This book offers the most thorough, detailed inside story of the preparation, negotiation, performance, and achievements of G20 gatherings from their start at the finance level in 1999 through their rise to become leader-level summits in response to the great global financial crisis in 2008. Follow the moves of America’s George Bush and Barack Obama, Britain’s Gordon Brown and David Cameron, Canada’s Stephen Harper, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and other key leaders as they struggle to contain the worst global recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This book provides a full chapter-long account of each of the first four G20 summits from Washington to Toronto with summaries of the ensuing summits. It uses international relations theory to build and apply a model of systemic hub governance to back its central claim to show convincingly that G20 performance has grown to successfully govern an increasingly interconnected, complex, crisis-ridden, globalized twenty-first century world.

Climate change control has risen to the top of the international agenda. Failed efforts, centred in the United Nations, to allocate responsibility have resulted in a challenge now reaching crisis stage. John J. Kirton and Ella Kokotsis analyse the generation and effectiveness of four decades of intergovernmental regimes for controlling global climate change. Informed by international relations theories and critical of the prevailing UN approach, Kirton and Kokotsis trace the global governance of climate change from its 1970s origins to the present and demonstrate the effectiveness of the plurilateral summit alternative grounded in the G7/8 and the G20. Topics covered include: - G7/8 and UN competition and convergence on governing climate change - Kyoto obligations and the post-Kyoto regime - The role of the G7/8 and G20 in generating a regime beyond Kyoto - Projections of and prescriptions for an effective global climate change control regime for the twenty-first century. This topical book synthesizes a rich array of empirical data, including new interview and documentary material about G7/8 and G20 governance of climate change, and makes a valuable contribution to understanding the dynamics of governing climate change. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, and policy makers interested in the dynamics behind governance processes within the intergovernmental realm.

Kirton offers a comprehensive, systematic examination of China’s G20 approach, diplomacy and influence since the G20’s start as a forum for finance ministers and central bankers in 1999. This comprehensive reference tool works its way through China’s elevation to the leaders’ level with summits from 2008-2014, to the prospects for its Antalya Summit in November 2014 and above all China’s first summit as host in Hangzhou in the autumn of 2016. This book contains a full treatment of China’s role in the summits from 2011 to 2014, and China’s plans, role and prospects for the summits in 2015 and 2016. Analytically, it develops and tests at the level of a single member country the systemic hub model of G20 governance that was developed for and guided in Kirton’s 2013 book, G20 Governance for a Globalized World.

This book offers the most thorough, detailed inside story of the preparation, negotiation, performance, and achievements of G20 gatherings from their start at the finance level in 1999 through their rise to become leader-level summits in response to the great global financial crisis in 2008. Follow the moves of America’s George Bush and Barack Obama, Britain’s Gordon Brown and David Cameron, Canada’s Stephen Harper, Germany’s Angela Merkel, and other key leaders as they struggle to contain the worst global recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This book provides a full chapter-long account of each of the first four G20 summits from Washington to Toronto with summaries of the ensuing summits. It uses international relations theory to build and apply a model of systemic hub governance to back its central claim to show convincingly that G20 performance has grown to successfully govern an increasingly interconnected, complex, crisis-ridden, globalized twenty-first century world.

The global community confronts a comprehensive and interconnected array of compelling economic, development and security challenges which require effective global governance. At the centre of world governance stand the new plurilateral summit institutions; the G8 and G20, and UN summits on subjects such as sustainable development and climate change. Many observers and participants regard the performance of these summits as inadequate and doubt their ability to cope with increasingly complex and numerous global challenges. This book critically examines how effectively central global institutions comply with their commitments and how their effectiveness can be improved through accountability measures designed to raise compliance and deliver better results. Expert contributors assess compliance and accountability at the key global institutions to provide an important resource for policymakers and scholars in political science, governance and accountability. For additional information and data relating to the book, please visit: http://www.g7g20.utoronto.ca/accountability/

This book analyzes the Group of Twenty (G20) since the 2008 financial crisis. The latter event undermined conventional wisdom and governance norms, constituting a more contested international economic regime. G20 leaders sought a cooperative response to the 2008 crisis through the forum, aware of their interdependence and the growing economic importance of key developing states. They agreed to new norms of financial governance based on macroprudential regulation, the Basel III Accords, and enhanced multilateral cooperation. They prioritized G20 cooperation for achieving international economic stability and growth. Differences exist over causes and effects of the crisis, including on the merits of economic austerity or fiscal stimulus strategies; on responsibility for and solutions to international economic imbalances; and concerns about monetary policies and “currency wars”. Despite claims from skeptics that G20 cooperation is declining, this book argues its importance for international relations and as a hub of global governance networks.

This book charts the course and causes of UN, G7 and G20 governance of climate change through the crucial period of 2015–2021. It provides a careful, comprehensive and reliable description of the individual and interactive contributions of the G7, G20 and UN summits and analyses their results. The authors explain these contributions and results by considering the impacts of causal candidates, such as a changing physical ecosystem and international political system and the actions of individual leaders of the world’s most systemically significant countries. They apply and improve an established, compact causal model, grounded in international relations theory, to guide these tasks. By developing, prescribing and implementing immediate, realistic actionable policy solutions to cope with the urgent, existential challenge of controlling climate change, this volume will appeal to scholars of international relations, global governance and global environmental governance.