[Editor: Apologies to all for the lengthy silence. But graduation of my older daughter took precedence.  And let me just say that Princeton University knows how to conduct a graduation. Believe me!]

Every rescue effort brings momentary relief to world markets.  Within days, however, the  good feeling drains away. Worry returns and leaders then describe and urge the next step to solve the crisis.  We move from Greece, to Spain and now to Italy and then back.  The Eurozone crisis continues – at a low boil – but a boil nonetheless.

As significant time has passed on the Eurozone crisis, we are now faced with yet another G20 Leaders Summit in the midst of a Euro crisis.  In fact the Greece national elections will occur just before the convening of the Leaders Summit – shades of Cannes all over again.  And so the Los Cobos G20 Leaders Summit faces the fate that we experienced with the G20 in Cannes and the G8 in Camp David – a crisis in Europe that is likely to occupy and distract officials and G20 Leaders occupying, we presume, much of Leaders face time notwithstanding the agenda prescribed by the host country.

We are even more likely at the conclusion of this Summit – as opposed to earlier ones –  to receive a round of media condemnation for the distraction from the agenda, the lack of outcomes for the Summit and no doubt a round scolding for the Leaders’ inability to solve the crisis.

And at one level who can blame the media.  This slow motion Euro crisis results in each global summitry meeting “kicking the can down the road” on whatever agenda the host has prepared for the summit.  The problem is that the excuse wears thin after several Summits and it is unlikely that the media will be placated that the next G20 Summit is likely to be more productive – after so much delay – not to mention that the next Summit could be well be over a year away somewhere – and hosted in Russia.

To parry such “negativism” leaders and officials have begun to urge the G20 to not let the agenda to be set aside by the “hurly burly” of the European crisis.  Thus, for example, German officials have been urging a focus beyond Europe – now that of course is hardly a surprise since a crisis focus can only lead to greater pressure on Germany to take bolder action to end this seemingly “never-ending story”.  Thus Reuters reported that senior German officials urged that:

The euro zone will surely be a topic, but as Europeans we also want to talk about other themes related to the global economy that go beyond the euro zone, for example budget consolidation in the United States, currency flexibility in China and structural reforms in emerging markets. … We think when talking about global growth it is important to look beyond the euro zone, not to the discussion to Europe.

German officials also expect to see action – long promised – to provide for the strengthening of the global economy over the medium-to-longer term, but still not likely to provide concrete stimulus plans by the G20 Leaders.

Mexican President Calderon too has spoken out expressing his hope that this action plan will form an important deliverable for this Summit:

(The action plan) will not only include measures to confront and resolve the European crisis, which is ultimately an economic crisis, but will also put forward concrete measures on public policy in key areas in the realms of tax, finance and monetary policy, which will help to boost global growth in the long term.

Chinese officials have also spoken out for the need to tackle not just the European crisis but make progress on on financial reform and push forward on international financial governance reform.  Brazil has raised the spectre of even more conflict suggesting that it may cap its overall assistance to the IMF fund if there are not firmer efforts to address the quota and share issues – though Brazil is aware, as are the others, that the US Administration is not prepared to amend the IMF formula by way of legislative changes till after the November US election.

Forecasts are thus not bright for the Los Cabos gathering.  The transition of the G20 Summit to a permanent meeting targeted on more medium-term issues – whether financial regulatory reform or on macroeconomic issues – seems to have faltered.  It may be inevitable that leaders will be drawn to, or pushed, to deal with the issue of the moment.  But the inability to get out from under the European crisis over an extended period of time has eroded, or is eroding, a sense of  effectiveness of this Summit.  This is not good for global governance overall.

As my colleague Dan Drezner says –  “Am I missing something”.

Image Credit:  Government of Mexico

Observers of global summitry recognize how difficult it is “kill off” a summitry settings.  In 2009 when the United States was eager to promote the newly minted permanent “high table” of economic global governance – the G20 Leaders Summit – there were whispers – unnamed official sources –  that the US was encouraging the “fading away” of the G7/8.

