Abstract
At the height of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009, the Group of Twenty was elevated to country leaders’ level and acknowledged itself as the “premier forum for… international economic cooperation.” This self-acknowledgment reflected the long-felt need to institutionalize the dialogue between the advanced and emerging economies in a more effective setting. However, the ad hoc nature of the G-20 and the extent to which an informal and self-selected club of nations can provide a stable framework for facilitating global cooperation has been questioned. Against this backdrop, the study traces the G-20’s historical evolution, situates the dynamics of its institutional arrangements, and reviews the emerging literature on G-20 reform. Building on this analysis, the study then assesses the expansion of the G-20’s scope to global development and appraises the Group’s evolution in the broader context of the current global governance framework.
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Notes
- 1.
Spain, Iran, Taiwan and Poland are among the largest 20 economies not included in the membership of the G-20. Conversely, the G-20 members of Argentina, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are only the 28th, the 30th, and 32nd largest economies in the world, respectively. The ranking is based on data for gross domestic product at purchasing power parity for the year 2011 from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook data set.
- 2.
The countries belonging to the G-22 included Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand.
- 3.
The countries belonging to the G-33 included Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand and Turkey.
- 4.
The countries belonging to the G-20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus one regional representative, the European Union.
- 5.
According to Vastergaard (Vestergaard 2011), there are several further reasons why the G-20’s claim to representational legitimacy is unconvincing: (1) There is only one African member country, South Africa; (2) no low-income countries are included; and (3) not one single “small, open economy” is present in the membership.
- 6.
Group One (2001, 2006, etc.) includes Australia, Canada, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Group Two (2002, 2007, etc.) includes India, Russia, South Africa and Turkey. Group Three (2003, 2008, etc.) consists of Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Group Four (2004, 2009, etc.) consists of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. Group Five (2005, 2010, etc.) consists of China, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea.
- 7.
See “IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde Welcomes Pledges by Members to Increase Fund Resources by Over US$430 billion,” Press Release 12/147, http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2012/pr12147.htm.
- 8.
Although executive directors cannot split their vote, council members would be allowed to do so.
- 9.
The 2010 Resolution No. 66-2 of the Board of Governors states that the composition of the Executive Board will be reassessed every eight years following ratification of the resolution itself. The latter, initially expected to be ratified by the IMF membership in the fall of 2012, should be approved in 2013, following the U.S. presidential elections.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge excellent research assistance provided by Sarah Milsom Puritz, Ana Maria Salamanca and Cory Smith. This chapter draws from the findings of a broader research project on the G-20 run by the Brookings Institution’s Global Economy and Development Program whose funding was generously provided by the Embassy of Denmark in the United States.
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Kharas, H., Lombardi, D. (2013). The Group of Twenty: Origins, Prospects and Challenges for Global Governance. In: Paganetto, L. (eds) Public Debt, Global Governance and Economic Dynamism. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-5331-1_9
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