Martin Albrow is a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics.

Olaf Corry is a visiting scholar at the Centre for International Studies, Cambridge University.

Public Engagement

Albrow: Compared with the April G20 Summit which gathered world leaders in London and gave the British public the impression that Gordon Brown was both hosting and leading the world in addressing the economic crisis the L'Aquila summit could not avoid being seen as less newsworthy and more pedestrian. For the red top press it never reached the front page. Reports on the first day from the four main tabloids all gave as much coverage to the fashion choices of the leaders' wives as to the agreement on climate change. Throughout the period The Guardian's main story was its own campaign against the practices of the Murdoch press (first 7 pages on the Friday) and only in one broadsheet paper, The Independent on the Thursday, did it make the front page headline with the US agreement to cut carbon emissions by 80% and reporting the many cross currents of the climate change discussions, the reluctance of India and China to sign up, Brown's own carbon fund proposal and green groups criticism.  Apart from the Financial Times which treated both on each day, the papers divided on whether to focus on climate change or the economy, the Telegraph and Guardian covered the global economy on day 1 and climate change on day 2, but on the second day it was Brown's announcement that the UK's nuclear weaponry could be subject to future summit talks on disarmament that captured most attention in the press. On Saturday Obama's food security plan competed for space with Brown's meeting with Gaddafi.

Other lines in the period were the summit arrangements, development aid, relations with Iran, meetings with the Pope, China's criticism of the role of the dollar, Obama's Africa visit, Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni, Sarah Brown's objections to veal,  and a miscellany of ‘human interest' angles that included Berlusconi's colourful persona. Probably the diversity of issues does not detract from public interest but it does create an impression more of a convention or world exhibition, a festival of issues. It is the meeting itself that is the event, the staged occasion rather than the substantive discussions which are simply episodes in long running narratives.

Corry: The very idea of public engagement in a summit of global leaders is a relatively new construct that in itself represents a sign of the creeping globalization of national politics. However, compared to the G20 Summit which was held in London, hosted by the embattled local prime minister Brown and subjected to large street demonstrations, public engagement in the G8 meeting is low in Britain. Demonstrations or other signs of public interest have been relatively minor, leaving the ‘riot-angle' unusable on this occasion. Although this is partly blamed on Berlusconi's last minute relocation to the earthquake-shattered town of L'Aquila, the lack of a street level dimension appears to have made the summit less newsworthy in other ways.

Public attention during the run-up to the summit was dominated by speculation about also embattled Italian premier, Silvio Berlusconi, and worries about Italian organisational problems. The Guardian newspaper speculated that Italy was about to be ejected from the G8 for not delivering on earlier aid promises. Newspaper headlines on G8 subjects on the final day of the summit in Italy were dominated by domestic scandals (concerning News International's phone tapping of celebrities, politicians and dignitaries) and a new wave of fatalities suffered by British forces in the war in Afghanistan. For the BBC's correspondent it was clear that "we shall soon forget the announcements on climate change and food aid. But the image of another prime minister once again having to defend and explain what is, for some, an unpopular war will linger on." Public attention seems to be basically elsewhere.

All the same, certain issues have been afforded airtime, including the first meeting between Libya's colonel Gaddafi and Gordon Brown as well as particularly the issue of climate change and possible UK reductions in nuclear arsenals mooted for future multilateral talks to be hosted in Washington.

Public Focus

Albrow: The burden of this question is how global leadership is shaped and perceived through the summit. This summit with its ever expanding circles of attendance and intricate series of meetings with different membership displayed the elaborated layering of contemporary international relations much more than any organised collaboration on global issues. Press estimates of leaders' attendance varied from more than 20 to 40 and their domestic political standing, their relations with each other and to the meeting rather than their stands on issues occupied press interest. In the British press three leaders stood out. Berlusconi's role as host attracted interest throughout. At the beginning it looked as if he was being set up as the buffoon fall guy, by the end he gained certain grudging admiration for carrying the whole event off without disaster. Brown, beleaguered at home, initially appeared to be targeting Italy as the villain in order to promote himself as the responsible voice for the global economy and for poor countries, but it was the Obama led food security initiative that sealed American global leadership. Perhaps Obama's simultaneous public display of friendliness to Berlusconi and attentiveness to Brown were sufficient to calm British fears and The Guardian's overall verdict was that it was Brown's "best week since he hosted the London G20 Summit." It was not enough for the Oxfam spokesman who said it was a case of "for Obama it was yes we can. For Berlusconi's G8, "it's no we won't" and that the next meeting in Canada would be the end of the road for the G8. Obama himself by openly discussing the composition of the G meetings (Financial Times 11/12 July, p.7) while taking the lead on issues effectively reasserted American global leadership whatever the format of summits. Press coverage suggests that the meetings are news for the light they throw on the leaders rather than any leadership on the issues.

Corry: Compared to the days when the G7 meant 7 leaders discussing the economy, the G8 meeting of 2009 is a sprawling affair. The changing themes and actors of the current G8 summit have spread attention and created a more blurred image of who was prioritizing which global issue. Attention shifted from the early negotiations that led to a climate change deal that fixed a 2 degree limit (but not the corresponding carbon emissions limits) to the question of food security and aid to Africa to that of nuclear weapons and non-proliferation aka Iran.

This is, however, not purely a weakness. In a sense, the G8 has quietly evolved in the eyes of the British press, from being a closed economics summit, to become a ‘flatter' broader forum charged with navigating a wider global agenda -- more of a "plateau" than a summit. Increasingly resembling a small version of the World Economic Forum that meets in Davos, it provides not just decisions but discussions and diplomatic moments and is seen as a chance to prepare for other events on the world leader calendar, including in this case the climate change summit planned for Copenhagen later this year. A successful G8 is seen as one that grapples with and delivers upon a wide agenda of security and progress.

