The Gx Global Governance：China Faces G20 Leadership

Alan S. Alexandroff

The Gx Global Governance：China Faces G20 Leadership

Alan S. Alexandroff

The Enlarging Gx Leadership

Since the 2005 G7/8 summit at Gleneagles, China’s leader and the leaders of the other G5 countries-China, India, Brazil,South Africa and Mexico-have regularly been invited to attend a portion of the annual Gx summit. But none of these rising powers, or their leaders, was invited to attend as permanent members of the original G7/8. It is only with the mounting global financial crisis did the G20 leaders receive the call to attend an enlarged leaders summit-first in Washington in November 2008,then in London in April 2009 and then in Pittsburgh in September 2009. And it was there in Pittsburgh that the G20 leaders summit was declared to be, “the premier forum for our international economic cooperation.”

With that China had become one of the global governance leaders. No longer is the club of the rich that had, some argued,arrogated leadership through the G7 and then the G8 summit of the global economy, this new enlarged leader summit represents more than 85 percent of global GDP, 80 percent of international trade and about two-thirds of the planet’s population. For China, a milestone had been reached that stretched back to the reform and opening (gaige kaifang).

China and the Shape of Global Governance Leadership

China’s views of global leadership have evolved strikingly since it emerged out of the shadow of the ‘Gang of Four.’ Though initially suspicious of multilateral relations, focusing instead on bilateral relations and regional relations in Asia, China has become a major multilateral participant - from the United Nations,including a permanent, and veto-holding member of the, Security Council, a member of most UN-Bretton Woods institutions,including the IMF and the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and numerous Asian regional organizations including both economic and security. In addition, it has more clearly signaled that its regional policy is not designed to exclude the United States. And as China has become more familiar with and more comfortable with regional organizations and participation in numerous plurilateral and multilateral organizations, China has built its global face on a number of crucial principles:①These principles were articulated in Zhang Yunling and Alan S. Alexandroff, “Cooperation in Governance: The Regional Dimension in a U.S.-China Shared Vision for the Future,” in Richard Rosecrance and Gu Guoliang (eds.), Power and Restraint: A Shared Vision for the U.S.-China Relationship, New York: Public Affairs, 2009, p.180.

China recognizes the United States as a ‘superpower,’ and the dominant power in the international system for the foreseeable future. From China’s perspective, as long as the U.S. recognizes and takes into account China’s interests, China is unlikely to challenge the U.S. leadership overall;

China will cooperate with the United States in as many areas as it is possible to do for China in international relations; and

China will continue to increase its strength, including military strength, and raise its status and influence both regional and globally.

As Zhang Yunling and I concluded recently in surveying U.S.-China relations:

In the final analysis, the most significant question for China is,how can it balance its support for democracy, domestically and externally, with a defense of sovereignty whether in Taiwan,Central Asia or the Asia-Pacific generally?①Yunling & Alexandroff, p.181.

While there is a ‘strong running’ debate, especially in Washington circles-which continues over the so-called China threat, and the prospect for war between China and the United States the position of Harvard’s Alastair Ian Johnson, remains apt:Rather, to the extent that one can identify an international community on major global issues, the PRC [China] has become more integrated into and more cooperative within international institutions than ever before.②Alastair Ian Johnson, “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security, Vol.27, No.4,2003, p.49.

Thus, China has become a significant player in global governance and that is now increasingly acknowledged for its participation in the G20 leaders summit (obviously before this was China’s participation in the G20 finance that was created over 10 years ago involving China’s minister of finance and the governor of the People’s Bank of China).

But the key question raised by such involvement and participation, is what China should do with this ‘seat at the table.’What can China’s leadership contribution be? How does China face global governance leadership?

The Landscape of Contemporary International Relations

The starting point for determining China’s leadership role in this new global governance environment requires grappling with the shape of the current international relations context. There are a number of aspects that may well condition China’s behavior: the role and behavior of U.S. leadership; the contours and character of contemporary international multilateral institutions; and the consequences that arise from the institutions in overcoming the collective action problem in international relations.

With a new American administration in place for just over a year, we are still trying to piece together the consequences of the stated reengagement of the Obama administration after eight-years of rather radical international politics.Multilateralism does appear to be back in Washington. But has the past just gone away-the unilateralism, à la carte multilateralism,the ‘coalitions of the willing’? Is global leadership assured now that the U.S. appears to have recommitted for the long-term to multilateralism? And if the new Obama administration is committed, what shape is this likely to take. Will U.S. leadership adopt a more reflective and accepting collective leadership or will the U.S. be determined to reestablish the hegemonic position that governed its behavior over the greater part of the Cold War and post-Cold War period?

