit hopes of breakthrough; governments are unlikely to agree on a strategy to tackle economic imbalances” read the Financial Times headline on Alan Beattie’s article from Seoul. Friday, November 12, The New York Times front-page headline declared: “Obama’s Economic View is Rejected on World Stage; China, Britain and Germany Challenge U.S.; Trade Talks with Seoul Fail, Too.” By Saturday, the Financial Times concluded in its lead editorial: “G-20 show how not to run the world.”

From these reports, headlines and editorials it is clear that conflicts over policy once again dwarfed the progress on other issues and the geopolitical jockeying over the currency and imbalances issues took centre stage, weakening G-20 summits rather than strengthening them. Obama was painted as losing ground, supposedly reflecting lessening U.S. influence and failing to deliver concrete results. China, Germany and Brazil were seen to beat back the U.S. initiative to quantify targets on external imbalances. Given the effort that Korean leaders had put into achieving positive results and “consolidating” G-20 summits, it was, from this optical vantage point, disappointing, to say the least.

How was the Rebalancing Issue Dealt With?

At lower levels of visibility and intensity, however, things looked a bit different and more positive. Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson in Saturday’s edition of The Washington Post (November 13) gave a more balanced view of the outcomes. Their headline read: “G-20 nations agree to agree; Pledge to heed common rules; but economic standards have yet to be set.” They discerned progress toward new terrain that went beyond the agreement among G-20 finance ministers in October at Gyeongju, which other writers missed.

“By agreeing to set economic standards, the G-20 leaders moved into uncharted waters,” they wrote. “The deal rests on the premise that countries will take steps, possibly against their own short-term interests, if their economic policies are at odds with the wider well-being of the world economy. And leaders are committing to take such steps even before there’s an agreement on what criteria would be used to evaluate their policies.”

They continued: “In most general of terms, the statement adopted by the G-20 countries says that if the eventual guidelines identify a problem, this would ‘warrant an assessment of their nature and the root causes’ and should push countries to ‘preventive and corrective actions.’”

The Schneider-Wilson rendering went beyond the words of the communiqué to an understanding of what was going on in official channels over time to push this agenda forward in real policy, rather than declarative terms. As the Saturday, November 13, Financial Times’ editorial put it, “below the headline issues, however, the G-20 grouping is not completely impotent,” listing a number of other issues on which progress was made including International Monetary Fund (IMF) reform which the Financial Times thought might actually feed back into a stronger capacity to deal with “managing the global macroeconomy.”

The Role of President Barack Obama

Without doubt, the easy, simple, big-picture message coming out of Seoul was that Obama and the United States took a drubbing. And this did not help the G-20 either. The seeming inability of the U.S. to lead the other G-20 leaders toward an agreement in Seoul on global imbalances, the criticism of U.S. monetary easing and then, on top of it all, the inability to consummate a US-Korea trade deal, made it seem as if Obama went down swinging.

But again, below the surface of the simple, one got a different picture. Obama himself did not seem shaken or isolated at the Seoul summit by the swirl of forces around him. At his press conference, he spoke clearly and convincingly of the complexity of the task of policy coordination and the time it would take to work out the policies and the politics of adjustment.

“Naturally there’s an instinct to focus on the disagreements, otherwise these summits might not be very exciting,” he said. “In each of these successive summits we’ve made real progress,” he concluded. Tom Gjeltin, from NPR news, on the Gwen Ifyl Weekly News Roundup commented Saturday evening that the G-20 summits are different and that there is a “new pattern of leadership” emerging that is not quite there yet. Obama seems more aware of that and the time it takes for new leadership and new patterns of mutual adjustment to emerge. He may have taken a short-run hit, but he seems to have the vision it takes to connect this moment to the long-run trajectory.

Reflections on the Role of South Korea

From a U.S. vantage point, Seoul was one more stop in Asia as the president moved from India to Indonesia to Korea to Japan. It stood out, perhaps, in higher profile more as the locus of the most downbeat moments in the Asia tour, because of the combination of the apparent lack of decisive progress at the G-20 along with the needless circumstance of two presidents failing to find a path forward on something they both wanted.

From a Korean vantage point, the summit itself was an event of immense importance for Korea’s emergence on the world stage as an industrial democracy that had engineered a massive social and economic transformation in the last 50 years, culminating in being the first non-G8 country to chair the G-20 summit. No one can fault Korea’s efforts to reach significant results. However, the fact is that the Seoul Summit’s achievements, which even in the rebalancing arena were more significant than they appeared to most (see Schneider and Wilson), but included substantial progress on financial regulatory reform, international institutional reform (specifically on the IMF), on development and on global financial safety nets, were seen to be less than hoped for. This was not the legacy the Koreans were looking for, unfortunately.

