Summit Reform: The Good and the Bad News

This essay argues that the case for creating an L-20 process is compelling. This is a mechanism that could effectively socialize leaders into thinking about global problems more responsibly, with an things considered perspective. However, the biggest obstacle to getting it going will not be an institutional issue, but the fact that many countries in the world simply do not take global problems like nuclear proliferation and global warming as seriously as is necessary to make good faith attempts to address them. Paul Martin's L-20 proposal has a number of virtues that, at first glance, make it an appropriate mix of realism and idealism. Its objective is to promote multilateral governance without a utopian blueprint. It promotes a more representative world order without wishing away the fact that some countries do carry more weight than others. It recognizes that the world needs new global institutions to adapt to new challenges and realities of power, but that these innovations need to be crafted gradually. It is original in acknowledging that any workable group capable of addressing the world's problems will have to mix and countries. But the scheme positions developed and developing together in a format that seeks to overcome the barriers that these labels often erect. The L-20 proposal makes way for new powers like India and China, without simply marginalizing the old like Canada or Germany. It recognizes that domestic politics within most countries, and the realities of power in the international system, often produce global deadlocks. But while recognizing these structural constraints, it does not give in to them. The L-20 concept is wisely unfashionable in recognizing the absolutely central role that leadership can still play in world affairs. It creates a formal grouping, but does not encumber it with an intractable, enduring bureaucracy that often becomes its own object. It does not call for the dismantling of existing formal institutions, but instead looks for new means to energize them. It also very subtly understands how leaders interact. Leaders face a complicated array of forces, but who they become--what they learn and come to believe--is partly shaped by the contexts in which they have to justify themselves. A grouping like the L-20 has long-term potential for socializing leaders into a global perspective that goes beyond the platitudes that emanate from large organizations. Indeed, perhaps the only way to have governments acquire global responsibility is to get them to participate in some kind of collective decisionmaking structure. In short, the L-20 is a wonderful way of constructing a global consciousness, without the disadvantages of large bulky structures. The timing of this proposal is also opportune. There is currently a genuine vacuum in international politics. The UN format is too unwieldy to confront some of the pressing issues, and most other groupings do not have the right mix of countries to propose solutions or even to articulate a common understanding of problems in a way that has global purchase. In addition, very few forums exist where leaders can depart from a tightly set agenda or confront major issues one at a time. The L-20 is attractive in that it provides a forum where leaders of key countries take responsibility, not just for their own nation or region, but for the world as a whole. Additionally, the L-20 is not confined to one or two sectors, in the way of most international institutions. Admittedly there is, at the moment, a proliferation of summitry: regional summits, cross-regional summits, and summits of unorthodox combinations of countries. However, none of these summit frameworks cuts across all regional divides and the country--developed country divide to encompass the world as a whole. Indeed, none of the summitry experiments currently on offer come close to the global integrating function of the L-20 proposal. …

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