The latest G20 summit seems to have gone off as well as could be expected – and perhaps a little better. Markets are up today.
It’s always hard to know how much was decided in advance, but damn near all of it would be a pretty good guess. The final communiqué is now available and it’s clear to see that the expanding role of the G20 itself is the most significant outcome, on the face of it, at least. More on that later. Interesting as well to see Nicholas Sarkozy continues to speak in quite progressive terms about banking reform and the decline of (what he would call) the Anglo-Saxon economic model (‘le laisser-faire, c’est fini’). Together with Angela Merkel, he’s been leading Europe’s push for firmer regulation and bonus caps. In comparison to these right-wing leaders, Gordon Brown (leading a social democratic party) has been dragging his feet somewhat on the caps, though seems to have relented in the end. However, The Economist believes that the outcome was a ‘fudge’:
Going into the summit they [France and Germany] had pushed hard for firm numerical limits on bonuses as a proportion of revenues or capital. The language of the communiqué, however, was closer to the Americans’ position.
Other key outcomes of the meeting included a declaration of intent to reform IMF voting structures by 2011. Any change will be at the expense of European board members, who will have to give up at least 5% of their voting weight, in part to China. Blake Hounshell is:
interested to see if Geithner’s ideas for reforming the IMF gain any traction. The micro story is a technocratic one, but the macro story could be yet another sign that China is being welcomed into the inner circles of global power. The scuttlebutt is that the Treasury secretary hopes to persuade China to sign on to his priorities on capital requirements and other reforms in exchange for getting a larger share of control of the fund. Anyone know the Chinese word for “bribery”?
The Fund is also getting another funding boost of $500bn. The IMF’s twin – the World Bank – was also discussed and noises (though no committments) have been made about small voting changes there too. More details will be available in the run-up to the Bank’s spring meeting next year.
Broader questions about banking regulations got a good deal of attention, though nothing firm came out of the meeting. However, it is important to note that since the London Summit, G20 leaders haven’t taken the easy route and gone quiet on the subject. This is presumably partly due to the domestic political benefits of looking tough on bankers. Somewhat surprisingly, though, the G20 does seem to be serious about real united reform and progress on tax havens has been substantive. The idea of ‘living wills’ for too-big-to-fail institutions has also been addressed in order to set up special regulatory regimes for systemically crucial firms.
On fiscal stimulus, politicians seem to be taking the necessity of working in concert more seriously. The EU fears that the US will ‘turn off’ its stimulus too early, perhaps fostering a much-feared ‘double-dip’ recession. However, the Group pledged not to pull pack on countercyclical policies just yet. The FT heralded ‘a striking area of consensus, given the arguments about stimulus that raged ahead of the previous G20 heads of government meeting in London in April.’
Outside, the protests apparently lacked focus, which is no real surprise. This is the danger of setting yourself up as ‘The Movement’. It’s not meant to be a secret society. On the other hand, Pittsburgh did witness what seems to be the first public use in a democratic country of the sonic blast cannon.
The really interesting point, as mentioned above, is the ascendance of the Group itself. Pittsburgh, in its own words, ‘designated the G-20 to be the premier forum for our international economic cooperation’. This is a body that theoretically represents 90% of world economy and 2/3 of its population. Summits will take place in Canada and South Korea next year and – in theory at least – annually thereafter. Brookings has a paper out on this (but I’d skip straight to the bottom of page four if I were you). Martin Wolf writes (FT leaflet) that ‘for the first time since the industrial revolution, economic power is no longer concentrated in western hands.’ One would have expected Wolf to be more sceptical of the idea that de jure power will translate to anything meaningful. Paul Collier certainly is:
In a world that needs collective action but is composed of 194 governments, the overarching problem is free-riding. The burden of global leadership inevitably will fall on those few governments that are manifestly too big to free-ride. There will be only five such governments: America, China, India, Japan and the 27-in-one European Union. Over the next decade each of these governments will realise that it can be a deal-breaker: if it tries to free-ride, the other four will refuse to step up to their responsibilities. These five will be the G5, the group that runs the world.
As Wolf acknowledges:
The whole point of the G20 is to allow the world’s most important leaders to have a proper discussion about the world’s most difficult problems. But with 29 people, plus support staff, in the conference room, it will be very difficult to break through the formalities. One diplomat involved in the planning for Pittsburgh points out that if everybody around the table insisted on making a three-minute opening statement, it would take an hour and a half before the discussion could even begin.
Marc Weisbrot has suggested that the move from the G8 to the G20 is not as significant as has been made out, since the G20 lacks any (formal) power of enforcement. For Weisbrot, the G20 issue distracts from the structural iniquities of power at the IMF, World Bank and WTO.
The G20 is not a permanent body, nor does it have a headquarters or secretariat. This might help it in terms of flexibility – in global governance, there’s actually something to be said for ad hoc decision making (what wonks call variable geometry – but it won’t do much for equality between rich and poor countries. There’s also a danger that as ‘the premier forum’, the G20 starts to feel entitled to make decisions affecting non-members without consultation. Before this becomes too gloomy, though, it’s worth saying that 20 voices are better than 8 in democratic terms, so at least this is a move in the right direction, more or less.
From the scene, Paul Mason wrote that ‘bit by bit the world is moving from an order based on treaty and formal sanction to one based on consensus, horse-trading and the diffusion of power’, adding that ‘here inside the Pittsburgh G20 Summit it feels like being there at the birth of a postmodernist medieval empire.’ Has Mason been reading Hedley Bull? Either way, I suspect he’s right.
It looks like the World Social Forum was a lot more fun than the World Economic Forum. No surprises there. What is a surprise is that the Forum managed to put together a coherent formal declaration. (H/T: 