Conflicts among the major players on what came to be seen as the major issue all but wiped out the serious workmanlike progress in policy channels. The leaders level interactions at G-20 summits has yet to catch up to the highly significant degree of systemic institutionalization of the policy process of the G-20 among ministers of finance, presidents of central banks, G-20 deputies and Sherpas, where the policy work really goes on. On its watch, Korea moved the agenda in the policy track forward in a myriad of significant ways. It will be left to the French and French President Nicolas Sarkozy to see if they can bring the leaders into the positive-sum game arrangements that are going on in the policy channels and raise the game level of leaders to that of G-20 senior officials.

Authors

Colin I. Bradford

Publication: NPGL Soundings, November 2010

Previewing the G-20 Seoul 2010 Summit

Colin I. Bradford — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:33:00 -0500

Colin Bradford examines the G-20 talks taking place in Seoul, Korea, this week. The dialogue will be intense and will focus on four critical, interrelated issues that impact global economic stability.

Video

A More Effective G-20

Colin I. Bradford — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:28:00 -0500

With the G-20 talks set to take place this week in Seoul, South Korea, Colin Bradford says that the meetings are critically important gatherings that influence much more than global financial policies. According to Bradford, the meetings could be even more effective if they were more frequent and convened for a longer period of time.

Authors

Colin I. Bradford

Image Source: © Jim Bourg / Reuters

Taking Action at the Seoul G-20 Summit

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Colin Bradford and Johannes Linn argue that, amidst the overheated rhetoric and doubts regarding international cooperation, G-20 leaders have a collective responsibility at the Seoul meeting to agree on a policy package for global rebalancing, international financial regulation and international institutional reform. They offer eight policy recommendations for leaders to take forward in Seoul in order set the course for a steady global economic recovery.

Publication: The G-20 Seoul 2010 Summit: Strengthening the Global Recovery

Toward the Consolidation of G-20 Summits: From Crisis Committee to Global Steering Committee

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:00:00 -0400

Event Information

September 27-29, 2010

(see agenda)
COEX

Seoul, Republic of Korea

Two challenges that could threaten the credibility and sustainability of the G-20, and its potential as an enduring global leadership forum into the future, are:

1. The growing intensity of political polarization and anxiety among ordinary citizens.

2. The unclear willingness of governments of major economies to agree on a long-term roadmap of collectively consistent and mutually reinforcing polices that provide a feasible pathway for global recovery.

The G-20 Seoul International Symposium held in late September 2010, organized by the Brookings Institution and the Korea Development Institute (KDI), anticipated these threats. Global rebalancing is seen to be a daunting political challenge for the sovereignty of nations, an institutional problem for the effectiveness of multilateral surveillance and a difficult economic policy issue. And an entire segment of the conference was devoted to public attitudes in G-20 countries (Bruce Stokes, National Journal), domestic leadership in a polarized and globalized world (Thomas Mann, Brookings), and leadership, publics and communications (Wendy Sherman, Albright Stonebridge Group), with prominent journalists (Alan Beattie, Financial Times, and Paul Blustein, formerly with the Washington Post) contributing to the discussion.

View the event summary » (pdf)
View the agenda » (pdf)

Web Chat: Previewing the G-20 Summit

Colin I. Bradford — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0400

This week, President Obama travels to Toronto for the G-20 Summit where world leaders are expected to focus on recovery from the global financial crisis, specifically restoring financial stability, global financial regulation and reform of international financial institutions.

On Wednesday, June 23, Colin Bradford previewed the G-20 Summit in a live web chat moderated by David Mark, senior editor at POLITICO.

The transcript of this chat follows.

12:29 David Mark: As the American economy seems to improve in fits and starts President Obama on Friday travels to Toronto for the G-20 Summit, where world leaders will focus on fostering a global recovery from the financial crisis. Welcome to the chat.

12:30 [Comment From Zengxin Li: ] Do you see the G-20 summit eventually taking on the responsibilities of climate change, security and other global issues and replacing G8 or G7, or is the G-20 merely a crisis call which will diminish after the crisis ends?

12:30 Colin Bradford: Short answer is "yes".

12:31 Colin Bradford: The global challenges today are urgent and multiple. There is no such thing as the world being out of crises in the short term.

