How much is global governance changing? The G20 as international practice

Abstract

Is the G20 transforming global governance, or does it reinforce the status quo? In this article we argue that as innovative as some diplomatic practices of the G20 may be, we should not overstate their potential impact. More specifically, we show that G20 diplomacy often reproduces many oligarchic tendencies in global governance, while also relaxing club dynamics in some ways. On the one hand, the G20 has more inductees who operate along new rules of the game and under a new multilateral ethos of difference. But, on the other hand, the G20 still comprises self-appointed rulers, with arbitrary rules of membership and many processes of cooption and discipline. In overall terms, approaching G20 diplomacy from a practice perspective not only provides us with the necessary analytical granularity to tell the old from the new, it also sheds different light on the dialectics of stability and change on the world stage. Practices are processes and as such they are always subject to evolutionary change. However, because of their structuring effects, diplomatic practices also tend to inhibit global transformation and reproduce the existing order.

Keywords

Diplomatic practice G20 global governance international order oligarchy

Introduction

Since its elevation to the leaders’ level amid the financial meltdown in late 2008, few international forums have aroused as much heated debate as the G20 (Cooper and Thakur, 2012). As it proclaims itself the ‘premier forum’ for international economic cooperation, to use the Pittsburgh summit declaration language, the G20’s rise to prominence on the world stage raises key questions about global governance. Above all, what does the rise of the G20 mean for the evolution of the world order? How does it change or continue the ways in which the world stage is organized? In existing literatures, many greet the G20 with a celebratory tone. In terms of the redistribution of power among states, David Held (2010: 204) suggests that the G20 features ‘an unprecedented successful attempt by developing countries to extend their participation in key institutions of global governance’. Others view the G20 as an instrument of continuity, not change. For example, Ngaire Woods (2010: 60) portrays the G20 as the ‘last gasp’ by the old establishment seeking to use a new consultation forum and mechanism for reorganizing the post-crisis order, keeping intact a largely the status quo liberal international economic order.

This article argues that while the G20 opens a useful window onto current global transformations, notably the entry of state-based actors outside of the traditional G7 establishment, its transformative potential should not be overstated. In fact, at the level of diplomatic process, the G20 continues to exhibit many features of the Western-dominated order, including club dynamics and executive multilateralism. In order to balance the two trends of transformation and reproduction, we focus on the diplomatic practices that sustain the G20 process. This approach provides us with enough analytical granularity to specify the dialectics of stability and change in a primary site of global governance (see the introduction to this special issue). Thanks to that lens, we show how G20 diplomacy forms an intriguing mix of old and new practices.

The scope of this article is focused on the diplomatic process that goes into G20 summits. We are particularly interested in how the G20 simultaneously reinforces and relaxes oligarchical tendencies in contemporary global governance. Given our focus on process, substantive issues of economic policy do not form our primary object of interest. While it may be true, as some argue, that the G20 has essentially reproduced, not reconstituted, traditional North–South relations (Soederberg, 2010), in what follows we use the forum as a vantage point to observe the politics of global governance practices. In order to do that, we focus on the details of G20 diplomacy and how this intricate bundle of practice transforms and reproduces schemes of global governance. We observe that the international architecture does evolve over time, although mostly in increments and at the margins.

In terms of the dialogue between diplomatic studies and practice theory that this special issue seeks to foster, the pay offs flow both ways. In the study of diplomacy, we argue, a key value added of a practice lens is to help separate what elements of practice are new and what are old. This focus is important for a more nuanced identification of the tendencies within the G20 that facilitate the opening up inclusiveness within and beyond the state-based level, and those that lock in familiar patterns of exclusivity. In so doing the practice framework specifies the nature and form of change by showing how transformative and reproductive practices actually feed off each other. Likewise, practice theory further entrenches the study of diplomacy in the broader field of global governance where it belongs (see also Cooper et al., 2002, 2008; Sending et al., 2015). Diplomacy takes place not in isolation but within a rich and diverse social, economic and political environment. Because it treats any and all practices in the same way — that is, as units of analysis – practice theory suppresses the temptation to study the global in silos.

The study of G20 diplomacy also raises interesting challenges and questions for practice theory. It is one thing to achieve empirical granularity and disentangle reproductive and transformative processes in global governance: it is quite another to explain why we observe the particular balance of old and new ways of doing things that characterizes the G20. Practice theory allows us to trace evolutionary patterns, but it is not as well equipped to conceive of the possibility of innovation and unique social forms. By highlighting these limitations, we hope to suggest a few avenues for reflection at the confluence of diplomatic studies, practice theory and the IR discipline writ large.

The G20 as practice

In order to analyze global transformation and reproduction, this article focuses on international practices (see also the introduction to the special issue). Practices are socially meaningful and organized patterns of activities; stemming from a know-how that is generated over time.¹ Practice rests on established ways of doing things, which does not preclude deviation, improvisation and calculation but, rather, defines the scope of agency. Practices structure interactions and that is arguably why they tend to exhibit some regularity over time.

