As mentioned in the last blog post I was in Princeton revelling in the company of colleagues on the question of liberal internationalism – its present and future.  Not content with such a feast of expert views, this last week I travelled to Chicago to continue various dialogues.

The Chicago meetings were not coincidental.  Chicago is soon to host leaders for global summitry.  First there is the G8 Leaders Summit (well it at least it had been planned for Chicago but is now relocated to Camp David) and then the NATO Leaders Summit. The G8 Leaders Summit – the 38th in a series (if you count G7 as well) – will now take place on May 18th and 19th.  It will be followed immediately by the NATO Leaders Summit in Chicago on May 20-21st.  Well there you are: back to back leaders summits.

In part, I suspect, to capture the summit setting and media focus, a second one-day gathering was held by the the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, on Rise of the BRICS.   Rich Williamson the senior fellow project head called together a group of experts to Chicago as he had earlier in New York.  On this occasion Rich had the experts examine the international financial system, economic growth, trade and finance and energy security.

Then on May 10th and 11th the Stanley Foundation, the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern and the Global Summitry Project from the Munk School of Global Affairs put on the conference  “The Apex of Influence – How Summit Meetings Build Multilateral Cooperation” (by the way you may view the entire Conference at fora.tv).  The Apex of Influence Conference was designed to both examine the big picture questions of global summitry definition and evaluate success/failure and also to look more directly at the upcoming key global summit meetings – holding panels on the G8, the G20, NATO and then an examination of the financial crisis in Europe and its consequences for European unity and indeed for global governance.

The “Apex of Influence” Conference included a host of experts and proved to be an illuminating series of panels.  I am going to divide my remarks – looking first at what constitutes – and therefore what doesn’t constitute the scope of global summitry and then in a follow-on post I want to examine the impact of the G8 meeting at Camp David and possibly say something about evaluating success/failure for global summits.

In trying to tease out the contours of global summitry, we created two panels – bookends so to speak with a panel that commenced the conference and then a panel that concluded discussions for this conference.  We were very pleased to include both experts, officials and former officials in our two panels: “What Makes a Summit More Than a Photo-Op?” and “Fair Standards for Summit Success/Failure – Keeping Sight of Diplomatic, Political and Bureaucratic Realities”.

Dan Drezner from Tufts and foreignpolicy.com and David Shorr from TSF led off.  Dan in particular was good about trying to provide a precise definition of global summitry.  As you can see Dan focused on the institutions of global governance that in his mind make up global summitry.  His definition:

A problem solving forum that includes the regular participation of heads of government.

This institutional definition is useful.  It sweeps in a number of forum including:

• routinized gatherings – the G8 and the G20 of course but also APEC, the Summit of the Americas, the nuclear security summit, NATO and ASEAN;
• instances where leaders frequently show up – e.g. when leaders gather annually for the opening of the General Assembly;
• large annual gatherings where some leaders frequently attended, e.g. the World Economic Forum (Davos);

The definition and the  instances cited do help distinguish global summitry from the broader category of global governance.  Thus, annual meetings where leaders do not attend e.g., the Fall and Spring meetings of the IMF for instance are not included.  Other routinized meetings are excluded as well especially those where transgovernmental regulatory agencies meet with officials including public and private regulators but not with leaders, e.g., the FSB, the BCPS, IOSCO,.

The definition provided by Dan is very helpful but the institutional focus may in the end be both too broad and too narrow. In the final session I gave a definition that was more functionally focused, which picks up on Dan’s “problem solving” aspect in his definition.  Thus, the definition for global summitry that I gave was:

The political architecture in which the organization and execution of global politics and policy take place.

This more functional approach targets outputs as well as actors.  Thus, the gathering of leaders at the annual General Assembly opening would fail to qualify as would Davos.  On the other hand it would take the broader element offered by architecture into account including  ministers, ministry officials, working parties, IO (International Organizations) and the vast structure of transgovernmental regulatory networks that get tasked to do things by those up the governmental hierarchy and that find their way to Reports, etc., that leaders then discuss, ratify or request further work.  Dan’s leader focus approach to global summitry, though useful, does separate out the “worker bees” from those at the top.  I see global summitry as a an authority decision mechanism that links together this complex of leaders, officials, representatives – public and private and their agencies, boards and organizations – my so-called “Iceberg Theory of Global Governance”.  It is messy and certainly not “your mother’s international decision structure” – but it has the value of reflecting the politics and policy for today’s global governance.

The question then is global summitry successful?  How can we know?

Image Credit:  Wikimedia Commons – Chicago Landscape