Breaking Deadlocks in Global Governance: The L-20 Proposal

Abstract

The L-20, a summit gathering of the leaders of twenty important states from all major world regions, would constitute a significant advance in global governance. For all its positive contributions, the Group of 8 (G8) has not been able to make the breakthroughs necessary to develop vitally needed global public policy for the twenty-first century. A somewhat larger group, the L-20 would build on the G8's strengths of informality and flexibility and provide a valuable complement to the United Nations. The result would be real advances in areas of global gridlock such as climate change, health, and conflict management. A Changing World Why do we need an L-20 today? The underlying reason is rapid globalization. Humanity now lives under conditions of high global interdependence. The practical reality is that issues of growth, trade, and aid on the one hand, and environment and poverty on the other, require levels of international coordination today that are fundamentally different from any preceding period. The global community needs global public policies to ensure its well-being. In particular, the world must continuously round off the hard edges of globalization so that this process works for all countries. This task is not simply the responsibility of the UN system. It is also the responsibility of national governments, all of which--despite their vast differences in circumstances--are dealing country by country with many of the same issues wrought by globalization. While successful international institutions are essential if the world is to work, national governments are the masters of those very institutions--not the other way around. Among the many national governments across the world, the most powerful have a particular responsibility to manage globalization well. The simple fact is that great economic or military power begets proportionate international influence and, with that power, comes significant responsibility for the global community. The exercise (or not) of that responsibility directly affects not only a state's own citizens, but all of us. Which governments hold this key position? For much of recent history, global primacy was held by the United States. At summit meetings, a hush would fall on the room when the president of the United States entered. Today, still, no player is more important for global governance than the United States. However, increasingly the ability to create the hush at summits is being shared. We stand at the brink of a period of significant change when it comes to the balance of global influence. The nature of power is transforming. A larger number of countries is likely to wield major power in the years to come, especially as it has become apparent since the fall of the Berlin Wall that military primacy alone is insufficient to ensure that a government's foreign policy goals will be met. From an economic perspective, the number of key players in world politics is multiplying. Economic globalization may have had its roots in the fertile commercial soil of a dynamic US economy, but its extension across the world has brought with it the development of significant partners and rivals. As international markets in trade and investment become freer, the less likely it is that a single country will dominate them. In fact, the United States has already been joined at the pinnacle of power by the European Union, Japan, China, and India. Others are not far behind. Even if only a partial transition to multipolarity occurs, the need for more effective global governance poses a significant challenge. For the moment, there is no effective caucus that can contain, manage, and mobilize this broader distribution of power for the common good of humankind. This is the fundamental rationale behind the L-20 proposal: the world needs a body that can form the consensus required to deal on a timely basis with issues of all kinds that have global repercussions. …