The evolution in U.S. thinking on global governance is usefully presented by Richard Haass formerly a director of policy planning in the Bush’s State Department and currently the President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In his earlier governmental position, and shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attack,Haass described the Bush administration’s foreign policy,particularly its selective abandonment of a number of international agreements and its refusal to sign on to new international agreements, as a policy of, “à la carte multilateralism.” In the blossoming of the U.S. ‘unilateralist moment’, the Bush Administration sought avoid those organizations and agreements that appeared to impede progress and to build where necessary transactional coalitions around challenges and specific tasks that that U.S. administration saw required attention. Stewart Patrick, another international relations expert, and now also at the CFR, has chronicled the evolution of U.S. post 9/11 policy:

Unlike large, formal bodies that constrained U.S. options,empowered spoilers, and forced the United States to strive for bland consensus, these selective arrangements would be restricted to capable, like-minded countries, permitting decisive action in the service of U.S.①Stewart Patrick, “Prix Fixe and a la Carte: Avoiding False Multilateral Choices,” The Washington Quarterly, Vol.32, No.4, 2009, p.83.

Haass recently has described contemporary multilateralist policy not as, “à la carte multilateralism,” but as, “messy multilateralism.” This new conception of American policy no longer focuses on opting in or out of arrangements as the earlier Bush policy did. Nor is about unilateralism or the creation of ad hoc coalitions of the willing. Rather global governance as Haass now sees it consists of a variety of platforms that seek to provide,“the collective effort” that not even the United States can face alone. Thus we see that multilateralism consists of democratic multilateralism (universalist institutions, Copenhagen Conference,United Nations General Assembly), elite multilateralism (G7 Leaders Summit and now G20), functional multilateralism(coalitions of the willing and relevant to the specific policy subject),informal multilateralism (financial and standard setting reforms)and even regionalism (bilateral and regional trade and investment regimes).

In the face of this growing jumble of international organizations what are we likely to see the United States do? The secretary of state Hillary Clinton has suggested that the U.S. will work to create a collaborative environment where states are likely to be incentivized to act together:

So these two facts demand a different global architecture, one in which states have clear incentives to cooperate and live up to their responsibilities, as well as strong disincentives to sit on the sidelines or so discord and division. … We’ll work through institutions and reform them, but we’ll go further. We’ll use our power to convene, our ability to connect countries around the world, and sound foreign policy strategies to create partnerships aimed at solving problems. … In short, we will lead by inducing greater cooperation among a greater number of actors and reducing competition, tilting the balance away from a multi-polar world and toward a multi-partner world.①Hillary Rodham Clinton, “Council on Foreign Relations Address by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,” July 15, 2009, http://www.cfr.org/publication/19840/.

An examination then of the contemporary international relations context becomes very valuable. When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, analysts puzzled over the new structure of international relations with the collapse of one of the two superpowers-the Soviet Union. International relations theorist,Richard Rosecrance, then at the University of California, Los Angeles, was one of the first to examine and compare the international system with the early nineteenth century European concert.②Richard Rosecrance, “A New Concert of Powers,” Foreign Affairs, Vol.87, No.4, 1992, pp.64-82.The fact that conflict between the two superpowers had ended-and so the bipolar world - and in its place a number of powers were left standing where there was no strong division or ideological gulf among them seemed to suggest the aptness of the comparison to a ‘club’ of leadership. Indeed, there appeared to be the prospect of a ‘new concert’ in the face of the end of the Cold War struggle.

Rosecrance warned us, however, that periods of central coalition were few indeed. The classic concert period, for instance,lasted only from 1815 through 1822. Indeed most the nineteenth century and thereafter was built on classic balance of power and competitive relations among states. And it is that dynamic experts looking at global governance today often assume operate notwithstanding that Rosecrance pointed to the failure of most balance of power and deterrence efforts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. States balancing one another and building a stable international system were not at the heart of international relations. And it is not today. As secretary of state Clinton suggests in her examination of American foreign policy this is not a balancing of powers but a collective partnership. Rosecrance,further reminded us what is required-what the fundamentals are- for such a collaborative ‘concert-like’ system: (i) involvement of all; (ii) ideological agreement; and (iii) renunciation of war and territorial expansion replacing it with a collective drive for economic growth and the achievement of national prosperity.①Rosecrance, p.75.