12:34 Colin Bradford: These global challenges need a focal point for global leadership and strategic guidance. The G-20 seems to be showing itself capable of generating significant coordinated responses to the financial crisis which set the stage for taking on other issues, like financing climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, development, energy security, water, health, the oceans, and so on.

12:35 Colin Bradford: It would be appalling for the G-20 leaders or the world as a whole to think that if and as the G-20 steers our way out of the current economic crisis that somehow its job is done, and it can close up shop.

12:36 [Comment From Zengxin Li: ] How has China's exchange rate announcement changed the atmosphere of the summit? By doing this, what does China want in return, and what can other countries offer?

12:37 Colin Bradford: What this announcement show is the dynamics of G-20 summitry at work.

12:39 Colin Bradford: Rather than have the Chinese exchange rate rivet attention of leaders at the G-20 Toronto Summit, the Chinese acted ahead of it to take the issue off the table and have it be one of many factors not THE factor.

Smart move; but also a good example of how holding leaders level summits can be forcing events, moving the global agenda forward not just AT summit but in the run-up to them.

Excellent. Very healthy and positive sign.

12:40 [Comment From Lane: ] Do you think that North Korea's recent bouts of aggression will be addressed?

12:42 Colin Bradford: I think the tensions on the Korean peninsula will be addressed by leaders in the G8 Summit in Huntsville on Friday, more informally than in the communique, and that this will be corridor talk among leaders and senior officials from the broader G-20 membership in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday. I would not expect communique language on this issue from either summit.

12:42 [Comment From Mona Pinchis: ] Mr. Bradford, do you believe that it will be necessary than to retain both a G8 and G-20?

12:43 Colin Bradford: For the time being , "yes", I think both will continue.

12:44 Colin Bradford: But the G-20 has the momentum, the lead on the financial crisis, with linkages through economics to most of the other major global challenges. So, the trend is clear; the G-20 is ascendent and the G8 is moving to a more subordinate role.

12:47 Colin Bradford: But, Canada, Japan, the U.S. and probably Italy, at the least, want to see the G8 continue. It will be up to them to shape an agenda which is suitable for what is in the end a "transatlantic " grouping plus Japan, of advanced industrial countries which have limited reach on the major issues, if they try to act in isolation.

On the North Korea threats, for example, China must be involved. It is hard to imagine a serious global problem that the G8 by itself can deal with alone.

12:49 [Comment From Mary: ] I haven't heard anything lately about the special issues of the developing world. Is that just off of the world leaders' radar screen for now?

12:49 Colin Bradford: No; the development issue is not off the radar screen.

12:51 Colin Bradford: To the contrary, fortunately. Good you asked, because it is important.

Korea is chairing the G-20 for 2010. The next G-20 Summit will be in Seoul on November 11-12.

The Korean leadership has for several months now been floating the idea of putting developing countries on the G-20 agenda.

12:52 Colin Bradford: There was resistance to the whole idea at first. Gradually, this turned around and there is enough support among enough of the G-20 member countries, so that the Koreans have put it on the agenda for Seoul in November.

12:54 Colin Bradford: The question now is what content a G2-0 role in development would have. There are various versions and possibilities, including some specific Korean ideas.

But what is clear is that a G-20 role will be different from the G8 role in development which became excessively aid-centric.

12:54 [Comment From Sisi Pan: ] Mr. Bradford, regarding the Millennium Development Goals, have you any concerns that this G-20 ascendency will allow for less accountability on the part of the G8 and their previous commitments? Moreover, to what extent will G-20 ascendency affect international development and traditional donor-partner relationships?

12:56 Colin Bradford: Good question. The Canadians are putting a lot of attention in the G-20 Toronto Summit on "accountability" or "implementation of previous G-20 commitments".

Presumably, they will apply the same metric to the G8 summits , especially on the Gleneagle commitments and so on.

12:58 Colin Bradford: I think the MDGs are alive and well, I am happy to say.

There are still five years to go before the 2015 deadline for them. And they seem to be center stage in the donor community, among civil society globally, in the United Nations, and most importantly in many developing countries.

And there is thought already being generated about the sequel to the MDGs after 2015.

1:00 Colin Bradford: I think what you may see in Korea in November is a greater focus on the economic growth dimensions of development.

But this approach will be laid out as a complement to, not a substitute for, the MDGs.

So it will provide an emphasis on the economic growth underpinnings for the social and environmental goals in the MDGs.

Korea chairs the G2-0 now and has the secretary general of the UN position, so Korea is uniquely able to pull these two streams together.

