Reimagining The G7
“Bending” the Architecture: Reimagining the G7
John J. Hamre, et al. | 2024.06.12
The global governance system is in disarray. The UN Security Council is frozen by geopolitical rivalry and two wars. Other institutions such as the G20 and World Trade Organization (WTO) are underperforming.
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Over the last half-decade, G7 leadership summits have identified nine global priorities: (1) the Indo-Pacific; (2) economic resilience and security; (3) food security; (4) digital competitiveness; (5) climate; (6) Ukraine; (7) sustainable development; (8) disarmament and non-proliferation; and (9) labor.
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The G7’s scope has expanded, but its representation of the global economy and population has declined, highlighting the need for reform to enhance capabilities and legitimacy without sacrificing the G7’s trademark informality, trust, and effectiveness.
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The G7 should create an informal “troika” of the previous, current, and next G7 hosts to manage a consensus-based approach to agenda setting. This ensures consistency and follow-through on issues from one host to the next.
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The G7 should expand membership to include Australia and South Korea. They bring significant capabilities to the nine priorities identified by G7 leaders, are like-minded partners, and display the trust and reliability required of G7 members. These two countries perform as well, if not better than, current G7 members in the nine priority issue areas. They also address Europe’s overrepresentation and Asia’s severe underrepresentation in the group.
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The G7 might recognize other high-performing actors (e.g., Spain) as dialogue partners or associate members. The G7 should also consider consolidation of the European Council and European Commission into one seat.
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The G7 should establish a formal leader-level outreach mechanism to the Global South and middle-power economies to demonstrate inclusivity and confer legitimacy on the body as a global governance institution. The outreach partners should include the African Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, the G20, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
While the current G7, a decade old in its practices and membership, has performed admirably, the pace of change engendered by new disruptive technologies and old geopolitical rivalries now requires innovation beyond comfort for some. Inaction precipitates a vacuum that may be filled with forms of rule that are less desirable and even dangerous. The recommendations contained in this report are necessary pre-requisites for the incarnation of tomorrow’s G7 global governance mission.
A WORLD IN TURMOIL
At a time of global turmoil when traditional institutions of global governance are underperforming, the Group of Seven (G7), a bloc of industrialized democracies which includes the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union, is needed now more than ever to foster a more stable and predictable world order.
This CSIS report offers recommendations to empower a future G7 as a critical institution of global governance. The work presented here is a non-partisan and collaborative effort of CSIS expertise on Asia, Europe, sustainable development, and economics. The authors sought advice and critical input from almost three dozen former G7 point persons — so-called sherpas, sous-sherpas, and yaks — and representatives of the G7, European, and Asian diplomatic communities. This report does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of these participants.
The international system is changing at a pace not seen since the end of World War II. In the geostrategic space, wars in Europe and the Middle East, cohesion among a bloc of autocratic powers, and heightened proliferation threaten a new Cold War and pose major challenges to the peaceful status quo. At the same time, emerging and critical global issues such as artificial intelligence (AI), resilient supply chains, advances in synthetic biology, pandemic preparedness, and sustainable development demand new standards and norms, as well as cooperative and sustained action.
The current architecture of global governance is ill-suited to meet these challenges and opportunities. The United Nations, particularly the UN Security Council (UNSC), has failed to address human rights abuses, anti-democratic behavior, and aggression globally. The G20, once a stabilizing force that helped address the 1997 Asian liquidity crisis and the 2007–08 global financial crisis, is now hamstrung by geopolitical rivalry. The WTO, established to uphold rules and norms for the global trading system, has expanded membership to more than 160 countries, making it difficult to make decisions or enact the reforms necessary to regulate the current trade landscape. Changes in the operative space of the international system have led large emerging and middle powers to organize a proliferation of ad hoc groupings, including the Quad, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, AUKUS, U.S.-Japan-Korea trilateralism, and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Others, such as the BRICS partnerships, are also growing in membership and seeking to diminish their dependency on the U.S. dollar. Likewise, the G20 has welcomed the African Union to its ranks. Though these minilaterals allow new forums for marginalized voices, they are not yet in a position to set new rules of the road or replace institutions such as the UNSC or WTO.
