From G7 to G8: The G7/G8 as an International Institution

From G7 To G8:
Evolution, Role and Documentation of a Unique Institution

Peter I. Hajnal

April 1998

The G7/G8 as an International Institution

The Group of Seven/Group of Eight (G7/G8) is an unorthodox international institution. To place it in context, it is useful to recall that the authoritative Yearbook of International Organizations defines international governmental organizations (IGOs) as bodies that are "based on a formal instrument of agreement between the governments of nation states; ... includ[e] three or more nation states as parties to the agreement; ... [and have] a permanent secretariat performing ongoing tasks." ₁ The G7/G8 is a less structured international arrangement; it was not established by formal international agreement, and it has no secretariat. The British government, preparing to host the 1998 Birmingham Summit, characterizes the G8 as "an informal organisation, with no rules or permanent Secretariat staff. " ₂

Occasional proposals to establish some form of permanent, continuing machinery have met with stiff resistance from at least some of its members. Nonetheless, the G7/G8 has become a most important institution on the international scene and has evolved into what may be termed the G7/G8 system. The best-known part of that system is the series of annual meetings of heads of state or government. These annual summit meetings are covered in great detail by the news media and increasingly by scholarly and other specialized writing, but the resulting documentation is not widely understood. This work explores the context and the nature of that documentation.

The term G7, and now G8, has come to predominate as the name of the annual series of summit meetings. Earlier it was called the economic summit, the summit of industrialized countries, the Western economic summit, and the seven-power summit. None of these names is totally accurate:

the summit is no longer just economic; political questions and various global issues have taken on increasing importance for a number of years;
it has not been strictly a summit of the seven; the first summit had six participants, only the second had seven, and subsequent meetings had seven countries plus the European Union (formerly European Community); beginning with the 1994 Naples Summit (following post-summit meetings with the USSR and then Russia in 1991, 1992 and 1993), Russia has been directly associated with the political aspects of the summit which, for this purpose, came to be referred to as the P8 (or "political G8"). In 1997, Russia became associated with the G7 even more closely, forming the "Summit of the Eight", leaving only financial and certain other economic issues to the core G7; in the lead-up to Birmingham in 1998, the British host government calls the forthcoming event the G8 summit, anticipating the inclusion of Russia as a full member;
it is not completely Western, at least in a geographic sense; Japan is a charter member;
not all the--prospectively or arguably--major industrialized countries participate.

There are several scholars who affirm the unique character and growing importance of the G7/G8 in the post-Cold War world. John J. Kirton states that "the G7 system of institutions is the late twentieth century global equivalent of the Concert of Europe that helped produce peace among the great powers, and prosperity more widely, from 1818 to 1914." He argues that "the G7 Summit system has become the effective centre of global governance, replacing the order earlier provided by the 1919-1945 [League of Nations and] United Nations and 1947 Atlantic family of institutions, and recurrently creating consensus and inducing compliance among its members and other states and international institutions." ₃ Cesare Merlini, on the other hand, expresses the view that the G7 "is not an international institution in the real sense of the term ... . [It is] a quasi institutional structure ... semi-personal and at the same time semi-institutional." Michael Hodges gives the British view that the G7 "is a forum rather than an institution. The French view, according to Philippe Moreau Defarges, is that "the G-7 summit cannot and must not be a Western council." ₄

Andrea de Guttry views the institutionalization of the summit as a dynamic development. She notes "the total absence of a fixed summit structure or any kind of administrative/bureaucratic support" at the summit's beginnings, and the gradual process whereby, over the years, "the structure of the summit has slowly, almost unconsciously, become more complicated. " ₅ Nicholas Bayne and Robert D. Putnam contrast the "stand-alone" G7 summit with other kinds of summits that have become common in recent years and that depend on a parent international organization for their existence, such as the United Nations (UN) "Earth Summit" in 1992, or the periodic summit meetings of the European Union, the Commonwealth and the Francophonie. ₆ G. R. Berridge lists G7 summits among the category of "serial summits", in contrast with ad hoc (usually one-time only) summits and with a third type, high-level exchanges of views. ₇ Bayne observes that "[t]he G7 Summit is at the same time an institution and an anti-institution. This ... may be the secret of its survival. " ₈