1:01 [Comment From Mike: ] Is there any significance to the summit being held in Canada?

1:03 Colin Bradford: Yes; for sure.

Canada is the G-20 country, par excellence. Paul Martin, former finance minister and then later prime minister of Canada was the crucial architect of the formation of the G-20 at finance minister level, as an excellent in depth article in the Toronto Globe and Mail revealed this week. He chaired the first three years of the G-20 finance ministers meetings in the wake of the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.

1:04 Colin Bradford: Later, as prime minister, Paul Martin proposed that the G-20 countries move to leaders level summits.

Finally, that has happened, thanks, unfortunately, to the financial crisis.

So, Canada has an opportunity to take ownership of this new summit grouping.

1:08 Colin Bradford: But like several other G8 countries, as indicated above, prime minister Harper is one the the G8 leaders that wants to see the G8 continue. Some think he prefers it, because it smaller and more "like-minded."

But smaller and "like-minded" are not assets that compare with larger and more diverse which makes the G-20 massively more powerful than the G8.

So, Canada embodies the ambivalence of many leaders about the G8/7-G20 tradeoff and the ambivalence of many citizens in advanced countries who now face a transformed world order in which the non-Western world is on the scene, involved, and contributing to global approaches in significant ways which make their inclusion imperative.

1:09 [Comment From Amy Lebichuck: ] If the G8 concept is becoming outdated, will the G-20 not become quickly outdated as well? If inclusion is an objective, will the end result be another United Nations General Assembly?

1:09 Colin Bradford: Short answer here is..."no" !

1:11 Colin Bradford: You have hit the nail on the head.

No matter that the G-20 embodies 70 per cent of the world's population and 80 percent of the world's economy, it is still seen as not inclusive enough by those 173 countries that are not in the G20.

1:12 Colin Bradford: If the G8 with 10% of the world's population was the embodiment of "the West against the Rest," the G-20 could be construed to be "the Rich and powerful against the Rest."

1:13 Colin Bradford: But there is a huge leap forward between the G8 and the G-20 in representativeness legitimacy, just because of the leap from 10% to 70% of the world's population.

1:17 Colin Bradford: Fortunately, there is a qualitative difference as well.

Under Korean leadership , there is a move to generate innovations in G-20 Summit processes, modalities and procedures so that countries outside the G-20 will have input into the G-20 preparations, summits and follow up, through time, even if they do not have a seat at the table for the summit meetings themselves, which are only the pinnacle moment of the process.

The G-20 process through time is what is important. The G-20 will be more porous than the G8; if you want to influence it , you can. Civil society, business and NGO leaders will be involved. There is not just "outreach" which implies telling others what is going on, there is will be "inreach" or input into the G-20 process itself.

1:20 Colin Bradford: We all learned from Copenhagen in December that involving everyone has the downside of reducing effectiveness to near zero.

So, the G-20 summit size of 20 leaders is a good number to stick to; bigger than 8; smaller than 193.

The question is not the number of seats at the G-20 table but how responsive those who sit in them are to the different interests, ideas and perspectives of those who are not at the table.

There is serious progress on this front.

1:20 [Comment From Adam Kuerbitz: ] How do you think the G-20 will work to reform global financial regulations to prevent future crises? What kind of measures will be proposed?

1:22 Colin Bradford: This will be a major issue in Toronto this weekend. The leaders will review and report on progress over the last nine months, since Pittsburgh, in G20 countries, by parliaments and through cooperative efforts at the Financial Stability Board in Basle and the IMF to push forward oversight, supervision and regulatory reform of financial markets and institutions.

1:24 Colin Bradford: A lot has been done in each of these venues over the last nine months.

The challenge for leaders is multiple. First, they have to be vigilant in searching out remaining weaknesses in national efforts. There will be some. This work is not over, not by a long shot.

1:26 Colin Bradford: Second, they will have to figure out how to convey to the public what is going on here, and that is not made easy by the variety of fronts on which there has been action or on which action is underway.

Third, countries are different. Some countries, like Canada, have fairly solid regulatory frameworks and institutions in place. They have relatively few investment banks, reducing systemic risk. They have higher capital requirements than many. So their opposition to the bank tax or bank levy is due to the fact that they don't have the same level of risk as the U.S. for example.

1:29 Colin Bradford: So, leaders will have to report on progress collectively and eclectically that nonetheless reflects the considerable progress that has been made in laying the foundations for much greater collaboration, information sharing, and vigilance than before the crisis, and much greater movement toward institutional innovations and reform which will strengthen the ability of governments to assert public responsibility for the public interest in financial stability, than was there before the crisis.

