Introduction: The essays available here for the first time represent an experimental inquiry into the political relationship between national leaders and their publics in the context of the London G20 Summit on April 2 as revealed in national newspapers in the capitals of G20 countries in the run-up and immediate aftermath of the G20 Summit. The purpose is to assess the degree to which this broader summit grouping in the context of the global economic crisis can restore the confidence and trust of people in the capacity of national leaders acting together to take public responsibility for the public interest in economic outcomes. This restoration of confidence would not only have a political effect but also an economic impact on the level of confidence in consumer, investor and money markets, potentially contributing to greater stability and growth in the global economy. This short note is a first attempt to identify some common themes and results from this initial inquiry based on the dozen papers on the dozen G20 countries presented here. Others are invited to follow.
National Economic Priorities, Political Leadership and Shifts in Public Opinion:
The behaviour of leaders at the London G20 Summit on April 2 was not fully transparent since the meeting itself was behind closed doors, with only occasional glimpses during breaks of leaders huddled together in groups exchanging views, without in most cases any evidence of what they were talking about. Nonetheless, the run-up to the Summit and the press conferences afterward did provide a profile of national leadership and a sense of the priority interests of various leaders in Summit outcomes.
Most leaders, of the dozen G20 countries surveyed here, were identified with single issues, whereas fewer leaders were invested in multiple issues. Further complicating perceptions, or manifesting them differently, was the presence of pairs of countries with common interests. There was considerable interest in the degree to which the United States and China constituted a "G2," since they are among the largest countries with the broadest global reach, even though both countries tried to down play the G2 idea. Also, the French-German "couple" revived its image by joining forces against the Anglo-American interest in fiscal stimulus and in expressing the Continental priority for strengthening financial regulation. This perceived conflict became the high drama of the April 2 Summit, especially in the run-up to it, less so in the aftermath.
There was a significant contingent of G20 countries, among the dozen countries surveyed here, which clearly prioritized a strong stance against protectionism as being their top priority national interest in the Summit. These four countries tended to be countries which had not suffered (yet) enormously from the global economic crisis but which have significant trading relationships, especially with the United States. The four countries with single-issue priority commitments in the London G20 Summit to open trade and anti-protectionism were: Canada, Mexico, Brazil and India.
The G20: Opportunities for Middle Powers?
Given the significance of the London Summit meeting at twenty rather than eight, it implicitly represented an opportunity for medium sized countries at the table, beyond the G8 and beyond the new super-powers (China, India, and Brazil) to capitalize on their presence in the G20 to reposition themselves in the geopolitical structure.1 For a variety of reasons, this seemed to not happen. Australia, Korea, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia (middle powers not included in this survey) did not appear to be assertive nor visibly try to reposition themselves in the geopolitical order.
Among those middle powers that are surveyed here, India, South Africa and Turkey are in the midst of elections which deflected public attention away from the G20 Summit and meant that their leaders were more intent in early April on domestic issues than making major forays in the international arena. Mexico's Calderon deliberately struck a higher visibility profile in his state visit to the UK a few days before April 2 than he did at the G20 Summit itself. Similarly, Turkey's Endroğan would be receiving President Barack Obama two days later in Turkey, which would be an immensely higher profile international moment for Turkey than Turkey's role in the London Summit. And Canada's Harper, suffering low poll ratings going into the Summit, pushed hard on a relatively lower profile issue of development assistance for poor countries and getting his parliament back home to agree to an IMF pledge than he did to the larger strategic issues of fiscal stimulus and financial regulation.
Albert O. Hirschman taught many of us to use two-by-two diagrams to reveal and clarify pairs of observations together so as to highlight the inter-relationships among the two contre-temps. One can draw from the essays in this project the degree to which individual national leaders got a boost in public support as a result of the G20 Summit. One can also draw from these essays a distinction between those countries that were assertive in promoting their national economic interests and trying to reposition their country in the global order at the April 2 Summit and those which had domestic constraints (such as, elections, or low poll ratings) which drove a lower political profile at the Summit and hence may have dampened the degree to which they were perceived at home as having improved their own political profile as a result of the Summit. The country alignment of the twelve countries and their leaders along these two dimensions is shown below.
Figure 1: Hirschman Two-By-Two Diagram
Assertion of Single-Issue Priority vs. Multiple Issue Approach
What is interesting here is the degree to which perhaps the assertion of a single priority interest (trade and protectionism) by Canada, Mexico, Brazil and India may have been less effective in projecting a clear profile of national leadership than might have been expected. A plausible strategy for high profile leadership in a relatively large meeting could have been to select a single issue and become identified with it. To be sure, other factors intervened in determining where countries fall in the two-by-two categories, such as country size and leadership style. But it does seem that those countries that took on more issues and the larger strategic issues in the April G20 Summit (fiscal stimulus, regulation and the IMF) did better at home than those who pushed a single issue of slightly less consequence, such as trade. The exception to this rule seems to be Brazilian President Lula. While Lula kept a relatively low profile on economic issues by singling out a push against protectionism in trade, he did assert a view on the "historic" nature of the G20 London Summit itself and the fact that it "reflected a shift in world power". (Gregory paper on Brazil) As a result, he was one of the few G20 leaders who explicitly addressed the issue of global political leadership and the role of new powers in it, asserting a higher political profile and getting a positive response from the Brazilian press and public as a result. It is interesting to note that President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina seemed to gain ground at home by taking a holistic view of the G20 agenda, embracing both the fiscal stimulus and financial regulatory issues, as well as "the failure of neoliberalism" and defending developing countries as "weak links bearing an unfair burden," rather than taking a single issue approach.
Implication: Perhaps this indicates that for future summits to provide still more robust results in promoting global economic actions and greater global leadership, more leaders would be well advised to take a broader approach to summit issues and a more proactive and visible role in pushing for action on them across-the-board rather than projecting a less assertive political profile and narrowing their issue focus to a single-issue priority. Active assertion of engagement in the summit agenda as a whole and greater visibility in promoting it may yield both national political benefits and strengthen global leadership at the same time.
Conclusion: The individual essays in this collection need to be read carefully and read comparatively to distill more fully their potential insights into the underlying political process of summitry and the relationships between leaders and their publics which are part of summitry itself. Both this set of essays and this brief overview note are but experimental beginnings in an exploration we hope to continue in the relation to future global leadership moments. We would welcome the comments and contributions of others with similar interests in understanding the dynamics of global political leadership at summits in providing strategic direction for the planet and a sense of responsibility for the public interest of the people.
1Of the G8 countries present at the London G20 Summit, Italy, Japan and Russia are not (yet) included in this survey. The omission of these three G8 countries and of the four other G20 countries was unsystematic, deriving from time and logistical constraints. Further iterations of this effort would continue to attempt to include all 19 G20 countries.
Colin Bradford is a non-resident senior fellow of The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo and the Brookings Institution in Washington. For the last four years, he has been director of the Brookings-CIGI project on global governance reform which consists of an annual seminar series on international reform issues for Washington-based officials from G20 countries, conferences and workshops, publications and media communications. He and Johannes Linn edited a 2007 Brookings book, Global Governance Reform: Breaking the Stalemate.