In a very recent piece - again by Richard Rosecrance, now at Harvard University’s Kennedy School but in addition China international relations expert, Jia Qingguo, Associate Dean of School of International Studies at Peking University, examines closely the landscape of international relations and in particular the path of U.S.-China relations.②Jia Qingguo & Richard Rosecrance, “Delicately Poised: Are China and the U.S. Heading for Conflict?” GlobalAsia, Vol.4, No.4, 2010, pp.72-81.

Among other things these two experts evaluate the likelihood of war between these two great powers and find it lacking. In doing this they describe a world quite distinct from 19thand 20thcentury international relations. They point to three quite significant changes in the international relations landscape:

Nuclear weapons and the deterrence nuclear weapons have generated among the great powers have dampened major power enthusiasm for conflict and its consequences;

Globalization and growing interdependence have allowed,and impelled, major powers to focus on trade and investment in their efforts to insure growth and national prosperity; and

Territorial expansion as a means to enhanced wealth and prestige has little appeal-states and importantly their publics in general do not favor territorial expansion and conflict.①Jia Qingguo & Richard Rosecrance, p.79.

In the China-U.S. relationship and indeed for all the major powers, the tight interdependence (both positive and negative)causes states to explore the necessary collaboration even where conflict continues to exist. As the authors suggest, “… after years of interaction, China and the U.S. have developed a shared stake in cooperation.”②Jia Qingguo & Richard Rosecrance, p.80.

Global leadership is today built on national interest, not surprisingly, but also on interdependence and growing globalization. Such a foundation does not rely on the mechanisms of balancing and great power rivalry, as we have understood those concepts. Today we see the great powers struggling to overcome the problem collective action and to fashion collective decisions in global governance. This is not a focus on the distribution of power of the leading states but on the negotiated agreement of states.

So contemporary global governance is constructed on a foundation of national interest and globalization. The classic elements of balancing and power relations, so evident in the European system of the 19thcentury, are reconfigured in the light the international relations landscape of the post-Cold War world.

The World of Gx Global Governance

But the structure-meaning the institutions - has been altered as well. Today the Gx process dominates the multilateral system of global governance. While the multilateral system was built after World War II on formal, treaty-made, legally binding institutions– collectively the UN-Bretton Woods system of international organizations-today the most dynamic elements of global governance arise from the Gx process.

The emergence of Gx institutions sends us back to the early 1970s. The creation of the G7, actually the G6 in 1975 with the first summit at Rambouillet included France, the U.S., the UK,Germany, Japan and Italy. By the next meeting this informal leaders gathering in Puerto Rico, hosted by the United States,included a seventh leaders-the Canadian prime minister.①For a practical summary of these summit initiatives, see Peter Hajnal, “The G7/G8 as an International Institution,” in Peter Hajnal, The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role and Documentation, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2007, pp.1-12. In fact the extensive analysis and information on the Gx process history here in this PAB has been provided through two multivolume series from Ashgate Publishing entitled, “Global Finance” and “The G8 and Global Governance”. The Global Finance series is currently edited by, John Kirton, University of Toronto, Michele Fratianni, Indiana University and Paolo Savona, LUISS University in Italy. The G8 and Global Governance Series were edited by John Kirton and is now completed.With that this G7 leader’s summit was born and continued uninterrupted annually until the formal enlargement to the G8 in 1998 with the inclusion of Russia at the Birmingham Summit.

This Gx process emerged because of forces driving global affairs. Issues requiring collective action remained unresolved.As the decades past the deadlock over reform and leadership in many of the Bretton Woods and UN institutions became an even clearer impetus for other action at the Gx level.

While the G7 summit became an annual meeting on the calendar of global governance, it remains evident that even today there is no consensus on the purpose or expectations over results of these leaders meetings. The rise of the Gx process-the G5, the G7/8 and the G20②The G20, which is actually consists of the G7/8, U.S., Canada, UK, France, Italy Japan,Germany, Russia and the EU plus the G5, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico and then additionally Argentina, Australia, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the Republic of Korea and Turkey.Unofficial countries include Spain, Holland and Belgium plus the heads of the key multilateral financial institutions and the UN and the OECD.- is structurally and procedurally at odds with the earlier treaty-based organizations of the post war world. Many officials and commentators have not accepted such an institutional transformation with any degree of equanimity.