The fact that practices are patterned is key to understanding politics and social life more generally. Patterned ways of doing things produce mutual expectations, facilitate coordination and render communication possible. Using language is an obvious example here: through conventional formulations, either sound or script, discursive practices are the foundation of social intercourse. They make it possible to engage in further transactions with others. Crucially, speaking and writing are patterned, in the sense that verbs are conjugated in a certain way while idioms have a generally agreed upon meaning. But this regularity does not impede improvisation and agency – think of the poet as a discursive virtuoso, for instance. What is more, in the longer run the relative regularity of discursive practices does not preclude evolution either. Language is a living social structure and, while it usually is locally stable, over time the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of words and idioms may evolve quite widely. In sum, patterns of practices are, indeed, relatively stable; but they may also be played with and played around (local change), and they incrementally transform over time (long-term evolution).

Focusing on practice, then, allows one to capture better both stability and change in politics and social life more generally (Adler and Pouliot, 2011: 18; with regard to this theme, see also the Wiseman, Kuus, and Goff articles in this special issue of Cooperation and Conflict, 2015). On the one hand, practices are the vehicle of social reproduction. Thanks to their patterned nature, they create the conditions for ontological stability in everyday life. On the other hand, because performances practices are the vehicle of change and innovation, either through situated challenges and contestations (e.g. Andy Warhol subverting aesthetics through pop art) or via long-term evolutionary dynamics (e.g. the practice of dueling for retribution disappears over decades). In all of these instances of continuity, change and evolution, practices remain processes – that is, assemblages of activities that are socially recognized as particular ways of doing things. Most of the time, they seem to be purely reiterative and reproductive as people keep doing what is to be done. Only rarely are they explicitly challenged and reinvented, as new masters take advantage of epistemic instability to redefine their trade. However, at all times, practices are evolving at the margins, slowly but surely, into new forms that generally look like more of the same.

Both the reproductive and transformative dynamics of practice are due to its structuring and constitutive effects. In a broad interpretation, practices have causal power in the sense that they make other things happen (Pouliot, 2014). Practices are the generative force thanks to which society and politics take shape; they produce very concrete effects in and on the world. This is the generative side of practices: under proper conditions, practicing X causes various other practices to follow. For example, in the field of international security the practice of military exercise – which usually involves simulating an attack, setting in motion a chain of command, moving forces around and delivering a response – produces various social effects. Depending on the political context at hand, the same pattern will generate distinctive practices in turn. Between close partners, military exercising will likely produce communications sharing, officer exchanges, and follow-up meetings. When it comes to rivals, however, the same sequence of actions may generate harsh diplomatic reactions, military deployments, and countermeasures. Whatever its effects, the military exercise, just like any other practice, will surely cause other practices in its wake.

Practices create ‘baselines’ for interaction – that is, they set the social terms under which deals are made, debates are conducted and decisions are taken (Pouliot and Thérien, 2015). These processes are continually at work in world politics: ‘When states face each other due to a myriad number of reasons, their strategic interaction is affects not only by the cost-benefit analyses leaders make, the ideas and knowledge people carry in their heads, and the discourse they use to communicate. Rather, the moves they make, the signals they give, and the language they speak are constituted by the practices they share’ (Adler and Pouliot, 2011: 20). During the Cold War, for example, strategic interaction between the United States and the USSR was structured by various practices of nuclear deterrence, arms control and summit diplomacy. The bipolar order was the result of patterned ways of doing things, from military hardware acquisition through negotiating tactics and rhetorical devices to technologies and communications artefacts such as the hot line.

In an illuminating article, Hurd shows how diplomacy constitutes international law – the key normative infrastructure of contemporary world politics. For him, the practice of diplomacy primarily ‘involves the presentation of the interests and actions of the state to an international audience’ (Hurd, 2011: 581). Public statements, formal agreements and various forms of interaction serve the purpose of ‘international legal justification’, that is, ‘reconciling state behaviour to international law’ (Hurd, 2011: 582). Thanks to his focus on diplomatic practice, Hurd is able to document the uses of the law as a social resource. These uses are constrained by existing patterns, but they are also adaptive and purposive. There exists a narrow room for manoeuver that constrains diplomatic practice up to a point, beyond which incremental change as well as legal innovation may become possible. When diplomatic discourse essentially reproduces international law, argues Hurd, we observe compliance. But even such patterns may evolve in increments, and sometimes in bumps, through the practice of legal justificatory discourse.

To recap, we argue, first, that practices are at the source of both stability and change; and, second, that this generative power comes out of the structuring effects that practices produce. Building on these two insights, in this paper we contend that the G20, conceived as a bundle of diplomatic practices, offers an excellent vantage point onto reproductive and transformative dynamics in contemporary global governance. We are particularly interested in how the G20 includes practices that both reinforce and relax oligarchic tendencies in the existing architecture. Without the high level of granularity that practice offers, as a unit of analysis, it is not possible to tell the old from the new in shifting global conditions. By looking into G20 diplomacy, we supply the extent of detail required to empirically document global governance processes. In so doing, we somehow turn the usual causal arrow on its head. Although we remain interested in how the redistribution of world power is affecting diplomatic practices (Alexandroff and Cooper, 2010), the main focus of our inquiry is how the ways of doing things that are prevalent at the G20 are transforming and reproducing global governance.

