It’s G8-time again! Sadly, not all the leaders who’ve turned up to recent G8 summits – like the guy on the right, seen at the Italian-hosted meeting in 2009 – will be able to make it to this week’s conclave in Deauville, France. What will they miss? Arguably not all that much, now the G20 takes precedence. Bruce Jones, Emily O’Brien and I have a new paper out on the Brookings website about whether the G8 still matters:
On May 26 and 27, France hosts the annual G8 Summit. Although the French have prepared a wide-ranging agenda – covering everything from internet security to the Arab Spring – there is skepticism that the G8 remains relevant in the post-financial crisis world. The G20 has eclipsed it as the primary forum for financial diplomacy, while talks between G8 foreign ministers on Libya this March delivered little.
There are, however, two recurrent arguments for maintaining the G8:
* It acts as an insurance policy for its members against the failure of the G20, a risk highlighted by ill-tempered exchanges over currency issues at the last year’s G20 summit in Seoul.
* It is a useful political club for liberal Western democracies (plus or minus Russia), whereas the G20 contains a less ideologically coherent group of major powers.
This paper argues that neither of these arguments is fully convincing.
Find out why they fail to convince here.