For those like John Kirton, the director of the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto, who champions these informal global governance institutions, these summits provide,“core functions of forging co-operative agreements, inducing national compliance with those collective commitments, and responding to regional cries before they endanger systemic stability.”①John Kirton, “Explaining G8 Effectiveness,” in Michael Hodges, John Kirton and Joseph Daniels (eds.), “The G8’s Role in the New Millennium, Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999, p.53.A somewhat less favorable review suggests that the summits may provide primarily deliberative functions. In this view the summit performs the core functions of stability maintenance through ongoing communication, consensus formation and crisis response. Leaders are provided frank face-to-face discussions and information on national policy action.The summit becomes much more in the way of information sharing. While the deliberative function may encourage direction setting, possibly a convergence of some national policies and in some instances collective agreements, there may be no agreement.②John Kirton, “Economic Co-operation: Summitry, Institutions, and Structural Change,” paper prepared for a conference on “Structural Change and Co-operation in the Global Economy,” The Center for International Business Education and the Center for Global Governance, Rutgers University, May 19-20, 1997.Finally, for many observers, those most critical of the Gx process, the summit is really no more than a consultative forum. Leaders come together, get to know each other, understand the challenges faced by leaders and their domestic pressures.The statements issued at the end of such summits are generally aspirational and often hide the differences that represent distinct national positions.

The criticisms of the Gx process are then numerous. Many international relations experts are dismissive of the informal system especially the annual leaders’ summits. CFR’s Richard Haass believes that all these various informal institutions, which are, as he puts it, “… invariably less inclusive, less comprehensive and less predictable” and also for good measure less legitimate than the, “formal global accords” that are “doable and desirable.”③Richard Haass, “The Case for Messy Multilateralism,” Financial Times, January 5, 2010,http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b68ad6a2-ff1a-11de-a677-00144feab49a.html, accessed January 22,2010.For Haass these informal club-like efforts can lead or complement classic multilateralism. While a positive appraisal-if evidently qualified - Haass implies that the multiplicity of institutions-a far cry from the ‘neat world’ of the UN-Bretton Woods system-is a‘second best’ solution to the challenge of global governance in the 21st century.

CFR’s Stewart Patrick has examined the various informal structures that were created in the Gx process and he expresses the prevailing sense, at least in Washington, that these institutions remain at best, a ‘second best’ response to global governance:

Regardless of which format emerges [Gx process], the Obama administration should be wary of indulging in unrealistic expectations. It is implausible that any annual summit can morph into a true decision-making (much less decision-implementing)body that could substitute for the authority, legitimacy or capacity of formal institutions like the United Nations, WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), or The World Bank. Going forward, a priority for the Obama administration and its counterparts abroad will be to design systematic procedures for linking the initiatives launched and commitments made in these consultative forums with the ongoing work streams and reform agendas within the world’s formal organizations.①Stewart Patrick, “Global Governance Reform: An American View of U.S. Leadership,” Stanley Foundation Policy Analysis Brief, forthcoming, 2010, p.14.

On the membership, or representation front, many have long criticized the self-appointed G7 annual gatherings made up of what critics called the ‘club of the rich’. Each of the rising powers—China, India, Brazil criticized the narrow membership of the G7/8 process and expressed deep skepticism about joining leadership organizations as they were traditionally constituted. As Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, declared just before the 2008 G8 Summit, “you simply can’t ignore” the emerging countries such as Brazil, India, and China. He further argued that the G20 leaders’ summit was a “better model” than the G8 leadership, adding that the “G-8 is over as a political decision group.”②Quoted in “Brazil Considers the G-8 Is No Longer a Valid Political Decision Group,”MercoPress, June 12, 2009.Chinese commentators and experts also opposed China’s membership in an only slightly enlarged G8, but China has warmed, it seems, to the G20 Leaders’ Summit, where it has an opportunity, perhaps, to influence the G20 agenda—particularly in support of developing countries—and leverage its own position. For China and the other large emerging market countries, their inclusion-through the G20 enlargement -appropriately acknowledges their status as rising powers and their increasing influence on views of global governance leadership. It also seems to have stilled, if only, criticism of Gx process legitimacy. It is clear, however, that the ‘uninvited’ remain suspicious. The Nordic countries, for example, following the Pittsburgh summit, expressed disappointment in not being included. Many smaller countries have expressed distaste for the informal summits even if they have been enlarged. It may be that there is ultimately no resolution of the question of ‘legitimacy’ and critical voices would only be quieted with a UN General Assembly–like institution.