In a nutshell, we argue that G20 constitutes both something old and something new in the evolution of world politics. We start from the observation that global governance generally exhibits oligarchic qualities, in that it has historically been and remains to this day a form of ‘governance by the few’ (Badie, 2011). We then identify key features of the G20 process that either reinforce this trend or relax it (see Table 1). The remainder of the article documents the many practices that underpin these reproductive and transformative processes in global governance.

Table 1.

G20 diplomatic practices and their effects on the oligarchic nature of global governance.

Oligarchy-reinforcing practices	Oligarchy-relaxing practices
Self-appointed rulers	More inductees
Arbitrary rules of membership	New rules
Cooption and discipline	Changing club ethos

‘Something new…’: oligarchic governance in the 21st century

In this section, we specify three dimensions of the G20 diplomatic process that are transforming the politics of global governance. We document (a) the reconfiguration of the international hierarchy through the induction of new players; (b) the limited emergence of new or revisited international norms; and (c) the redefinition of the club’s ethos around a multilateral ‘life world’ premised on papering over differences.

Reconfiguring international hierarchy

If de facto biased towards the US and the West, the operational premise of the G20 is one of equality between countries of the old establishment and the global South. Key players from different regions engage each other directly and personally without a formal distinction in status. Unlike the UN with the P5 or the IFIs with marked differences in shares and votes, the G20 members are not placed in asymmetrical positions on a constitutional basis. Each country has the potential to find solutions that can be accepted by others on the basis of openness to learning and deliberation. Every country may host the G20 meetings at some point.

In terms of scope and form, the magnitude of this transformation cannot be underestimated. Helped by the precedent of the G20 Finance, a cluster of countries beyond the G7 can feel some sense of ownership over the forum. If not the animators of the summit, leaders from the global South, from China (Hu Jintao) to Brazil (Lula da Silva), were given high symbolic importance in seating and the photo-ops of the initial G20 forum in November 2008. Moreover, there was a strong buy-in from these global South countries. Unlike in 1933, when the ‘rising’ US stayed away from the London World Economic conference, all of the emerging powers not only participated but also energetically contributed to the preparations. Furthermore, all of the ascendant states bought into the coordinated approach, which is seen most emphatically in the manner by which China and other countries embraced the G20 stimulus program both individually and collectively. This image of deviation with older patterns of doing things was reinforced by the opening up of other institutions to emerging countries, the prime example being the reform of the Financial Stability Forum into the Financial Stability Board.

The elevated standing of the G20 at the moment of crisis meshed with signs of a fundamental rearrangement in the distribution of the share and stakes of global political power. As John Lipsky, the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, explicitly stated, during the Pittsburgh Summit: ‘This movement to the G20 and away from the G7 is recognizing economic realities. You can’t talk about the global economy without having the major dynamic emerging economies at the table’ (quoted in Gulf Daily News, 2009). Without the catalyst of the 2008 financial crisis, however, such a breakthrough had proven difficult. Most infamously, the 2007 G8 communiqué announcing the establishment of the Heiligendamm process of outreach was formulated without any input from the emerging powers. India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remark – ‘We have come here not as petitioners but as partners in an equitable, just and fair management of the global community of nations, which we accept as reality in the globalized world’ (quoted in Bidwai, 2007) – was seconded by a hopeful statement from China that the G8 Outreach would not be used as ‘a means of exerting pressure on developing countries’ (Tiankai Cui, quoted in Chen, 2007).

Although comfortable within the G20, however, the big ‘rising’ countries of the global South retained other options of mobilization. The most significant of these was the use of the G20 as a launching pad for a separate caucus or lobbying group to the G7/8 in the form of the BRICS summit. Potentially the BRICS coalition represents a powerful challenge to the US and West-dominated architecture whose apex consists of the UN Security Council, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). For the first time, the sense of frustrated entitlement found expression in some concrete ideas on how to break through the embedded configuration of global privilege and power. The BRICS have put down markers that they intend to use their demographic and economic clout to challenge and change the way the world is governed through formal multilateral machinery and an informal grouping. This induces some pressure on the prevalent normative order.

Limited normative change

The global financial crisis heightened the process of discrediting the Washington Consensus on deregulated neoliberal capitalism and shifted the balance between states and markets. The mindset that privileges Western powers and their biases is trapped in the old paradigm and fails to recognize the new realities. The global financial crisis, as President Lula da Silva bluntly put it, ‘was created by white men with blue eyes’ (quoted in Gillespie, 2012). In comparison to most Western economies responsible for the crisis, the BRICS have had solid budgetary and fiscal performances. In the Delhi Declaration of March 2012 (Delhi Declaration, 2012) the BRICS blamed the European and US central banks for ‘aggressive policy actions’ to stabilize their domestic economies that had spilled over into emerging market economies by generating ‘excessive liquidity’ and fostered ‘excessive capital flows and commodity prices’ (Delhi Declaration, paragraph 5). Turning the tables, they called for the advanced economies ‘to adopt responsible macroeconomic and financial policies, avoid creating excessive global liquidity and undertake structural reforms to lift growth that create jobs’ (Delhi Declaration, paragraph 6).