Dealing with these potentially existential issues will require a level of trust and capability, as well as a track record of working together. It will take real conversations among leaders, not a set of talking points or a lowest-common-denominator joint statement to produce solutions that are lacking in these larger groupings.
Trying to devise a new institution would take decades, with no promise of success. The current pace of change in world affairs requires a “bending” of existing institutions to meet the challenges of global governance. As a grouping of like-minded, advanced industrialized democracies, the G7 is the only institution today that can step into this role. But this requires a reimagination of the G7 not of the past two decades but of the next two, that can find solutions to global problems, capitalize on future opportunities, and engage with critical voices from emerging and middle-power economies. This report offers recommendations focused on agenda setting, institutionalization, and membership of the body.
THE GLOBAL ROLE OF THE G7
G7 leaders have come a long way since their initial gathering in 1975 to address the oil shock and to coordinate monetary policies. In the past few years, the G7 leaders’ statements have taken on a more urgent, expansive, and unified tone as the world has grappled with a range of existential issues, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple financial crises, climate change, supply chain resilience, and wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In the past few years, it has become clear that the significant global challenges today have created demands for the G7 to actively execute across its expansive domain of responsibilities. Table 1 lists the top nine global priority issues of the G7 leaders over the past half-decade, derived from text analysis of G7 leaders’ statements between 2018 and 2023.
There is no denying that G7 leaders are willing to shoulder global responsibilities to meet the demands of a new era. Yet at the same time, the G7 commands a smaller portion of the global constituency. Even as the G7’s agenda has grown global, its representation as a share of the world’s population and global economy has declined over time, raising questions about its legitimacy outside of advanced industrialized democracies. At the same time, global challenges highlight the need for other capable countries to step up and help shoulder the burden of an expanded agenda.
This confluence of necessities — the need for the G7’s expanded scope, the need for effective institutions of global governance on the international stage, and the need for more inclusive representation of actors to manage the global challenges ranging from war to pandemics to the AI race — requires the G7 to “bend” and embrace a set of reforms to meet the moment. Reform and reimagination of the G7 will have to be done in a way to maintain the pieces that make it an effective and special grouping but allow it to effectuate its expanded scope and be an effective leadership organization.
▲ Table 1: Top Nine Priorities of G7 Leaders, 2018 vs. 2023. Source: CSIS Korea Chair analysis of G7 communiqués and statements.
▲ Figure 1: G7 Leaders’ Priorities by Topic, 2018–2023. Source: CSIS Korea Chair analysis of G7 communiqués and statements.
▲ Figure 2: The G7’s Declining Share of the World Economy and Global Population, 1975–2022. Source: Data aggregated by CSIS Korea Chair from “GDP (current US$),” World Bank; and “Population,” World Bank.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR REIMAGINING THE G7
RECOMMENDATION 1
Create a Consensus-Based Approach for G7 Agenda Setting
Traditionally, the G7 has been an informal grouping. Former sherpas praise the informality as contributing to the grouping’s flexibility, nimbleness, frank consultative process, and ability to act quickly on issues.
The downside, however, is that informality leads to inefficiency around agenda setting and discontinuity from presidency to presidency. For example, the 2023 Hiroshima G7 statement laid out an ambitious global agenda for member countries ranging from AI norms to cyber defenses to economic security, but the agenda for the 2024 Apulia G7 meeting, chaired by Italy, largely ignored these issues and has turned to migration from North Africa. While both sets of issues are important, the discontinuity in the agenda-setting function is suboptimal. It conveys confusing signals to the international community, precipitates a lack of follow-through, and exacerbates a lack of oversight on announced commitments.
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Create an informal “troika” of past, current, and upcoming G7 hosts to complement the work of individual country secretariats.
While respecting the privilege of the host country to shape the annual agenda, the informal troika’s main focus would be to ensure the continuity of core issues, including economic security, emerging technology, China, and Ukraine. These issues may change over time as they are resolved or as new challenges arise.