Is all this skepticism warranted and how should China approach these new structures of global governance? Is it indeed,“implausible” that these annual summits can be no more than a consultative forum, with at best aspirational statements and deliberative functions with little or no capacity to engineer and implement collaborative decision-making at the international level?

Critics of the Gx process and the informal institutions the process has generated tend to focus on, or limit their gaze perhaps to, the annual leader’s summits. But the Gx process has been about far more than summits and for quite some time. Increasingly a thick institutional support structure and framework surrounds the leader’s summits. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the current director of Policy Planning at the U.S. state department, and formerly dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University has for some time argued the growing importance of transgovernmental networks in international relations.①Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.For a more contemporary focus on transgovernmental networks, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Hale, “Transgovernmental Networks and Emerging Powers,” in Alan S. Alexandroff and Andrew F. Cooper (eds.), Rising States, Rising Institutions Challenges for Global Governance,Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, forthcoming May 2010.And this is certainly the case for the G7 and now for the G20. At the first summit at Rambouillet in 1975, finance and foreign ministers, as well as personal representatives (later called sherpas) accompanied leaders and joined at the summit gatherings. This collective group continued to gather at the annual G7 summits up until Birmingham 1998.There, on the advice of then Prime Minister Tony Blair, the foreign and finance ministers held separate meetings a few days before the leader’s summit and the leaders met separately with their personal representatives sitting behind the leaders but otherwise taking no part in the proceedings. This ‘heads-only’ format has continued right up to the present and is also the format for G20 leaders meetings.

But, and in addition, finance and foreign ministers met periodically throughout the years of the G7 ad the G8. And not only these two sets of ministers but also other ministry officials began to meet. The following details the starting date for separate minister meetings:

Trade –first met in 1978. In 1982 formed the quadrilateral –EU, U.S., Canada and Japan that met 3 to 4 times a year.

Ceased to meet after 1999

Foreign affairs - 1984

Finance ministers-1986

Environment-1992

Employment-1994

Information-1995

Terrorism - 1995

In the case of finance, not only do the finance ministers meet periodically but deputy ministers also meet periodically.“Indeed the annual gathering of the leaders, as John Kirton has pointed out, is now supplemented by a year-round sequence of ad hoc meetings of the leaders and their finance and foreign ministers,regular forums collectively embracing a majority of the ministries of government, and a subterranean web of working groups that even the leaders’ personal representatives find it difficult to monitor an control.”①John Kirton, Explaining G8 Effectiveness, p.46.The sherpas and sous sherpas (two for each leader) are key official elements of the Gx process. They gather several times a year and are responsible for preparation of the upcoming yearly summit. These representatives take notes at the leaders meetings and they transmit any decisions that the leaders make. And the sherpas follow up with each other after the summits.

Beyond these ministerial networks regular and ad hoc task forces and working groups have also become part of the Gx process. An Africa Forum, a major venue for the discussion and monitoring of policies, strategies and priorities to support Africa’s development was created. The G8 in 2001 at Genoa launched the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. A counter-Terrorism Action Group was set up as early as 2002.

In the financial area a number of rather prominent task forces were created. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was created in 1989 to co-ordinate efforts to fight drug-related money laundering. The FATF is purposed to develop and promote national and international policies to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The task force has enlarged its membership beyond the original G7 and then G8. In fact as early as 2005 China sent members as observers. An expert group on financial crime was set up by the 1997 Denver summit. Finally,and importantly, the Financial Stability Forum (FSF) was established by the G7 finance ministers and central bankers in 1999. This Forum was designed to improve the functioning of financial markets and to reduce systemic risk. The FSF has grown quite significantly and in the global financial crisis the G20 enlarged it further, gave it a new name, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and has tasked it with a variety of regulatory proposals that initially were lodged in a number of G20 finance working groups.