Two problems with that scenario appeared.  First, a number of the “smaller” members of the club – Japan, Italy and Canada – clung to the decades-old G7.  They declared it more informal and intimate in contrast to the  stiffness and formality of the new club.  And the G7 was a setting where these less powerful members held greater sway.  Look at poor Japan.  In the G7 Japan was the only Asian country; but in the G20 Japan was but one of 6 (and yes I do include Australia in this Asian grouping).

The second problem was quick to appear as well.  Notwithstanding early Administration enthusiasm for the enlarged group that now included China, Brazil and India, it proveed to be very heavy lifting to move to consensus and agreement in the enlarged high table of global governance.  Look at the protracted discussion over global imbalances.  American officials began to back away from their earlier enthusiasm and determined regicide and began to suggest a rather more a la carte approach to global summitry – looking at the forum likely to achieve forward movement and to favor that gathering for the specific goal.

So the G7/8 didn’t go away and there was frequent reference to the warm like mindedness that the G7 at least represented.  Here was a club with similar norms and values that could focus on a goal and achieve forward progress in overcoming the collective action problem that plagues global governance.

Well, how’s that view holding up?  Not so well.  So, there we were with about as intimate and informal a setting as you could achieve – Camp David – and what we got was – very little.  And why.  Well, there was deep contention between Germany and the rest over the question of the resolution of the eurozone crisis.  The officials struggled long into the night but the Camp David Declaration failed to deliver.  No agenda – no targets – but strong rhetoric “Our imperative is to promote growth and jobs” and:

Against this background, we commit to take all necessary steps to strengthen and reinvigorate our economies and combat financial stress, recognizing that the right measures are not the same for each of us.

Read that as  – We agree to disagree over growth and austerity.   And as the Multilateralist, David Bosco, chronicled recently in his post “Can the Obama administration get the G8 back to basics?” the US sherpa, Michael Froman turned the agenda in to a grab bag of global governance issues:

But Froman then proceeded to outline an agenda that included a remarkable number of things under the sun, including Syria, Iran, Burma, Afghanistan, energy security, the Eurozone crisis, the Arab Spring, and food security. The scattershot agenda is a reminder of how much the forum has changed from its original economic focus.

So the “like-minded”  – what a number of the original G7 had pinpointed as a peculiarly relevant aspect of this gathering – failed to prove its value.  Sorry global summitry is hard! And whether states are democratic or not provides no guarantee of achieving success.  It remains unclear what the G7 forum, let alone the G8, is all about other than a caucus of states drawn from the larger G20. It might then make greater sense to hold this meeting at an extended meeting time of the G20 – two days plus – rather than one for the G20.  And eliminate the separate time for the G8.  Global Summitry is too precious to squander – like-mindedness or not.

Image Credit: Xinhua/AFP – G8 Summit

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

[Editors Note:  This post is somewhat long – too long –  my apologies, as I am attempting to describe the meaning of ‘Global Summitry’.  The explanation follows.]

It was the receipt of a very informative piece by Mexico’s Minister of It was the receipt of a very informative piece by Mexico’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa-Cantellano that got me thinking about success and effectiveness in global governance.  We are closing in on another G20 Leaders Summit – this Los Cabos in June – hosted by our Mexican colleagues.  This will be the seventh Leaders Summit since its inauguration with the global financial crisis in November 2008 in Washington.  As one of the Editors of the soon to be launched ejournal – Global Summitry – look for it! –I am fortunate to be in possession of an upcoming article from the Mexican Foreign Minister.  I am not about to ‘spill the beans’ here – but stay tuned for its appearance and also possibility of further examination of the role of Mexico as the host of the G20 summit.  But receiving that first article got me to thinking about the progress of the G20 specifically and in fact more generally global summitry.

This original impulse to examine the progress of global summitry was further encouraged by several upcoming conferences in Chicago – the first organized by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs – I’ve already commented on the New York Workshop in the recent post “Strange Members“.  It will be held on May 8th. The next conference – commencing on May 10th is organized by the Stanley Foundation, happily a frequent partner with us at the Munk School of Global Affairs and additionally in this case the Roberta Buffet Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern.  In the “shadow” of the G8 Leaders Summit – though the President very inconveniently switched the venue to Camp David  – and the Leaders NATO meeting, the partners organized a Conference entitled “The Apex of Influence – How Summit Meetings Build Multilateral Cooperation”.  By the way you will be able to livestream the proceedings of this conference – if you are so inclined at fora.tv.  Join us virtually if you cannot be with us in Chicago.  The topic directly raises the question of global summitry health. And a quick read of the conference agenda will identify as an early panelist – our colleague Dan Drezner from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.  You need not wonder any further why Dan raised the question of summitry success/failure in his recent post at Foreignpolicy.com.

