2014. vol. 9. No. 4

The world needs an effective, functioning Group of Twenty (G20). After an early phase as a forum of finance ministers and central bank governors, the body was elevated to leaders’ level in order to steer the apparatus of global governance through times of great uncertainty from 2008 onwards. This period of uncertainty has been characterised by a peculiarly complex mix of financial crisis, shifting economic power and growing environmental threat. The G20’s record since 2008 is not without achievement – for example, it acted swiftly to stimulate the global economy sufficiently to avoid a recession becoming a depression – but it nevertheless remains disappointing overall, failing to break out of the trap of supposed ‘growth friendly fiscal consolidation’.  The meeting held in St Petersburg in September 2013 was hijacked by the Syria crisis and contributed substantially to the current dominant view of the G20 as an increasingly ineffective agency of global governance. This places great pressure on Australia to deliver a successful summit in November 2014. It is also apparent that the G20 now needs substantial institutional reform in order to reduce the “occasionality” of its current mode of operation and embed it more comprehensively into the work of other major global economic organisations and the activities of global civil society. 

Since the financial crash of 2008 monetary policy has been in a state of stasis – a condition in which things are not changing, moving, or progressing, but rather appear frozen. Interest rates have been frozen at low levels for a considerable period time. Inflation targets have consistently been missed, through phases of both overshooting and undershooting. At the same time, a variety of unconventional monetary policies involving asset purchases and liquidity provision have been pursued. Questions have been raised from a variety of sources, including various international organizations, covering distinct BIS and IMF positions about the continuing validity and sustainability of existing monetary policy frameworks, not least because inflation targeting has ceased to act as reliable guide for policy for over six years. Despite this central banks have been reluctant to debate moving to a new formal policy framework. This article argues that as an apex policy forum only the G20 leaders’ summits has the necessary political authority to call their central banks to account and initiate a wide ranging debate on the future of monetary policy. A case is made for convening a monetary policy working group to discuss a range of positions, including those of the BIS and IMF, and to make recommendations, because the G20 has been most effective in displaying international financial leadership, when leaders have convened and made use of specialist working groups. 

This article analyzes the recent G20 initiatives on taxation, more precisely on “base erosion and profit shifting” (BEPS) in the area of corporate taxation and the new G20 norm of automatic exchange of information (AEoI) with regard to foreign accounts. After having reflected on the special relationship between the G20 and the OECD, the discussion proceeds through the lens of compliance, accountability and legitimacy. In terms of compliance, the G20 is still in the phase of delivering as a group on recent promises with regard to global standard setting. Compliance to these standards by G20 member states (and third countries) is expected to start in the coming years. As to accountability, the G20 and OECD already have ample experience with the peer-review process and public reporting on the G20/OECD standard of information exchange upon request. For AEoI and BEPS the OECD will be designated as the prime mechanism to monitor compliance as well. Both initiatives, which are attempts at universal governance, suffer from legitimacy issues, more precisely because the G20 and OECD exclude most developing countries. Moreover, the policy outputs are not necessarily adjusted to developing countries’ needs and interests. Since a few years, both G20 and OECD attempt to address this issue through institutional fixes, extensive consultations with developing countries and modifications at the level of content. 

The cumulative effects of a significantly changing climate are projected to have disastrous implications on the world’s natural habitats, and along with that, are projected to drastically increase the rate and likelihood of violent conflict globally, particularly in high-density, urban, poverty hotspots.  Limiting the effects of a changing climate is thus critical in influencing multiple societal goals including equitable sustainable development, human health, biodiversity, food security and access to reliable energy sources.

This paper argues that the G7/8 has led global climate governance in ways other international environmental institu­tions have largely failed to do. It has done so largely by placing climate protection at the forefront of its policy objectives, alongside economic, health, energy and security goals, and reaching consensus repeatedly amongst its leaders on the impor­tance of stabilizing emissions through energy efficiency, conservation, investment and technological innovation. Moreover, this chapter argues that the summit’s predominant capability, its constricted participation, democratic convergence and political cohesion – as well as the combined effects of global shocks – have all had positive impacts on the G7/8’s success in mitigating climate change.

Following a detailed process-tracing exercise over the summit’s 40-year history in which clear surges and retreats on global climate governance are outlined, this paper concludes by assessing the G7/8’s accountability record on climate mitigation and outlines a set of prescriptive recommendations, allowing for the delivery of a more tangible, coherent, results-driven accountability process for global climate governance. 

Innovative, integrative, local, and business-inclusive governance for food, agriculture, nutrition, health and wealth can be strengthened through informal global institutions led by the Group of Eight (G8) and the Group of Twenty (G20). Their regular summits include the most important countries’ leaders and have a comprehensive, synergistic agenda, and impulse, as well as the flexibility and authority to link issues, factors, and actors in new ways. The G8 has increasingly addressed food, agriculture, nutrition, health, and the link among them, involved business, civil society, and low-income countries, and made decisions intended to affect the lives of the poor in many locales. The G20 has contributed to some degree in such ways too. Of particular promise is the G8’s New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition, launched in May 2012, and the G20’s AgResults program built on commitments made in June 2010. Yet there remains much that both institutions can and should do to meet the combined, complex, food-health-wealth challenge now confronting the global community, before the next food crisis comes. 

Health is an indispensable public good. At the national level it has been manifested in the BRICS governments’ commitment to scale up health financing, though to a different degree. At the global level it is evidenced by the international community progress on the three health-related Millennium Development Goals. However despite successes in fighting infectious diseases, child and maternal mortality, old risks persist and new challenges emerge, resulting from the 2008 financial crisis, current slack economic growth and growing economic inequality. The BRICS face these challenges and have begun cooperation on health issues. It is important that they build their emerging health agenda recognizing these challenges, committing to develop sustainable policy solutions, and cooperating with other actors to promote effective health governance for change. To explore how the BRICS contribute towards global health governance the article first considers the BRICS cooperation (its institutionalization, discourse, and engagement with other international institutions) with a focus on health issues. The authors then look into the BRICS members’ national health systems, challenges and goals. The article concludes with expectations of the BRICS future health agenda and its implications for global governance.

Why do the Group of Eight (G8) members approve its members’ use of material sanctions in some regional conflicts but military force in others?2 As an informal security institution composed of major democratic powers from North America, Europe and Asia, the G8 has often chosen sanctions, notably on Iran in 1980, Afghanistan in 1980, Sudan in 2004, North Korea in 2006, and Syria in 2011. It has increasingly chosen military force, notably in Iraq in 1990, Kosovo in 1999, the USSR over Afghanistan in 2001, Libya in 2011, and Mali in 2013. Yet the G8’s choice, initiation, commitment, compliance, implementation and effectiveness of both sanctions and force has varied. Force was chosen and used effectively only in the post cold war period, primarily where the target was close to southern Europe. A high relative-capability predominance of G8 members over the target country strongly produces the G8’s choice of force, but a high, direct, deadly threat from the target state to G8 countries does not. Geographic proximity and the connectivity coming from the former colonial relationship between G8 members and the target country only weakly cause the G8 to choose force. Support from the most relevant regional organization – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – and support from the United Nations in the form of an authorizing UN Security Council or General Assembly resolution have a strong, positive effect on the G8’s choice of force. Accompanying accountability mechanisms from the G8 itself have a variable impact, as leaders’ iteration of the issue at subsequent summits does not increase compliance with G8 commitments on force-related cases, but their foreign ministers’ follow up does to a substantial degree.