And it is worth recalling that the G20 leaders summit was called into existence ten years earlier-at the time of the Asian financial crisis-as the G20 Finance Ministers. This transgovernmental network has continued to meet and, according to John Kirton of the G8 Research Group, “The G20 finance ministers collectively confront complex systemic crises and issues rather than allowing the traditional powers to dictate decisions.①John Kirton, “The G-20 Finance Minister: Network Governance,” in Alan S. Alexandroff and Andrew F. Cooper (eds.), Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance,Washington, DC,: Brookings Institution, 2010, p.197.These are but some of the groups created by the Gx process. The Gx process, in sum then, is then a much more complete system of global governance than is identified if one looks narrowly only at the annual summit process. If all that Gx ministerial and network development is insufficient, then it also the case that there is an additional piece to global governance-the growing relationship between the Gx and UN-Bretton Woods institutions. Frequently proponents and critics have emphasized the possible zero sum nature of the two systems-one formal and one informal. John Kirton and his colleagues, however, have described the global governance institutions as two systems, “two great galaxies.”For Kirton and his colleagues the central feature of this two-system global governance environment arises from the fact that the new institution building of the Gx process that has occurred over several decades did not follow on from the destruction of the prior system.①One of the classic examinations of global governance development is chronicled by Princeton University’s, G. John Ikenberry. This much praised work looks at the creation of new international orders following major wars. G. John Ikenberry, “After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint,and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.In part, because of the analysis in this book many have come to believe that new international institutions and indeed orders can only be constructed on the debris of the former international system.Rather, following the demise of the Cold War system in 1989, “The institutions and ideals of a new and old order thus had to compete, converge and cooperate with each other as they sought to govern this ever more demanding and globalizing system.”②John Kirton, Marina Larionova and Paolo Savona, “Introduction, Argument and Conclusions,”in John Kirton, Marina Larionova and Paolo Savona (eds.), Making Global Economic Governance Effective: Hard and Soft Law Institutions in a Crowded World, Aldershot, UK:Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010, p.4. For a thorough examination of the emergence of the two systems and the growing interaction between the Bretton Woods-UN system and the Gx process system, see especially John Kirton, “Multilateral Organizations and G8 Governance: A Framework for Analysis,” pp. 23-42.The Bretton Woods-UN system had been build on a formal, ‘hard law’, broadly heavily organized bodies. Over the decades this formal system was joined by ‘softer’organizations with more limited membership, less bureaucracy and more flexible organizations. Included in these institutions is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). As we have described above, the Gx system is one built on club-like limited membership, informal organizations, and now a widely developed transgovernmental network of institutions.

As with so much of the analysis on the Gx process there is no consensus of the relationship between these two global governance systems. Views range from the two being totally isolated from each other, through the two systems acting as rivals towards each other, to a perspective where the G7/8 and now the G20 act as a kind of ‘inner cabinet’ and the international organizations provide a civil service that can be tasked to implement commitments made at the Gx summit or at the ministerial level. Certainly in the global financial crisis the G20 leaders summit, especially in the 2008 Washington communiqué,tasked the IMF to carry out a number of leaders’ commitments identified at the summit. It is likely that the relationship between the UN-Bretton Woods system and the Gx process system is one where there is a “pulling together” with, “support flowing both ways,” as suggested by Kirton. Indeed there is collaboration and support through many of the Gx phases from preparation,commitment and finally implementation. In that continuum the international organizations can provide, among other things,expertise, officialdom, and compliance monitoring. In addition the heads of some of the key institutions such as the UN, the IMF,OECD and the World Bank attend the G20 summits.

China Faces Global Governance Leadership

So, how should China look at the system and the role it has acquired through the creation of the G20 leaders summit? As the article points out there are two systems of global governance that have been built since the end of World War II. First there is the Bretton-Woods-UN system of treaty-created legally binding multilateral structures of global governance. Beginning in the 1970s and accelerating from the 1980s there is the informal Gx process institutions-built on leader summits and an ever enlarging web of transgovernmental networks - that today constitute the most dynamic elements of global governance.China has achieved leadership in both systems. China sits atop the security system as one of the five permanent veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council (UNSC). With respect to the Gx system, China has achieved a place at the leaders table with the enlargement of the leaders summit for economic purposes from the G7/8 to the G20.

Though the rising states-China, India, Brazil and possibly South Africa and Mexico-all members of the G20 leaders summit- continue to express support for the institutions of the Bretton Woods-UN system (support in particular for the ‘universalism’ -one country, one vote - character of these institutions) the evident collaborative decision-making in global governance today appears to be taking place in informal organizations.

