The project traced several G20 policymaking processes through content analysis of elite interviews and policy documents of the G20 and other governance institutions. In addition, the project analysed a range of indicators to put the institutional features of the G20 in a global perspective and assess its democratic legitimacy.
Analysis of the membership of G-groups demonstrated that the G7 at its establishment and the G20 currently dominate the global economy on various financial and economic indicators. The shift to the G20 seems to have been driven by the G-group role of accommodating rising powers. For example, if its role as financial regulator would have driven the shift, inclusion of financial centres like Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Switzerland would have been warranted. Nevertheless, there was no specific country that consistently ranked better on the various economic and financial indicators. Therefore, we may conclude that the G20 does have the rightful membership in the economic and financial domain to legitimately play its central role.
However, the remit of the G20 has evolved far beyond the economic and financial domain. The project analysed the position of the G20 membership on various indicators related to the main environmental challenges of today, and distinguished countries that are most relevant in terms of responsibility and those that are most vulnerable to detrimental consequences. The G20 membership mirrors the global ranking of relevance with respect to the responsibility quite well. However, the set of countries with the most vulnerability is significantly different from the current G20 membership. In other words, it is more challenging for the G20 to legitimately play a central role in global environmental governance.
These project results indicate that the current institutional setup of the G20 faces challenges in legitimately performing its central role in global governance. To further investigate the implications of this, the project analysed global policymaking processes, focusing on the relations of the G20 with private actors and the ideas and norms underpinning G20 deliberations. When it comes to the relation to private actors, an analysis of sovereign debt crisis resolution demonstrated how the G20 has a structuring effect on private financial associations. The Institute of International Finance restructured its organization, expanded its membership, and took on private governance roles to remain the key interlocutor of the G20 and technical forums of governance. It subsequently was able to develop a private governance mechanism for sovereign debt restructurings which was endorsed by the G20.
To analyse the role of ideas and norms in the G20, the project investigated the development of governance patterns to tackle climate risks to financial stability. The complex nature of the climate system has created uncertainty for policymakers which opened up the discussions to, for example, civil society organizations. However, the ideational default in the G20 (a remnant of G7 preferences for light-touch market-based financial regulation) has led the supervisors and authorities in the G20 to stick to market-based solutions such as increasing transparency through disclosure of climate-related risks.
A key result of the project is the FINEPINT (‘FINancial Elite Policymakers INTerviewed’) thematic collection of interview transcripts held under an open data arrangement at the Data Archiving and Networked Services repository of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. This database is a valuable resource for researchers from International Political Economy, Political Science, and Contemporary History.
All results and outputs of the project are open access and can be found at the dedicated webpage at
https://jasperblom.eu/?page_id=170(se abrirá en una nueva ventana)