1:30 David Mark: That's about all the time we have for today. Thanks everyone for your great questions.

1:31 Colin Bradford: Thanks to everyone for great questions. I would have liked to have addressed more of your questions, since there are so many good ones. Will try to increase my typing speed for the next round. Thank you.

Authors

Colin I. Bradford

Recovery or Relapse: The Role of the G-20 in the Global Economy

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:48:00 -0400

On June 26, heads of state and government of the Group of 20 (G-20) will meet in Toronto, which is the fourth time they will convene since the start of the global economic crisis. At last September’s G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, leaders seemed cautious yet fairly optimistic and confident that the worst of the crisis was behind them and that the world economy was on the path toward recovery. During Pittsburgh, leaders focused on the global coordinated actions needed to ensure a full economic recovery that would deliver sustainable, long-term and balanced global growth.

However, before the economic recovery could be fully entrenched, the global economy was hit with yet another setback in the form of the European debt crisis. Therefore, almost a year later, the question still remains: is the world economy really recovering? Or are we beginning to see a relapse?

Experts from the Brookings Global Economy and Development program examine this question, analyze the current economic climate, and provide recommendations on how the G-20 should continue to serve as the “premier forum for international economic cooperation.”

Download the full report » (PDF)

Articles

Back From the Brink, but a Tough Road Still Ahead for the G-20 » (PDF)
Eswar Prasad takes the pulse of the world economy and tracks the recovery in G-20 economies by looking at a set of real economy, financial and confidence indicators. He discusses the critical policies and reforms that G-20 leaders must take into consideration in Toronto in order to put the world economy back on track toward balanced, robust and sustainable growth.

The G-20 Summit Assesses the European Crisis: Finding the Way From Toronto » (PDF)
Domenico Lombardi assesses how the ongoing European debt crisis will impact the agenda and discussions in Toronto. He argues that the European Union—the largest economy in the world—lacks the institutional framework needed to manage the first serious crisis since its post-World War II establishment. Lombardi also discusses what the G-20 can and cannot do to help Europe deal with its debt crisis.

It’s Time to Drop the G8 » (PDF)
Colin Bradford and Johannes Linn analyze the changing role of the G8 with the rise of the G-20. They argue that the G8 has lost its legitimacy and effectiveness due to its reduced relative weight in the world economy and the growing set of complex global challenges that require greater coordination from a diverse group of countries. They advise allowing the G-20 to break the pre-formed, traditional alliances in order to engage in a more fluid and flexible process of discussion, negotiation and bargaining.

Passing the Development Football From the G8 to the G-20 » (PDF)
Homi Kharas examines what role the G-20 should play in international development vis-à-vis the G8. He argues that while the G8 deserves credit for achieving some positive impacts on development aid and debt relief, the G-20 can and should provide a more comprehensive view of development; one that includes issues like growth, employment, investment and private sector development and that affects a more diverse group of emerging and developing economies.

It’s Time for Africa’s Voice in the G-20 » (PDF)
Ezra Suruma discusses Africa’s lack of representation in the G-20 despite having Ethiopian and South African leaders participate in the meetings in Toronto. Suruma urges the G-20 and other international forums and institutions to respond to Africa’s quest for inclusion and to increase Africa’s voice of nearly one billion people in the global discussions of world economic affairs, which certainly impact the future of Africa’s growth and development.

G-20 Leadership Lacking on the Doha Round » (PDF)
Paul Blustein evaluates how the G-20 has delivered so far on the Doha Round of global trade negotiations. He argues that although G-20 leaders have continued to pledge to refrain from using protectionist measures such as raising new barriers to international trade and investment, they have done little to seek an ambitious and balanced conclusion to the Doha Development Round in 2010.

Downloads

Download Full Report - English

Europe's Governance Stalemate Causes Gridlock for Global Governance Reform

Amar Bhattacharya, Colin I. Bradford and Johannes F. Linn — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Over the last six decades, European countries have moved in what often seemed like a slow and convoluted path toward closer cooperation. Yet, after a history of war and colonialism Europe’s transformation into a peaceful continent, a constructive neighbor and a generous international donor is a great benefit to the world.

However, at the upcoming IMF and World Bank spring meetings, Greece’s ongoing financial crisis will illustrate the challenges that Europe still faces in creating a strong and cohesive union, as well as the risks of global financial instability should Europe fail to manage threats of a Greek default. Moreover, the ongoing debates about IMF and World Bank governance reform are a reminder of Europe’s continual inability to create a coherent geopolitical presence, which is now becoming a major obstacle to effective global governance. To put it bluntly, the stalemate of Europe’s internal governance reform is creating gridlock for reform of global governance.