While that Gx dynamic is most evidently present in economic issues (the series of summits to tackle the global financial crisis), it is also present in issues such as climate change and in proliferation.While the climate change issue was most recently addressed in the UN Copenhagen Conference (COP-15) that included the ‘192’-all leaders of the UN Assembly-and a host of non-governmental organizations, the key leadership-Brazil, India, South Africa,China’s Wen Jiabao and U.S. President Barack Obama concluded the Copenhagen Accord at the Conference.①http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf.Though not a legally binding instrument, it appears to be the basis for further elaboration of a global governance accord on climate change.And with respect to critical non-proliferation questions - notably North Korea and Iran-informal organizations-the 6-Party members over North Korea and the EU-3 plus the U.S., Russia and China have sought to restrain Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.In both cases the informal group interacts with larger and often formal global governance institutions but the collaborative decision-making effort is tackled at the informal level.

China’s global governance leadership will be tested-whether the leadership prefers this it or not-at the Gx and informal level.Experts have generally agreed on the key dimensions of the Gx process, though as we’ll see there is little consensus on how to evaluate these dimensions. Still most experts recognize these Gx features:

Legitimacy;

Informality;

Effectiveness

Equality; and

Likemindedness

Examining these dimensions is important, as the same dimensions will impact the prospect for collective decision-making.

We have already examined legitimacy and the critics’denunciation over the limited and qualified membership of the Gx process; it has been recently quieted by the enlargement of the G7/8 to the G20.

Informality is a dimension that is largely ignored by experts.But the same cannot be said of participants. Leaders and others identify this dimension and express support for the value of the small group setting and which they come to know each other personally. Over time leaders come to know each other and the problems they face in their own domestic settings; they can speak directly and often forthrightly. Equalness is likely linked to informality; it is certainly linked to hierarchy, or more precisely,the absence largely of hierarchy in these settings. The Gx process id at least formally built on an equality foundation. The leaders are accorded the same strength of voice. This obviously contrasts with the UN where the conflict resolution setting-the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) distinguishes permanent representatives (the P5) with the no permanent and non-veto holding members of the UNSC.

In many respects there is no more vital dimension than effectiveness in the analysis of global governance. Effectiveness is a complex dimension that includes at least two parts. There is what most refers to as, ‘commitment.’ Commitments are most readily identified in the communiqués of the leaders. Thus, as set out below in the most persistent evaluative program of the Gx process and the leader’s statements-the G8 research group - as described below has the most comprehensive definition of commitment. Thus, to the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto (G8 Research) a commitment is, “a discrete, specific,publicly expressed, collectively agreed statement of intent, a“promise” or “undertaking” by Summit members that they will take future action to move toward, meet or adjust to an identified welfare target.”

But effectiveness is not limited to commitments. The evaluation of effectiveness must necessarily also encompass implementation or what the G8 Research has identified as compliance. Compliance” is, “national government action towards the domestic implementation of the necessary formal legislative and administrative regulations designed to execute Summit commitments. National governments alter their own behavior and that of their societies and outsiders, in order to attain summit-specific welfare targets.”①The definitions and the operationalization of the G8 compliance assessments can be found at:G8 Research Group, “Analytical Studies,”What is evident about implementation or compliance is that the actions take place in the national capital. Though there are commitments that can be implemented at the international level in, say, an international organization, the international commitments must be implemented generally at the national level. Global governance is not global when it comes to implementation. It is local. For a number of the leaders this focus on implementation at the national level underlines the difficulty in not only jointly committing to an effort or a program but to implementing that collective decision.Certainly a focus on domestic politics and the structure and process of governing there highlights the difficulty for a U.S.administration in achieving implementation. But the obstacles presented by domestic politics are not confined to the United States alone. Thus, using the Gx setting with the informality provided to leaders is an important feature of the informal process.Much can be learned and it may well be that leaders may have to publicly and more openly support collective decisions in order to support those leaders who face a tough ‘domestic road’ to national implementation.

Enlargement may well pose serious challenges to collective decision-making. The increase in size to a G20 leader’s summit brings added diversity and raises the challenge to achieving a collective global governance decision. Likemindedness in the Gx leadership appears to have diminished with enlargement. While it is the case that traditional powers of the G7 have often disagreed,their disagreements-Germany, France, the UK, the United States and Japan - have been principally over policy choices and not over differences in norms and values in the international system. The‘values gulf’ today between rising and traditional powers threatens to weaken, perhaps fundamentally, Gx global governance institutions just as they have eroded collaboration in the Bretton Woods-UN formal institutions. The most acute aspects of the ‘values gulf’ among the enlarged leadership, especially China, include a number of aspects in global governance.