So I propose to do two things here.  First, I wanted to examine the scope of what we at the Munk School refer to as ‘global summitry’.  Is it different/the same as global governance – the now accepted term – I think – for what the international relations types generally referred to in the past as  ‘multilateralism’? And does the addition of ‘global’ alter significantly the scope of inquiry?  And then what I want to do – as the title suggest is do a bit of ‘temperature taking’ on the matter.

My effort to describe the scope of global summitry and distinguish it from global governance is enmeshed today in a strong and loud debate over the changing power distribution among the leading states of the international system and indeed in the overall shape of the international architecture as a result of that changing power equation.  A ‘hot’ and continuing debate rages over whether the United States is in decline and whether it is fading as the hegemonic leader in global politics.  Linked to this decline debate is the ‘Rise of the Rest’ and the consequence for governance of both US decline and the rise of the emerging market countries, especially China but also Brazil and India and occasionally throwing in Russia and South Africa.  At the one end is Charlie Kupchan at Georgetown who in his recent book, No One’s World: The West, The Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn determines the west is declining including, possibly especially, the United States and that the Rise of the Rest will end the current liberal internationalism order as those rising powers will be unwilling to adopt the norms and rules that US hegemony created and shaped after World War II.  The outcome of such a change will be that there will not be a single power there to replace the leadership of the United States, nor will there be defined ‘rules of the game’ for states in the global order. By implication disorder will reign.

Now firmly in the debate over decline, rise and transformation is Princeton’s John Ikenberry. John acknowledges the decline of the United States (see his Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order) but believes that Rise of the Rest will remain attracted to, or committed to, the current order – capitalism, open markets, rule of law, etc., Liberal internationalism will continue to frame the political order in some significant fashion.  As the title implies there may be a crisis but if there is, it is a crisis of US leadership not of liberal internationalism.  And of course there is Robert Kagan of Brookings, at the other end – his recent book, The World America Made – who suggests that the declinism thesis is well, overdrawn and that the United States will remain the continuing leader, or it better for the sake of order.

Now Dan Drezner in a broad-ranging review of Kupchan – not to mention some of the variants authored by others in the May/June issue of National Interest – places the variants of the current global order debate before us this way:

• Power is diffusing from the United States to developing countries;
• Power is diffusing from states to non-state actors; and
• As a result of the bullet points above, global governance is going to be horrible for quite some time

In the opening of the recent special issue of The National Interest on crisis of the old order titled, “Crisis of the Old Order” Brent Scowcroft the former national-security adviser to President Ford and then to George H.W. Bush suggests this sharp picture of the changing international political order:

We are struggling with institutions and practices of an Old World when the Old World is fading.

How then do we best describe the current architecture of the international political order?  How does it operate? And who are the principal actors and what are the drivers that describe its operation – and ultimately its success or failure?  There is little question that the old order is changing – but how?

The concept of global governance really took off with the end of the Cold War.  This sudden revolution in the international political order is the exclamation point in the evolution of the geopolitical landscape of the international system.  There were, and are, both analytic and practical, or real-world reasons for the emergence of global governance discourse.  On the analytic side the demise of the Soviet Union completely altered the shape of the international political order.  As Michael Barnet and Raymond Duvall wrote in their edited volume Power in Global Governance in 2005:

The Cold War was not only a description of a bipolar system; it also represented a mode of organizing the analysis and practice of international politics.  With the end of the Cold War, the issue became what would and should take its place.  For many, global governance represented a way of organizing international politics in a more inclusive and consensual manner.  … Alongside the eclipse of the Cold War was the emergence of globalization.  Although globalization had various dimensions, a unifying claim was that intensifying transnational and interstate connections requires regulatory mechanisms – governance, although not a government  – at a global level.