Through the BRICS perspective, the World Bank has a decidedly outdated North–South and donor–recipient (rather than development partners) orientation. The Declaration of the fourth BRICS summit, held in New Delhi on 29 March 2012, called for a study of the feasibility of creating a new South–South development fund (Delhi Declaration, 2012, paragraph 13), an initiative that has proceeded through the 2013 Durban summit process. Although this fund could eventually rival the World Bank, for now it is presented as a complement, to assist with infrastructure and other development projects that fail to attract World Bank or IMF funding. The five countries renewed demands for the leadership of the World Bank to come from developing countries and for expanded voting rights for developing countries in the IMF as well as an increased lending capacity of the Fund (Delhi Declaration, 2012, paragraphs 8–12). And they took initial steps toward facilitating South–South trade in local currencies, thereby reducing the role of the dollar as the global currency (Delhi Declaration, 2012, paragraph 18). The lowered transaction costs, it is hoped, will stimulate intra-grouping trade. Although intra-BRICS trade has grown by 28% annually, the ambition is to double the volume to US$500bn by 2015.

The BRICS coalition is resentful of calls for ‘responsible’ stakeholder policies, regarding such policies as efforts to subjugate the BRICS worldviews to the global North’s priorities, and generally take an instrumental approach to international governance. Charles Grant argues, for example, that China and Russia are instinctively suspicious of the very notion of global governance as a self-serving Western concept. They are still strongly resistant to international interference in internal affairs, preferring informal gatherings of big powers and regional institutions to formal multilateral machinery. To be sure, the BRICS is far from a monolithic block. Though relatively united when it comes to global economic governance, BRICS countries are quite divided when it comes to political questions, including democratic values. Nevertheless, the Delhi Declaration signals increasing self-consciousness on the part of the five BRICS nations that they have global weight and mean to begin using it.

In G20 diplomacy, however, normative entrepreneurship is not limited to the big and rising powers. Indeed, one of the most significant features of G20 is that inclusivity went beyond the profile of a G7–BRICS formulation. Take the example of South Korea which, notwithstanding a structural weight below that of not only China but also Japan and India, raced ahead to grab the right to host the first G20 outside the ‘Anglo’ world. In doing so it played up its ‘bridging’ role with respect to its evolution from a developing country to a developed (OECD) state. Although not alone in its ambitions, South Korea’s unique brand is important here (punctuated by the close relationship between the South Korean state and corporate giants such as Samsung). Unlike the BRICS there is no sense of hedging by South Korea. Nor are there any explicit recriminations about the causes of the crisis that led to the creation of the G20. For the rising middle powers, the G20 does not present challenges in terms of being ‘responsible stakeholders’, but opportunities in terms of access to the ‘top table’ at the apex of power.

In substantive terms, South Korea managed to push a new development agenda and the notion of safety nets during financial crises. Such a success makes it more likely that there will be space for a blend of countries in any informal multilateral groups dealing with functional issues. As the host for the November G20 summit, South Korea emphasized in some detail the need for the forum to move to the stage where ‘global leaders aggressively coordinate their exit plans’ (Kwak Soo-jong, quoted in Korea Times, 2009). Beyond this, though, Seoul also sent a number of signals that it was contemplating stretching out the agenda for the G20 when it hosted the forum in November 2010. In his various ‘outreach’ efforts, Changyong Rhee, South Korea’s Secretary-General of the Presidential Committee for the G20 Summit, placed strong emphasis on efforts to solidify the G20’s role not only as the ‘premier forum’ for crisis management but also for beyond-crisis economic cooperation. On top of follow-ups to Pittsburgh on recovery and exit strategies, a framework for sustainable and balanced growth, and the reform of international financial institutions, other issues such as trade, food and energy security and climate financing were highlighted.

Under the ‘mixed’ leadership of Brazil and South Korea, G20 governance also encompassed the role of capital controls as a legitimate policy tool for stemming the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries. Such a move was significant in that this type of instrument was seen by the established countries as an illegitimate form of monetary policy and aggressive policy action within the international political economy. The implementation of controls as well as their subsequent (yet varied) success rates has influenced a wider shift toward their re-legitimization within the core institutions of global economic governance, and the IMF in particular (Gallagher, 2011; Grabel, 2011). Although quite limited in scope, these normative evolutions suggest that G20 diplomacy does have some transformative potential.

