So is the challenge to legitimacy and the inability of the G7/8 today to solve key global problems – global finance, and climate change but two key problems – leading the Great powers to welcome enlargement? No. That’s not it exactly. The current enlargement plans – if that is what the HP process is (more on that in a moment) – appears to have been built on earlier enlargement efforts of the G7/8. In fact the G7/8 as great power organization, is itself a product of enlargement, since its initiation in 1975 was 5 and today is somewhat imperfectly the G8.

But enlargement models have periodically arisen. Thus, much praise has accompanied the emergence – at the Finance ministerial level – of the G20 created after the Asian financial crisis. In this forum China, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa Continue reading →