FRONT PAGE

New summit group needed to tackle global problems

By Ramesh Thakur

	MORE COMMENTARIES BY RAMESH THAKUR
		Iraq's recovery phase can now begin in earnest
		Popular return of a dynasty

In major foreign policy speeches in Washington on April 29 and Montreal on May 10, Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada proposed the creation of a new group of 20 countries (G-20) at the heads of government level as the forum of choice for tackling pressing global problems. He is set to raise it again at the meeting of the G-8 leaders (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the US) now taking place in the US. It's to be hoped the reaction will not be initiative fatigue at yet another worthy Canadian idea.

Although initial press reports in Canada interpreted this as a veiled retrenchment from Canada's historically strong support for the United Nations, it is better viewed as an enlargement of the G-8 grouping by co-opting such major economic players as Australia, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. For Australia, this is potentially more useful and important than trying to gatecrash the East Asian groupings.

The central challenge of global governance is a double disconnect. First, between the distribution of hard and soft power in the real world, on the one hand, and the distribution of decision-making authority in the existing intergovernmental institutions on the other. Second, between the numbers and types of actors playing ever-expanding roles in civil, political and economic affairs within and among nations, and the concentration of decision-making authority in intergovernmental institutions. 

In turn, this has provoked a double crisis of legitimacy. With regard to the first disconnect, legitimacy is the conceptual rod that connects power to authority, so the circuit is broken when power and authority diverge.

As regards the second disconnect, legitimacy is the conceptual rod that grounds the exercise of power by public authorities in the consent of the people, so the circuit is broken with the growing gulf between the will of the people and the actions of governments.

Even the UN Security Council fails to pass the test of legitimacy on some dimensions like  representational, procedural and performance legitimacy. Western countries are more concerned with performance woes, developing countries focus more on lack of representation, transparency and  accountability below and above.

The G-8 fails the tests of legitimacy on representativeness, consistency, transparency and accountability.

As the collapsed trade talks at Cancun showed, Brazil, China and India acting in concert in world negotiations form a powerful bloc that cannot be ignored any more. Drawing them into a new summit grouping that bridges the North-South divide would serve also to make them more responsible and
responsive.

US policies since 9/11 confirm how actual experience of an event shapes responses in ways that are fundamentally different from a world view grounded solely on theoretical arguments.

G-8 leaders cannot possibly begin to appreciate the real-world framework in which developing countries have to make political, economic and social policy choices. Yet it is the G-8 countries who are the chief architects of the world's financial and security orders.

To narrow the gaps between theoretical knowledge and practical experience, the major developing countries must be brought in as joint architects to help design the system, set the rules and promulgate the norms. Such jointly constructed economic and security systems will result in a shared ownership of the international order, and the enhanced legitimacy will translate into a more efficient international machinery.

The question is: can the G-8 enlarged into a new G-20 provide a solution as a new, important pillar of institutionalised multilateralism? If so, should it be situated within the existing architecture of global governance that comprises the UN system, the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), the G-8 group, the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum?

The legitimacy of the UN as the universal-global institution is qualified by drag in performance and efficiency; while the G-8's performance efficiency, to the extent that it exists, is qualified by its legitimacy drag with regard to serious lack of representation. The United Nations is too large, cumbersome and unwieldy, with the powerful centrifugal pressures overwhelming collective decision-making prospects. The G-8 is far too widely perceived as a self-anointed exclusive club of the rich and powerful.

As currently constituted, the G-20 is restricted to finance ministers. One of the architects of the G-20 was Paul Martin when he was Canada's Finance Minister. Not surprisingly, now that he is Prime Minister, he wants to explore raising the G-20 to heads of government level.

A summit level G-20 would be a better forum for framing the issues, outlining choices, making decisions; for setting, even anticipating, the agenda; for framing the rules, including for dispute settlement; for pledging and mobilising resources; for implementing collective decisions; and for monitoring progress and recommending mid-term corrections and adjustments.

It is worth recalling that some of the crucial decisions regarding Kosovo in 1999 were made at the G-8 summit in Bonn, not in the UN Security Council. And East Timor was handled in the informal corridors of the APEC summit in Auckland. The informality and personalised style of summit meetings between leaders who know and are comfortable with one another cannot be substituted in the formal forum of the UN as an intergovernmental organisation.

As for the composition of the proposed new G-20, some - like China, India and Brazil - would be uncontroversial. Others would be marginal cases. Given the history of the last 3-7 years and the requirement of policy innovators, would it be better to have Egypt rather than Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia rather than Indonesia?

There would be tensions between efficiency and representational legitimacy, inclusiveness and intimacy-cum-informality; governmental and civil society representation, etc. Those necessary for achieving the goals of the new grouping would have to be included; but what about co-opting those who could play the spoiler role or produce systemic contagion effects through collapse?

Here's a final problem. If established, the summit-level G-20 would need to guard against becoming a prisoner of success as more and more countries clamour for admission, to the point where the group loses any focus. And, bearing in mind what has happened with permanent membership of the UN Security Council, it would need to include mechanisms from the start of identifying and jettisoning countries who have passed their use-by dates in terms of the core criteria of membership.

is Senior Vice-Rector of UN University and Assistant Secretary-General of the UN. This commentary first appeared in the June 9 edition of The Canberra Times. These are his personal views.

Copyright © 2004  United Nations University. All rights reserved.