A different ethos? The multilateralism of difference

The G20 has been severely criticized for its incapacity to promote a bold, unified vision. The loose and informal script of G20 diplomacy is no stranger to this outcome. US control in the G20, exhibited at first, has been eroded, with leadership more diffuse. The formalization of the Troika process and the trend that sees hosts putting greater emphasis on their policies of choice, as at Los Cabos with expansion of the G20 agenda toward inclusive and green growth, suggests that this evolution will continue. Given its institutional fragility and political fragmentation, the G20 cannot serve an apex role in terms of consensus formation and policy implementation. For instance, by the time of the Seoul summit in particular the G20 became caught up in a number of bitter disputes such as those over the ‘currency war’, both in terms of US charges of Chinese manipulation of the RMB and US quantitative easing, and global imbalances and the debate over current account targets.

At the same time, these threats to group cohesion should not be exaggerated. Rather than returning to the North–South polarization of the 1960s and 1970s, the pattern of tensions is messy and fragmented. In several summits to date with regard to specific economic initiatives, as on the stimulus versus austerity debate, the US has been outnumbered. Furthermore, overlapping cleavages have not been developed. On imbalances, China and Germany share positions. On resistance to bank taxes, Canada is joined by Australia and Japan as well as Mexico and the BRICS. On the problem of currency manipulation, Brazil has some of the same concerns as the US. In that sense, G20 governance may be representative of a wider ‘interregnum period’ within the international political economy during which the trajectory of the emergent order, including its parameters, is being shaped (Helleiner, 2010).

Prospectively, these relatively unusual diplomatic dynamics may suggest a distinctive ethos in the new G20 oligarchy, founded on a kind of ‘multilateralism of difference’. After centuries of one-sided Western domination under which dissent was suppressed, new voices are being heard in global governance. The G20 is probably the first forum to demonstrate a (limited) capacity to accommodate this new pluralism. By contrast, divides at the WTO have completely paralyzed the Doha Round, whereas the P3’s domination of the Security Council over Libya may very well have been the last time the BRICS caved in to them – witness Syria. All the while, G20 diplomacy may not always achieve the most substantive results, but it does allow for a much-needed and relatively functional dialogue. Herein lies, we would submit, the G20’s most promising transformative potential. However, as the next section argues, this potential also faces severe limitations.

‘… and something old’: reproducing oligarchic governance

In this section, we highlight three sets of practices that reproduce diplomatic patterns inherited from earlier eras with respect to the shaping of international society. We demonstrate that in terms of form the G20, commonly viewed as a innovative international practice, embeds: (a) self-appointed leadership; (b) arbitrary rules of membership; and (c) cooptation and discipline.

Self-appointed rulers

Contrary to what one might expect, the creation of the G20 was not animated by a new guard of rising powers. On the contrary, those in command were the same countries that have been leading for decades now – first and foremost the United States, aided by its inner circle of France and the United Kingdom, in particular. As Kirton (2013: 4), notes, the US grabbed ownership of the design from the start, with the first G20 summit ‘hosted and chaired’ in Washington. In preparation for the summit, US officials held private consultations with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, together with his finance minister Christine Lagarde and European Commission president José Manuel Barroso, as well as with UK prime minister Gordon Brown. At odds with the common image of new administrations discarding the practices of their predecessors, US President Obama maintained the Bush game plan. Control of the G20 was kept with the Anglo-American condominium through the first three summit meetings, with the UK (and Gordon Brown) hosting the second in London in April 2009 before returning the host function to the US at Pittsburgh in September 2009. In Pittsburgh, the US endorsed the G20 as the premier forum for global economic governance, and also crafted the hosting schedule of G20 summits though 2011.

Self-appointed leadership concerned not only which countries occupied the driver’s seat, but also what domestic institutions would be involved. Clearly, G20 reinforces existing trends of ‘executive multilateralism’ (Zurn, 2004) by which parliaments and other representative institutions are sidelined in foreign policy-making. Indeed, early observation of G20 highlighted the command and control ethos of the G20, not only in terms of membership but also with respect to its image as a leaders-centric concert of powers. The G20 – akin to the G7/8 – operates as an apex club of leaders (albeit an enlarged one including members from the South and also representatives from the international financial institutions and the European Union). Akin to earlier forms of oligarchic global governance, leaders met with only a few advisors (‘Sherpas’) to make decisions that had the capacity to have an impact on policy at a global level. The logic of the G20 places enormous responsibility on the heads of governments.

However, to a greater extent than traditional concerts, the G20 possesses a stronger delegative quality in which national bureaucrats and international organizations are expected to mobilize the requisite and often diverse follow-up. The focus on networking – while privileging the interaction among leaders – intends to allow spillover into a wide number of subsidiary and interconnected networks at both governmental and non-governmental levels. Instead of requiring an elaborate ‘bricks and mortar’ bureaucracy (or extensive secretariat), this model for an enhanced G20 is supposed to be selective and results-driven. The expectation was that silos would be broken down under the weight of top-down political pressures. Under this ‘network’ model the G20 offloaded many of its responsibilities to other bodies, most notably to the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the IMF. In doing so it has helped revive the IMF from its position of relative decline since the time of the Asian crisis in the late 1990s. The leadership exerted by the US and other Western powers in creating the G20 allowed them to reinforce existing levers of influence in global governance.