That last comment by the authors is telling.  Global governance language initially evoked concern among many international relations experts that the in a post Cold War world the political order that was being described by analysts was moving to global government.  US scholars in particular stuck rather overlong to “multilateralism”.  But slowly the language of global governance assumed something of primacy in international relations discourse.  As Margaret Karns and Karen Mingst in their text International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance in 2010 suggested:

Thus global government is not global government; it is not a single world order; it is not a top-down, hierarchical structure of authority.  It is the multilevel collection of governance-related activities, rules and mechanisms, formal and formal, public and private, existing in the world today.

Many who have come to examine global governance have focused particularly on its non-hierarchical dimensions and on the informal structures that have emerged.  They have emphasized non-state actors in many varieties including individuals.  While global summitry acknowledges – embraces even – the flattening of authority structures, the state and institutions of the state remain at the heart of global summitry.  But as Princeton’s Anne-Marie Slaughter suggests in her examination of governmental organizations and networks, the state does not disappear but it does often find itself “disaggregating into its component institutions.”

Thus global summitry remains focused on state institutions and its numerous variations.  It consciously eschews, however, a focus on just traditional formal treaty-based institutions.  Global summitry is tuned to leaders summits for sure but it acknowledges and  focuses on the many organizations – governmental, and non-governmental, formal and informal – that constitute the galaxy of global summitry.  This examination adopts the “Iceberg Theory of Global Governance”.  Below the leaders, lie the growing system of meetings and work of ministers, and their ministries, international institutions but also transgovernmental organizations and regulatory networks with formal and informal regulatory actors.  These actors are all part of global summitry.  As Klaus Dingwerth and Philipp Patterberg described in their article in Global Governance in 2006 “Global Governance as a Perspective on World Politics”:

In essence global governance implies a multiactor perspective on world politics. … the term global governance conceives of world politics as a multilevel system in which local, national, regional, and global political processes are inseparably linked.

Global summitry accepts this far more complex political order where the sharp boundaries of international, regional and national policy have been partially erased but where the leaders and governments remain at the heart of international politics.  International institutions have also not disappeared but traditional institutions, the UN and Bretton Woods systems are now in many instances displaced or supplemented by informal organizations.  And the world of traditional diplomacy conducted by foreign ministers and their officials have been remade with the appearance of many meetings of their mainline ministers and their officials – finance, and trade, central bankers, etc., and the numerous meetings of regulatory officials both public and self regulatory of many varieties.  Again Princeton’s Anne –Marie Slaughter, a strong proponent of international networks since the turn of the century suggests:

From a theoretical perspective, government networks straddle and ultimately erase the domestic/international divide.

Global summitry examines all these actors in the organization and execution of global politics and policy.  The focus is then theoretic but more centrally, empirical and policy-attentive.  It is alert to the repositioning of global politics and policy premised on changing dynamics and dimensions of international relations.  Besides the redistribution of power among states there are other changing dimensions that are very much a part of global summitry and impact this redistribution as well.  The international system has seen a marked shift, some of which I have talked about earlier: from ‘hard’ law to ‘soft’ law; from formal institutions – often hierarchical – to informal ‘flattened’ or horizontal institutions; from national sovereignty to globalization.  The last dimension marks a continuing struggle of states and their leaders with many both offensively and defensively asserting national sovereignty. The rhetoric remains fixed on national autonomy yet reality is often matched against the reality of globalization and the impact of tight and possibly ever-tighter interdependence.

Finally a word on the term ‘global’ in global summitry.  A perspective could well be that global is exactly that – universal such as the UN – especially given the focus on states.   The term should not be taken as that.  Even in the UN the critical UN Security Council is not universal – far from it.  And so many institutions – often described as regional – seem perfectly a part of global summitry especially those that are not particularly geographically narrow in scope but generate policy that impacts the global order.

Global summitry remains focused on state actors but in many new arrangements and again examines all these actors in the organization and execution of global politics and policy.  And because it focuses not so much theoretically but more analytically and empirically on policy and policy impacts, it is sensible to assess the success/failure of the actors and their global governance policies.

But we’ve gone on far too long already.  So, that’s for another day.