It is clear that the global institutions created after World War II do not reflect the economic and political realities of the 21^st century. The end of colonialism, the rise of large emerging markets, the growing interconnectedness of world economies and the threats of global financial instability and climate change require inclusive, representative and effective global institutions. This has put a spotlight on existing international organizations, including the G8, UN Security Council, IMF and World Bank, and their governance structures. All of them reflect the past dominance of Europe and the United States and must be reformed to represent the new balance of world economic and political influence.

Europeans tend to think of the U.S. as the superpower promoting its own values through unilateralism, exceptionalism and hard power, unwilling to give up its privileges in international institutions. They see Europe as a harmonious community of diverse nations with a preference for compromise and soft power. In fact, Europe often aggressively projects “European values” in foreign relations, touts its experience of multinational integration as an example for others and insists on representation in international institutions far beyond its actual size or strength.

Excluding Russia, Europe occupies four seats at the G8 and two of the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. It occupies eight to nine of the 24 seats at the IMF and World Bank and represents about 30% of their voting share. This compares with Europe’s share of 7.5% in the world’s population and 23% in the global economy. The Europeans also have traditionally nominated the head of the IMF. In the newly created G-20 summit, Europe occupies five of the 20 seats, a more reasonable share than the 50% in the G8. However, the addition of the Netherlands and Spain raises the de facto representation of Europe at G-20 summits. European requests for an additional “Nordic chair” and a seat for the political head of the Eurozone at the G-20 further reflect the sense of entitlement to an extraordinary role in international forums.

There have been calls for a reduced representation of Europe in the major global institutions and a reallocation of its voting shares and governance arrangements that is more closely aligned with its current global economic and political weight. In the World Trade Organization, the European Union is already represented as a single entity, but this remains the exception. With only limited EU constitutional reforms agreed under the Lisbon Treaty, stalemate prevails in EU reform of its foreign policy process. This perpetuates the EU’s inability to speak with one voice, to cast a singular vote, and to occupy one or at least fewer chairs in international organizations. This has become a major stumbling block for global governance reform. Since the Europeans are unwilling to give up on excessive individual country representation and voting shares in the governing boards of the international organizations, they keep out other key players and prevent a recalibration of voting structures that reflect today’s changing global realities.

The consequence of this is four-fold: First, global governance reform faces gridlock. Second, international institutions lose effectiveness and legitimacy. Third, formal European dominance in these institutions is rendered meaningless by the cacophony of European voices and lack of cohesion in votes. Fourth, Europe over time is increasingly marginalized in global decision making. This outcome serves neither global nor European interests. It may be counter-intuitive, but if the Europeans give up votes and chairs in the international institutions, they will wield more influence in more effective global institutions.

Until the Europeans are ready to address their own governance challenge, there is little hope for effective reform of global governance structures. But we sense a growing impatience in the rest of the world with European exceptionalism. Furthermore, the global financial crisis, followed now by the Greek financial upheavals, has put the Europeans on notice that business as usual will not work for them. We hope that the European political leadership will grasp this opportunity to change the way in which Europe acts on the global stage.

Authors

The April 2009 London G-20 Summit in Retrospect

Colin I. Bradford and Johannes F. Linn — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:25:00 -0400

A year ago, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown chaired the London G-20 Summit amidst growing concerns about the on-going financial and economic crisis. Three major achievements resulted from this summit, which convened twenty diverse countries rather than eight essentially transatlantic countries.

First, as a result of the process of concertation, communication and coordination in the run-up to the April 2009 London Summit, the G-20 countries together provided $5 trillion in stimulus to the world economy, an unprecedented combined jolt to precipitously dropping global demand.

Second, the International Monetary Fund was brought to center stage again as the world’s principal lender of last resort with pledges of $1 trillion dollars in additional resources from G-20 countries and promises to strengthen its role in global finance and reform its governance.

Third, G-20 governments committed themselves to strengthening national and global institutions for oversight, supervision and regulation of financial markets and institutions, at the same time they transformed the highly transatlantic-centric Financial Stability Forum in Basel composed of financial authorities into a new Financial Stability Board with greater authority and with all G-20 now present as full members.