Arbitrary rules of membership

One striking feature of G20 diplomacy relates to the relative arbitrariness of membership criteria. In order to be successful, a club must remain exclusive and take its rivals down. Early on in the improvised process, at the initial stage of formation, the US agreed with the French on the need to privilege selected big rising states. The US saw a high degree of attractiveness in using the established G20 Finance structure because that model cut off the debate about who was in, while at the same time bringing in some longstanding US allies including Australia, Korea, Indonesia, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. In addition, this formula also cut out any possibility of the UN having a privileged role in the summit process. For their part, the French managed to ensure a substantive European Union presence at the G20. Using its extra seat as the president of the EU Council at the time of the Washington summit, Sarkozy also shuffled the deck by allowing Spain to substitute for France in this capacity – an opening Spain subsequently consolidated by situating itself as a ‘permanent guest’ in the G20. And, instead of using the seat allocated for its finance minister, France allocated that space to the prime minister of the Netherlands.

For all of its innovative quality, the G20 reproduced well-known politics of exclusion in global governance. From the original establishment of the G20 Finance, the criteria for membership took on an improvised if not arbitrary air. In a classic variation of informal ‘back of the envelope’ diplomacy, in 1999 Paul Martin (the finance minister of Canada) and Larry Summers (the Clinton nominee for treasury secretary) had put together a framework that constituted the basic ingredients of G20 Finance. The rationale for choosing members was quite clearly a mix of instrumentalism and personal preference. As acknowledged by Paul Martin, a quantitative assessment of the candidates was part, but not the only part, of the process: ‘I felt very strongly that [the G20 had to be made up of] the regional powers’, Martin states, and ‘Larry felt that [as well] and then he also had geopolitical concerns’. But these standard ingredients were not the only criteria in play: ‘I would love to say we sat down and ran the numbers on whose GDP was bigger, but we didn’t’ (quoted in Ibbitson and Perkins, 2010). A number of selections suggest more arbitrary concerns. In the choice of Indonesia over Thailand, the deciding factor was likely influence. The same is true with Saudi Arabia, although of course the Saudis were also close allies with the United States. Also interesting is the non-choice of Malaysia, which had imprisoned its finance minister, Anwar Ibrahim, or the selection of Argentina over Chile, despite the kudos given to the latter country for its impressive return to democracy and economic performance.

The arbitrariness of membership criteria also bumped into a number of wider regional sensitivities. Criticism of the G20 composition came from important regional groupings themselves. ASEAN argued for a formal seat at the table of the G20, as opposed to simply representation by its chair. In a similar manner, the AU complained vociferously from the outset about its status among the excluded with respect to the G20. At a crisis summit held in Tunis, hosted by the African Development Bank, Jean Ping, head of the African Union’s executive Commission, appealed to organizers of the G20 meeting to think of Africa’s right to be an active player in the process and ‘not to suffer, as always, the consequences of other people’s mistakes’ (quoted in Muiruri, 2008). Even the Norwegian Foreign Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, offered a robust critique of the G20, labeling it as ‘a grouping without international legitimacy’ or without a ‘mandate’ concerning ‘its functions’ (quoted in Spiegel, 2010). His prime objective was that the members of the Nordic Council – Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland – should share a rotating seat together with the Baltic States.

In response to this push, the G20 developed accommodative practices. The middle powers, notably South Korea, were especially flexible in their hosting function. One example about how new types of innovation could be initiated came with the rapid move by Korea of new forms of regional outreach – embracing ASEAN in particular – prior to the November 2010 Seoul summit. At the ASEAN Leader’s Summit in Hanoi, in April 2010, the leaders’ statement highlighted that ‘ASEAN strongly believes that it can contribute to the deliberations of the G20 through continued participation of the ASEAN Chair and the ASEAN Secretary General in the future G20 Summits’ (quoted in Rana, 2010: 12). At the June 2010 Summit in Toronto, the ASEAN Chair and Secretary General were allowed to participate. Following a different model, South Africa has implemented a form of indirect representation via the regional ‘Committee of Ten’ finance ministers (or C10) and governors of central banks under the auspices of the African Development Bank, the Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union Commission. The scope of the membership for this committee is impressive – including as it does some important countries (Egypt and Nigeria) that were not included in the G20. Notwithstanding their inclusiveness, however, these various initiatives remain largely ad hoc.

Beyond these new forms of improvisation, the G20 has settled on a formula for non-member participation, enabling the summit host to invite up to five guests. However, these innovations are never free from complications. A case in point is the treatment of the Netherlands at the Toronto G20. Having initially signaled that the Dutch would not be invited, Canada relented and allowed the Netherlands in with a cluster of other countries (Ethiopia, Malawi and Vietnam) implicitly under the banner of regional representativeness. Any political or diplomatic advantage gained by this supplementary move, however, was offset by the problematic logic of letting in another EU claimant. Instead of lending credence to the notion that the G20 represented a shift of global governance for a world that was realigning its power and normative foundations, it reinforced the image of the G20 as having an arbitrary ‘club’ design.