The 1991 London Summit, important for the development of the summit as an institution, emphasized officially that the summit had a chairman, rotating each calendar year, in the person of the host leader for that year. (It is worth noting that a study team of the Group of Thirty, a Washington-based think tank, made several recommendations in a report released on the eve of the 1991 Summit. The main proposals were: setting a new core agenda for future summits; sharing responsibility systematically and comprehensively; and improving follow-up arrangements for summit initiatives.) ₉ The 1993 Tokyo Summit also addressed the question of the summit as an institution, and stated the leaders' wish that summits should be less ceremonial, with fewer people, documents and declarations, and with more time devoted to informal discussion" ₁₀ As a further indication of institutional development, Canada, as chair of the G7 in 1995, issued a report, 1995, Canada's Year As G7 Chair: The Halifax Summit Legacy, in February 1996. ₁₁

Notes:

Note 1: Yearbook of International Organizations, 1992/93, 29th ed., Vol. 1, p. 1649. More recent editions have simplified the definition: "An organization is intergovernmental if it is established by signature of an agreement engendering obligations between governments, whether or not that agreement is eventually published." Yearbook of International Organizations, 1996/97, 33rd ed., Vol. 1, p. 1677. Back.

Note 2: "G8 Structure: An Informal Club," Great Britain, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, [Birmingham G8 Summit Web Site] : birmingham.g8summit.gov.uk/briefo398/what.is.g8.shstml. Back.

Note 3: John J. Kirton, "The Diplomacy of Concert: Canada, the G7 and the Halifax Summit," Canadian Foreign Policy 3, No. 1 (Spring 1995): 64-65. See also his "Economic Cooperation: Summitry, Institutions, and Structural Change," Paper prepared for a conference on "Structural Change and Co-operation in the Global Economy. 11 Center for International Business Education and Center for Global Change and Governance, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., May 19-20, 1997. www. library.utoronto.ca/www/g7/scholar/rutcon.htm. Will appear in Structural Change and Co-operation in the Global Economy, edited by John Dunning and Gavin Boyd (London: Edward Elgar, forthcoming, 1998). Back.

Note 4: Cesare Merlini, "The G-7 and the Need for Reform," in The Future of the G-7 Summits, 5 (The International Spectator 29, No. 2; April/June 1994, Special Issue); Michael Hodges, "More Efficiency, Less Dignity: British Perspectives on the Future Role and Working of the G-7," in The Future of the G7 Summits, 155; and Philippe Moreau Defarges, "The French Viewpoint on the Future of the G-7," in The Future of the G7 Summits, 182. Back.

Note 5: Andrea de Guttry, "The Institutional Configuration of the G-7 in the New International Scenario," in The Future of the G-7 Summits, 68. Back.

Note 6: Nicholas Bayne and Robert D. Putnam, "Introduction: The G-7 Summit Comes of Age" in The Halifax G-7 Summit: Issues on the Table, eds. Sylvia Ostry and Gilbert R. Wynham (Halifax: Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Daihousie University, 1995), 1-2. Back.

Note 7: G. R. Berridge, Diplomacy: Theory and Practice (London; New York: Prentice Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1995): 83-84. Back.

Note 8: Nicholas Bayne, "The G7 Summit and the Reform of Global Institutions," Government and Opposition 30, No. 4 (Autumn 1995): 494. Back.

Note 9: Group of Thirty, The Summit Process and Collective Security: Future Responsibility Sharing (Washington, D.C.: Group of Thirty, 1991). Back.

Note 10: "Tokyo Economic Declaration", July 9, 1993, para. 16, in The Twenty G-7 Summits (Rome: Adnkronos Libri in Collaboration with Istituto Affari Internazionali, 1994), 251. Hodges states that this "paragraph had reportedly been square bracketed in the preparatory sherpa meetings ... [,] designed to reflect the personal opinion of the heads and the natural reluctance of the sherpas to anticipate their conclusions." Hodges, "More Efficiency, Less Dignity: British Perspectives on the Future Role and Working of the G-7," 146. Back.

Note 11: Canada, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1995, Canada's Year As G7 Chair: The Halifax Summit Legacy (Ottawa: DFAIT, 1996). See also the Department's Web site at www. dfait -maeci . gc . ca/english/g7summit/hfax2 . htm. Back.