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Build a task force structure for key, pressing issues to ensure continuity and follow-through.
Task force-like structures, in the form of working groups, expert groups, and other such forums, already exist within the G7, but these could be repurposed in a way to ensure (1) completion of commitments from previous G7 presidencies; and (2) the tracking of agenda items for follow-on work in the next G7 presidency. Since approximately 2010, the G7 has had in place a mechanism to track accountability for G7 commitments to global development, but no such mechanism to track accountability for other political and economic commitments exists. This could be accomplished through explicit task forces, which could change focus and composition as needed. For example, G7 governments could explicitly agree to sunset task forces after a set number of years, and G7 members could also introduce new task forces to address emerging challenges.
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Consider a bifurcated agenda process.
This process would include two to three items that are core interests to the greater G7 and one to two items of critical importance to the host. The agenda could be determined by the G7 “troika” — consisting of the current G7 president alongside the countries holding the most recent and the upcoming G7 presidency — with input from other G7 countries through existing consultation mechanisms.
▲ Figure 3: A Brief History of G7 Membership. Source: “About the G7,” G7 Italia 2024; “The History of the G7,” Federal Government of Germany; and “G7/Summit of The Eight: History and Purpose,” U.S. Department of State, June 3, 1997.
RECOMMENDATION 2
Expand the G7 to Include Australia and South Korea
The current composition of the G7, now a decade old, represents a declining portion of the world’s population and global economy. Moreover, changes in the G7’s membership have been part of the organization’s identity as it has evolved over time to meet different challenges (Figure 3).
Increasing membership is not without controversy. Some former sherpas see it as a potential slippery slope where the G7’s effectiveness is sacrificed for the desire for greater inclusiveness and representation.
Two factors, however, weigh in favor of expansion. First, the extent to which the G7 members have enlarged the scope of their responsibilities requires new players with critical capabilities to fulfill the mission. Second, the G7’s current membership is disproportionately dominated by Europe (six out of nine seats, including the European Council and European Commission); has only one country to represent the whole of Asia; and excludes any voice representing the developing world. This composition is ill-suited for a reimagined G7 to play the role of the preeminent institution of global governance.
Australia and South Korea fall in the “sweet spot” of expanded G7 membership and enhanced effectiveness. Former sherpas argued that any new members must support the G7’s mission, share its political values, be responsible stewards of the international economy, and have the capabilities, commitment, and, importantly, the trust of the other G7 members. Australia and South Korea, respectively the 12th- and 13th-largest economies in the world, easily meet this bar.
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Trust and Responsibility: Both Australia and South Korea have demonstrated records as trustworthy and responsible public goods providers.
The two U.S. allies have fought on the side of democracy and a rules-based order in every major war since World War I and the Korean War, respectively. They have been exemplary leaders in contending with challenges that preoccupy the G7 leaders. Today, Australia has stood up like no other to unfair economic coercion by China, and it is instrumental to the critical mineral resiliency of the industrialized democracies. South Korea is a major provider of economic and indirect military assistance to Ukraine, and it is a critical player in protecting emerging technology supply chains. Both have demonstrated a leadership role in a host of global issues prioritized by the G7 (Figure 4). Both have been constructive members of the G20, demonstrating strong cooperation with the United States across administrations.
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Performance: Australia and South Korea are outperforming some current G7 members in areas deemed critical to G7 leaders.
Former sherpas noted that any new members must enhance, not detract from, the effectiveness of the G7. At the outset of the G4/5, the original members had outsized influence and economic prowess, but that is not the case today. New members should be more representative of the type of advanced and industrialized economies of the future to be fit to deal with those challenges.
Figures 5 and 6 show how Australia and South Korea are outperforming several current members on the nine priorities identified by the G7 over the last half-decade of leaders’ statements.
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Representation and Values: Australia and South Korea “balance out” the non-European composition of industrialized democracies.