Only a year later, the London Summit looks to have been an enormous success in stopping the drop in the global economy, in strengthening the financial and institutional capacity of the international community to address future crises, and in pushing for national and global financial regulatory reform. Our prediction would be that in coming years, the London G-20 Summit will be seen as the most successful summit in history, eclipsing the G8.

What looms largest in the rear view mirror even now is the $5 trillion combined stimulus by G-20 countries. This action, along with expansionary monetary policies in G-20 countries, was the major reason for the bottoming-out of the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the beginnings of recovery around the world. But it did not seem to be so in the eyes of the beholders of summitry a year ago. The big headline out of the London G-20 Summit was not the combined stimulus of $5 trillion dollars but the additional resources for the IMF of $1 trillion.

Why was the focus a year ago on the $1 trillion for the IMF rather than on the $5 trillion for the world economy? Because there was a huge spat between the US and UK on one side and the continental Europeans on the other in the weeks before 2 April 2009 about what constituted additional fiscal stimulus. The US-UK argument was that only additional discretionary fiscal stimulus should count, and that “automatic stabilizers”, built-in social programs like unemployment compensation, should not be counted because they were not deliberate, incremental actions but systemic responses not requiring policy decision.

In the end, this was a false debate and a lesson to be learned for the future. IMF figures prepared for the March 2009 G-20 finance ministers meeting revealed that if discretionary fiscal stimulus actions and systemic automatic stabilizer expenditures were combined, the total impact of all G-20 countries would be at an average annual rate of 2.6 percent of 2007 GDP for 2008-2010. This was well above the 2 percent of GDP fiscal stimulus target set out by the IMF before the London Summit a year ago.

There was no economic reason whatsoever for distinguishing between discretionary fiscal stimulus of expenditure increases and tax cuts on the one hand and unemployment compensation and systemic social expenditures triggered by economic downturns, on the other. Both add to aggregate demand. And both did, which is the fundamental reason why the London Summit can already be seen to be such a success even though it was not seen to be so in its immediate aftermath.

In fact, we know now that the reason why the $1 trillion for the IMF trumped the $5 trillion for the world economy as the headline a year ago was precisely because there was such a open public conflict over what counted as fiscal stimulus and because many of the stimulus decisions were taken over time rather than at the time of the summit itself. This myopia over definitional detail and focusing on coordination at a given event rather than concertation over time was fallacious and in terms of the economics of it, wrong on both counts.

Two culprits seem to stand out for this misperception of reality. First, leaders and finance ministers should not have indulged themselves in a public quarrel over definitions when any sensible person would realize that, systemic differences aside, expenditure injections are expansionary whether they are automatic or discretionary. Second, the financial press had a field day with the debate, featuring it on the front pages as a cock fight in a farm yard rather than calling it out as a false debate.

Neither leaders nor the press seemed aware of the fact that the public was looking to the London Summit for leadership and the exertion of public responsibility over global economic outcomes. G-20 leaders in London last year actually did that in three very significant realms but the message was garbled and the public’s vision was blurred by a useless debate that deflected attention away from the principal action and the main message from London a year ago. In the end, $5 trillion is greater than $1 trillion in both scale and effect.

Authors

U.S. and the G-20 Summit: Perspectives on Global Leadership

Colin I. Bradford — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: The National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) project reports on public perceptions of national leaders’ performance at important international events. The third series of commentary focuses on the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit and looks at the perception of how individual leaders advance national economic interests, strengthen the relationship with their publics by reflecting their concerns, enhance the geopolitical status of their country, and reassure publics that leaders are working together to take responsibility for the public interest in global outcomes. Read the other commentary »

Economic Priorities and Summit Outcomes

The United States and the Obama administration had high-priority interests in all the major items on the Pittsburgh G-20 agenda, including macroeconomic stimulus and coordinated “exit strategies,” financial regulation and reform, especially with regard to establishing high capital requirements for banks, and international institutional reform. The final G-20 statement manifested progress on each of these points; also particularly noteworthy was President Obama having been seen as pushing the Europeans to agree on bank capital requirements. The U.S. also got agreement on cutting subsidies for fossil fuels, which broke new ground. Where the Obama administration was eager to duck criticism and avoid overreach was on trade. After the controversy stirred up by the Obama administration’s actions to raise import tariffs on tires from China, President Obama was vulnerable to criticism for engaging in protectionism while at the same time the G-20 was trying to restrain it. Other issues so dominated the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit that the trade issue did not erupt into a visible point of discord, but rather was smoothed over by a call to complete the Doha Round to benefit developing country exports of agricultural products as a source of economic recovery for those nations.