In the enlarged leadership of Gx there are strong differences over the character and defense of ‘national sovereignty’. This critical value is often expressed as non-interference in the domestic affairs of other states. China has long defended (goingback to Bandung in 1955) the most traditional notions of national sovereignty. But China is not alone. As is evident both India and Brazil support strongly non-interference in such contexts as responsibility to protect and humanitarian intervention. But this defense of the primary value of the Westphalian system of states is not just limited to the new values of humanitarian intervention.Recently we saw the Chinese leadership raise the same defense over the U.S. insistence that international verification of carbon reductions was a requirement of the new climate change regime.Yet the appeal to such values may not reflect China’s national interest in climate change. Furthermore, in a small group decision-making setting-not motivated by balancing or a competitive mode-the assertion of values may only ‘cloud’China’s legitimate interests over a climate change treaty that focuses on mandatory levels of emission, technology transfer and financing, among other policy objectives.

The appeal to the development gap and the attack on traditional states and their policies invoking the defense of the global south (a policy of ‘developmentalism’) is a policy that various rising states have appealed to at different times. In opposing, for example, trade and development aid policies the rising states emphasize the gulf between north and the global south and demand greater equity and participation for the global south. These states appeal to their own status as developing countries and demand satisfaction for the global south. The creation of this divide in leadership only raises the difficulties of reaching consensus and overcoming the problems to collective action in this informal small group setting. There is, of course,recognition that rising states such as India and China contain large populations and that there remain significantly poor populations in both. But national growth and prosperity are dramatic –historically unparalleled - and these dynamics underline why rising powers-India and China included-have been included in an enlarged leadership. Thus emphasizing the gulf between rising powers and developing countries from those of the traditional states again obscures the national interests that need to be satisfied at least in part in collective decision-making.

Universalism and hierarchy are often the opposite sides of the same value issue. Universalism insists on a one-country-one vote principle, or implies, if not necessitating consensus as in the World Trade Organization. Hierarchy permits differences of influence whether in the context of universal settings as the UNSC or in smaller clubs where formally or not some states hold greater sway than others. As has pointed out above universalism has retained a strong attraction and China and other rising powers have expressed support for those organizations where universalism governs. The Gx process has been strongly attacked for its exclusions. Yet the universalism has been shown too often - the Doha Round in the WTO or COP-15-to rob us of collective(though not universal) governance and the resulting commitments.

The Gx system has been both harshly criticized and frequently declared irrelevant. For supporters of traditional multilateralism, the Gx process is a ‘second best solution’ to the serious effort to forge collective decisions. This analysis casts a different light on the Gx process. While the Gx process is informal it is also an influential world of summits and a system of support structures that have promoted collective decision-making in economics, finance, development and beyond that to institutional reform and even security. The G20 is focused currently on the economic but there are calls to extend its attention beyond questions of the global financial crisis to include climate change,politics, institutional reform and security.

This analysis has examined the contemporary realm of informal global governance institutions and the ability of the Gx system to organize collective decisions and meet the challenges facing the global economic and political system. The Gx process retains the landscape, the structures and the dimensions that can generate successful collaborative decision-making. National interest has not fled. But it has to be both understood and expressed transparently. And the tight interdependence that has raised consequences for societies across the globe from the actions of others, if anything, is even more evident. Paradoxically, it may be that some of the most difficult issues-the existential problems of climate change and non-proliferation-that may be most susceptible to collective decision-making. Here both national interest and the ‘bindingness’ of interdependence may create the‘playing field’ for forging hard-fought collective decision.

China now faces global governance leadership in what still remains a small group environment where: informal leadership encounter is routine; persuasion dominates; and where disingenuous behavior is remembered. It places demands on the collective leadership to determine national interest and provide enough flexibility to enable leaders in these leadership environments to achieve collective commitment. China can face and be part of global governance leadership.

Alan S. Alexandroff is Co-Director of G20 Research Group, Munk Centre, University of Toronto& Senior Fellow of Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/evaluations/methodology/g7c2.htm.