In subsequent meetings, the logic of subtracting at least some EU representation has been acknowledged not only by Korea as the host of the 2010 G20 summit but also Mexico at the 2012 Los Cabos meeting. With the formula negotiated by the Sherpas in place, the door was opened to Ethiopia, Malawi, Vietnam and Singapore as the representatives of regional organizations, but closed to further EU representation beyond the case of Spain. In justifying the introduction of the ‘G20 plus five’ approach, the Korean preparatory committee explicitly stated that this decision had been made because ‘we finally agreed that we needed to have a better geographical balance’ (quoted in Cho, 2010). Building on this logic, Mexico invited Chile, Colombia, Benin and Cambodia, as well as Spain.

The ad hoc and informal nature of G20 diplomatic practices remain contested in terms of how much it cut into the sense of hierarchy. With regard to working procedures, the status quo is not challenged completely, with the order of opening commentary being conducted in accordance with formal protocol; for example, with Bush asking the King of Saudi Arabia to speak first at the Washington DC meeting. In many ways, the informality that characterizes G20 diplomatic practices reinforces the oligarchic nature of global governance.

Cooptation and discipline

The sustained image of the US being in charge of the G20 opens up the question about whether other countries were coopted into a process that constituted a new forum of old voices. Such an interpretation is enhanced by the mix of ‘going along’ by China, combined with signs of frustration with the process by other countries, notably Brazil. What stands out in the G20 dynamics in terms of power transition is the lack of material quid pro quos by China in attending the Washington summit. Chinese president Hu Jintao was the first world leader to accept the invitation (Paulson, 2010: 375) and well-publicized pronouncements by premier Wen Jiabao reinforced the impression that China was ready and willing to take on a considerable amount of responsibility in international coordination.

As in other areas of global politics, though, the image of China’s subordination should not be taken too far. President Hu Jintao was given considerable pride of place at the Washington DC summit, including a warm embrace by Bush as he entered to attend the working dinner on the first night of the forum, a bilateral meeting, and the positioning beside the US president both in formal settings and the official ‘family’ picture. This institutional embrace –without apparent conditionalities – also gave rise to speculation about the formation of some form of a G2 within the G20 (Garrett, 2010). In contrast, Brazil voiced some frustration at Western control of the G20. These frustrations were exacerbated by the explicit decision of the US to privilege the Bretton Woods IFIs as opposed to the UN. Although Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon did attend the Washington G20, some considerable distance appeared between the UN and the G20 approach on the eve of the initial Summit. Organizationally, the main alternative focal point became the UN Conference on the Global Economic Crisis at the end of June 2009.

Despite evident signs of this type of frustration, the advantages that the invited members of the G20 received in terms of status trumped substantive disagreement; and, in any case, the ethos of hanging together (rather than hanging alone) amidst the financial shocks militated against unruly behavior. As Paul Martin (2004) put it, the G20 is attractive because ‘peer pressure is often a very effective way to force decisions. We believe a similar approach among leaders could help crack some of the toughest issues facing the world. We need to get the right mix of countries in the same room, talking without a set script.’ Socialization and discipline often work hand in hand. Voluntary and limited compliance was obtained from the BRICS, for instance, which appeared willing to buy into the G20, with little sign of open divergence on norms. Particularly noteworthy was the pass these countries gave to the US especially, and the West more generally, about the blame for the crisis.

Outside the BRICs a more authentic and longer-term cluster of support for the G20 existed among the middle powers, which reaped many benefits from being coopted into the club. Most noticeably, Australia’s championing of the elevation of the G20 meshed with the strong support for the forum by South Korea. Korea and Australia both worked hard after the April 2009 London Summit to institutionalize the G20. A joint op-ed column that Lee Myong-bak and Kevin Rudd (2009) contributed to the Financial Times urging the G20 leaders to agree on a framework for macroeconomic policy coordination in Pittsburg was one of the highlights of their joint action. Other middle powers, including Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey, also gained the prize of membership in what Rudd called the ‘top table’ where the ‘the decisions on the future of the global economy’ are taken (quoted in Shanahan, 2009). With regard to substance this cluster of countries was more committed to the rules – and disciplines – of the existing global system than the BRICS.

In a much more restricted fashion, the G20 also sought to coopt non-state actors into its revamped form of oligarchic governance. According to some commentators, the state-centric response to the global financial crisis via leader-level diplomacy can be viewed as a ‘rebuke’ to the trend emphasized in recent years of the prominence of trans-governmental networks and a diminished role for the state, as well as of the ability of trans-national financial networks to govern themselves effectively without a regulatory role for the state (Pan, 2010: 244). The state-centrism of the G20 is reflected in the distance between the summit process and NGOs especially and civil society more generally. The Washington meeting was insulated from societal input. The barriers to entry for NGOs/civil society remained quite high. Even big global CSOs such as Oxfam were reduced to issuing statements through the media on what they hoped to see from the meetings. They did not have enough time to do the advance lobbying of the Sherpas nor to do the preparatory policy work. Access for civil society generally and big CSOs in particular was made far easier in London. Moreover, umbrella groups such as GCAP were far more advanced in their technical preparations. The June 2010 Toronto G20 revealed the capacity of militancy to move to the forefront of the G20-civil relationship.

