The paper presents a review of a flow of “accountability” reports made public in the G8/G20 process
since 2008, the total number of which reached 67 for both institutions. The review looked into how these
reports addressed the four accountability aspects of transparency, consultation, evaluation and correction.
Several features of the reports were singled out as proxies for the respective qualities. Provision of
the evidence base and data presented for each of the members rather than in an aggregated format enhance
transparency. Recommendations provided by the reports’ author promote consultation. Scorings
or ratings give clear signals of the evaluation results. Each report was assessed against the set of these
three functions with one score for transparency, one score for evaluation, and one score for consultation.
As the correction is the prerogative of the affecting actors, reports were not assessed on this merit.
The author concludes that the answer to the four questions of 1) how transparently G8 and G20
pursue the delivery of the global public good within their mission; 2) how consultative the institutions’
policy processes in respect of providing that global public good are; 3) how well their performance is
evaluated in regard to furthering that global public good; 4) how well they correct their shortcomings in
promoting the particular global public good is: “not enough”. Emphasizing that it is not the quantity but
the quality of the accountability mechanisms which should be addressed, the paper concludes with a set
of recommendations aimed at helping to build a pluralistic accountability system.