A reimagined G7 should be more representative of the world as it is and will be, not as it was. The current G7 is Eurocentric and has only one Asian nation representing the entire region. As Figure 2 shows, and as suggested in the performance criteria, the G7’s share of the world economy and population is declining, calling into question how its members could speak for markets larger than them in terms of GDP or population size. Australia and South Korea would bring representation for two advanced countries in the Indo-Pacific region, with the latter demonstrating significant advancements in the economies of the future, including computing, AI, and technology.
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Recognize other high-performing actors.
The metrics in Figure 6 show that other European countries, such as Spain, perform respectably in the nine priority areas identified by G7 leaders and could be considered as regular dialogue partners. The G7 should consolidate representation from the European Council and European Commission, which now occupy two seats.
RECOMMENDATION 3
Establish a Formal G7 Outreach Mechanism
Any expansion of the G7, whether to a G9 or beyond, will be met with staunch criticism by some within and outside of the body. Outreach to the so-called Global South, and emerging and middle-power economies, is necessary if a reimagined G7 were to truly fulfill the role of becoming the preeminent global governance institution. The tradition of consultation with developing countries might be institutionalized as an official consultation by the annual G7 president and foreign or finance ministers, as well as both before and after the convening of the leaders’ meeting. This would ensure linkages with developing economies, demonstrate inclusivity, and confer more credibility and legitimacy on the G7. The issue areas in the near term should focus on pursuing development and climate goals, implementing new norms and standards (e.g., AI and emerging technologies), and strategic signaling and shaping, particularly with respect to China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This outreach should be extended to the African Union, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, the G20, and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
These organizations and countries represent voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Islamic world, ensuring better communication but also limiting the size of the G7 to ensure the optimal equilibrium in maintaining the G7’s effectiveness.
▲ Figure 4: Australia’s and South Korea’s Convening Roles in Priority G7 Issues. Source: CSIS Korea Chair.
▲ Figure 5: Ranking of Country Performance along Identified Issue Areas. Source: CSIS Korea Chair.
▲ Figure 6: Comparison of Country Performance across Identified Priority G7 Issue Areas. Source: CSIS Korea Chair.
CONCLUSION
The scope of disruption brought on by new emerging technologies as well as old geopolitical rivalries and territorial aggression presages that the world of tomorrow will not look like the world of today. Current institutions have proven incapable of carving out a path forward that capitalizes on the opportunities created by disruption and also guards against the erosion or even usurping of the core values, norms, and ethics of the rules-based order established after World War II. A confluence of forces has made it incumbent upon a reimagined G7 to fill the leadership void. While the current G7, now a decade old in its practices and membership, has performed admirably, the pace of change now cresting requires innovation beyond what may seem comfortable to some. Inaction, moreover, precipitates a vacuum that others may seek to fill with less desirable and even dangerous forms of rule. The recommendations contained in this report are by no means comprehensive, but they are necessary prerequisites for the incarnation of tomorrow’s G7 as the preeminent institution of global governance.
John Hamre was elected president and CEO of CSIS in January 2000.
Victor Cha is senior vice president for Asia and Korea Chair at CSIS. He is also the distinguished university professor and professor of government at Georgetown University.
Emily Benson is director of Project on Trade and Technology, and senior fellow of Scholl Chair in International Business at CSIS, where she focuses on trade, investment, and technology issues primarily in the transatlantic context.
Max Bergmann is the director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and the Stuart Center in Euro-Atlantic and Northern European Studies at CSIS.
Erin Murphy is a senior fellow for the Asia Program at CSIS. She has spent her career in several public and private sector roles, including as an analyst on Asian political and foreign policy issues at the Central Intelligence Agency, director for the Indo-Pacific at the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, founder and principal of her boutique advisory firm focused on Myanmar, and an English teacher with the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program in Saga, Japan.
Caitlin Welsh is the director of the Global Food and Water Security Program at CSIS, where she analyzes the drivers and consequences of food and water insecurity around the world, including for U.S. national security. Her specific areas of focus include the impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine on global food security and nutrition, food insecurity in the U.S. military, and the coherence between U.S. global water security policy and U.S. global food security policy.