With this experience in mind, it is significant that the November 2010 Seoul G20 tilted back towards an expanded policy agenda, with more access for delivery-oriented civil society to influence the outcome. Approximately 150 representatives from civil society met via a Civil G20 in Incheon, Korea on 14–15 October. CSOs positioned themselves not only as the champions of an expanded development agenda (with an emphasis on financing for development/MDGs and a rights based approach for development), but also as filling the perceived gaps of legitimacy in the G20. Furthermore, the meeting constituted a procedural breakthrough due to the presence and active participation of so many Sherpas and sous-Sherpas, including those from India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa but not China or Brazil. However, in wanting to manage the G20 in as seamless a manner as possible, the Korean hosts were anxious to ensure that resistance-oriented elements either from abroad or in their own militant trade unions were not able to use the media center as a site of protest. This overarching concern for security was accentuated by the number of other restrictions placed on the entry of civil society representatives – particularly those taking part in a Peoples’ Forum – from gaining visas and entry into South Korea.

The Cannes and Los Cabos G20s suggested a move away from exclusionary tactics toward cooptation. President Sarkozy personally met CSO representatives prior to the Cannes summit and highlighted the need for innovative finance tools to generate additional revenue to meet developmental objectives. Big CSOs such as World Vision were given privileged access. This dynamic was replicated in large part at Los Cabos. CSOs not only had ample access to the media centre but also were consulted in an unprecedented fashion with daily briefings by the Mexican Sherpa office during the summit. However, the critical fact remains that these practices, just like that of inviting special guests or of regional consultation, are ad hoc responses to the widespread charge that the G20 reproduces the politics of exclusion in global governance. What is more, in the G20 inclusion often works hand in hand with discipline, thus reinforcing the oligarchic nature of global governance. Such an interpretation is accentuated by the use of inclusionary mechanisms by Russia in the hosting of the 2013 St Petersburg G20. The heavy hand of discipline over the G20 process by the government of President Putin went hand in hand with impressive signs of inclusion with Civil Society (C), Business (B), Youth (Y), and Labour (L) 20 components.

Conclusion

This paper sought to demonstrate the added value of a practice perspective in explaining change and continuity in diplomatic practices. While our approach would apply to any organization, it is a particularly good fit with the G20, which is, through and through, a practice-based forum. The G20 does not rest on a constitutional treaty; its procedures are not written or formalized. In that sense the only mechanism for change is the evolution of practice (and precedent). In terms of detail, the bundle of practices making up the G20 offers a rich laboratory of how states – and their leaders – operate under conditions of stress. Under pressure from the shocks of the global financial crisis, the old establishment could show some impressive capability of procedural adjustment. However, the overall assessment of the impact of the G20 bundle of practices in terms of politics remains limited. If the shock of the global financial crisis proved a dramatic catalyst for the elevation of the G20 to the leaders level, with the inclusion of a much wider set of states, the diplomatic practices rested far more on the familiar than on unpredictability in terms of repertoire. If states beyond the traditional G7 establishment were brought into an elevated G20 with attendant status enhancement, there remained a reluctance to share ownership with major rising powers. To be sure, the states that took instrumental advantage of the G20 were not the BRICS but the group of middle states, a trend that is punctuated by the hosting function by Australia in 2014 and Turkey in 2015. For their part the BRICS participated in the G20 with a cautious approach, keeping other options open, most notably through the BRICS stand-alone summit process.

What stand out from this close analysis, therefore, are the limitations and not the advances with respect to global governance. The G7 nations demonstrated a skillful adaptive quality in their modes of conducting diplomacy, expanding some inclusionary space but not overturning the familiar rules of the game. The new players accepted entry – and recognition – as members of a recalibrated global hierarchy, with no open vocal dissent about the reproductive features of the G20 but not buying into the G20 as their exclusive option. While the G20 merits attention for its layers of rich details, as a bundle of practices the forum reveals more about how interactions reinforce divides rather than new forms of collective enterprise.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Jean-Philippe Thérien as well as the other contributors to this special issue for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Author biographies

Andrew F Cooper is Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo. He is the author of Diplomatic Afterlives (Polity, 2014); the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 2013); and co-author, The Group of Twenty (G20) (Routledge, 2012).

Vincent Pouliot is Associate Professor and William Dawson Scholar in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. He is also the Director of the Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS) and a Research Fellow at CERI-Sciences Po. He is the author of International Security in Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and the co-editor of Diplomacy and the Making of World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and International Practices (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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