Domestic Political Impact of Summit Leadership

Around the world, but especially perhaps in the United States, the G-20 Summit was overshadowed by the breaking news: 1) an additional nuclear site in Iran and the consequences for the efforts to forge a stronger nuclear proliferation regime; and 2) international support for forcing Iran to be transparent and adhere to international norms on nuclear energy. In fact, the domestic political impact of Obama’s international leadership was generated over most of the week, with a climate change summit at the United Nations on Tuesday, chairing the UN Security Council meeting on nuclear proliferation and Iran on Wednesday, and the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday and Friday.

President Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. nuclear missiles from Poland and the Czech Republic seemed to pay off in terms of greater support from Russian President Medvedev mid-week, as well as gaining strength on Friday after the revelation of the nuclear site in Iran. This along with the visible and vocal support of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, were the most palpable manifestations of Obama’s high-profile global leadership during “summit week.” Also, the fact that President Obama got the results he wanted at Pittsburgh at week’s end, and seemed masterful at orchestrating the G-20 leaders toward agreement on a broad range of issues, was icing on the cake in providing the American public with a sense that U.S. international interests are in steady hands. But nuclear and security issues overshadowed the economic crisis and the Pittsburgh G-20 Summit in terms of opportunities to demonstrate leadership at the global level but to the same effect.

Obama visibly demonstrated firm and determined international leadership throughout the week and a clear commitment to working with other nations, rather than going it alone, whether on climate change, nuclear security or economic recovery. His call for international cooperation in his United Nations General Assembly speech was strengthened by his actions on major issues throughout the week. This is not just an approach the rest of the world wants from the United States, but is an approach Americans now want from their government, in the wake of the Bush administration. The opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of his international approach in various forums on many issues throughout the week strengthened domestic political support for the Obama administration as a result.

Geopolitical Repositioning

President Obama consulted with all G8 leaders, and Australia, and with the 10 leaders from emerging market economies, and moved everyone forward in Pittsburgh to agree on the most significant reform in the international system since the Second World War, as Gordon Brown put it. By agreeing to make the G-20 permanently the “premier forum” for international economic cooperation, “the G-20 eclipses the G8,” as CNN encapsulated the news in a box on the screen. “G-20 Grabs Bigger Role in Global Economy” bellowed the Washington Post front-page headline on Saturday after the summit. Only a few weeks ago, President Sarkozy vowed to permanently establish a G14 in 2011 when France hosts the G8, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was, and maybe still is, reluctant to convene the G-20 as chair of the G8. Nevertheless, the G-20 Statement indicates: ”Finally, we agreed to meet in Canada in June 2010 and in Korea in November 2010. We expect to meet annually thereafter and will meet in France in 2011.”

As a consequence of Obama’s leadership, global summitry has been transformed from a parochial Western-dominated G8 with false pretenses to act as a global steering committee, to a more inclusive, representative and now proven-to-be more effective G-20 summit that restructures global leadership into a new grouping. This new grouping balances the West and the non-West into a cooperative relationship. This move, initiated by Obama, but obviously supported by the other leaders, repositions the emerging markets in the global order, providing them with visible roles in global leadership, which are more clearly defined than in other more complex international institutional reforms that are currently underway. The emergence of the G-20 as the world’s global steering committee is a blockbuster reform, which will now become a more powerful driver of other international reforms.

Global Leadership and the Public Interest

The momentum for summit reform was bolstered by the success of the G-20 at the leaders level in establishing a track record in taking public responsibility for the public interest in economic recovery in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. The London G-20 Summit was clearly pivotal in laying out the pathway involving macroeconomic coordination, financial system reform, and international institutional reforms which dovetailed into an effective, concerted strategy for dealing with the crisis that affected everyone everywhere. The fact that six months later, the world economic downturn had been halted and signs of recovery were appearing, testified to the fact that the G-20 acting together was able to have demonstrable effects. This evidence clearly has had the benefit of reassuring publics everywhere that someone is minding the store, there is a focal point for global leadership and that trust and confidence in markets, institutions and leadership, perhaps the most crucial ingredients in the recovery itself, are creeping back into the global economy. The G-20 has been instrumental in restoring confidence by being effective in addressing the global crisis with a global response.

The elevation of the G-20 to fill the void at the apex created by the lack of representativeness, legitimacy and effectiveness of the G8 acting alone, is a logical result of the critical role the G-20 and G-20 countries and their leaders have played in charting a new mode of global leadership for the twenty-first century.

Authors

Colin I. Bradford

Publication: NPGL Soundings: September 2009