G8 Relevance

Albrow: There is no real debate in the UK on the future of the summits, only a deeply conflicted and confused official consensus of establishment opinion that the G8 is on the way out but at the same time there is a British investment in the G8 process which they have to maintain somehow. Whatever the direction of future summits the default solution is to stay on the same page as the United States.

At the outset of the summit the best way to conceal this inner conflict appeared to be to attack the Italians and Berlusconi in particular. The 2005 Gleneagles poverty and Africa agenda has not lost it public appeal and the British aid minister Douglas Alexander, a close ally of Prime Minister Brown, issued a White Paper immediately before the G8 reiterating those commitments and calling for countries that fell short on them to be ‘named and shamed'. On July 7^, Julian Borger in The Guardian newspaper reported deep official dissatisfaction with the Italian leadership, both for failing to deliver on promises and for chaotic preparations for the summit, a report that Berlusconi rebutted as coming from "a small newspaper." These comments were directed towards raising the whole question of summit organization and suggested American officials were working towards a 13-16 strong replacement of both the G8 and G20.

The Daily Telegraph editorial on July 8 was headed ‘The challenge for the G8 is for it to matter. A leading article in The Times on the July 8 was entitled "Talking Shop" and declared that ‘real decision making power has shifted upwards from the G8 via the G13 to the G20, suggesting that no progress would be made on reforms of global governance that everyone agreed were necessary. Its pre-meeting report also pointed to Berlusconi's self-inflicted loss of international standing arising from his personal life.

On July 11, The Times said this summit would be the last of its kind. The London Financial Times summed up the meeting as a "glorified but vacuous photo opportunity" with the food security initiative giving the G8 ‘a chance of relevance.' However, The Guardian's reporting at the end indicated that British anxieties might have been overblown. That paper's columnist Marina Hyde paraded old fashioned British "fair play": all the attacks on Italy had been quite overdone, and who were the British to point to others' corruption in high places? And Bridget Kendall of the BBC reporting at the end complimented the Italians for a minimalist summit, set in earthquake ruins, with an air of austerity that brought correspondents closer to the leaders.

Corry: Compared to the excitement generated by the Live8 concerts in 2005 in the campaign to make poverty history, however, this year has been low key in the British public imagination. With the arrival of the G20 and the corrosive effects of the financial crisis on the power of the G8 countries, some grass roots organisations have concluded that the G8 has been superseded as a forum for global decision making.

More fundamentally, global summits have tended to be viewed with suspicion on both the left and the right in the UK at least since the defining summits following the end of the Second World War. The conservative daily newspaper The Daily Telegraph pours scorn on the whole idea, assuming power resides elsewhere: "The challenge for the G8 Summit is for it to matter." For the left-leaning Independent the problem is accountability -- that "too often the group's optimistic resolutions and promises have been forgotten or discarded". Pragmatic voices see the G8 as a limited yet indispensable institution that simply needs to get its priorities right concerning global food security, climate change and the economic crisis.

But currently such questions of substance are partially obscured as the event activates a particularly dominant theme on the UK political agenda, namely Gordon Brown's leadership. Seen as being "in his element" when at global summits, this is contrasted the image of a national leader out of touch with his domestic constituency. According to The Independent Brown "clearly feels at home when talking about the global economy, climate change and aid to poor countries -- the main items on the G8 agenda" -- an escape from domestic troubles, in other words. For the right-wing Spectator, Brown's "doom-mongering on the world stage is simply intended to provide to same escape route as it did prior to the G20 summit: in the case that the green shoots don't grow rapidly enough, Brown can blame the "inaction" of other countries." The global summit is resolutely viewed through a national political prism and personal dramas.

Global Leadership

Albrow: As far as the global economic crisis is concerned, to which this question relates, the overall impression in the UK is that the L'Aquila summit was almost time out. It was known that Obama would be chairing the G20 when it meets later in the year in Pittsburgh and opinion is divided both between economists and countries whether the measures adopted both before and after the London G20 in April have been effective or not. The disagreement on the need for further stimulus for the world economy as opposed to countries reining in public spending, with Angela Merkel leading the call for restraint, is mirrored internally in the UK with the Conservative opposition taking a similar line to Germany's. Gordon Brown was reported as saying the summit was a second wake up call, but equally the summit agreed to discuss exit strategies from the current spending levels. ‘Leaders can only paper over the cracks' was a Financial Times judgment and the papers were at one in emphasizing the precarious state of the global economy. The early place of the economic discussion on the agenda and its interim and tentative character shifted the weight of the summit to climate change and food.

Corry: Buoyed by the presence of newly elected President Obama, this year's G8 is loaded with higher expectations concerning global leadership. The "can-do" ethos of the American president coupled with (grudging) respect for Gordon Brown's command of international political economy have both contributed to this. Progress on kick-starting the global economy, increasing aid and food security in Africa, laying the foundations of a global climate regime and weaving stronger multilateral harnesses on nuclear proliferation are seen as relevant themes that the G8 is right to give priority to.

However, cynicism about delivery, unfavourable comparisons with the G20 that includes China, Brazil and India, and doubts about the host nation Italy overshadowed this British near-consensus on the necessity of global governance in general. High projected levels of public debt undercut faith in the ability of global leaders to follow up on promises given at L'Aquila as well as on pledges made in former years, not least the 2005 meeting in Gleneagles where higher foreign aid levels were agreed. The overriding worries in the British public domain are currently levels of debt incurred to offset the economic downturn, the faltering war in Afghanistan and what is seen as the corruption of the political class after the MPs expenses scandals. None of these problems, except perhaps the question of national debt, are seen to be tackled at the G8 Summit.