Controversy over “Heiligendamm Process”

The wrong forum

In terms of legitimacy, the G8 is under huge pressure, and this was so even before the summit at Heiligendamm. Of course, heads of state and government must not be denied the right to meet and exchange opinions in informal settings. However, criticism of the Group of Eight is justified. This is an exclusive club that makes decisions of global relevance, affecting the world far beyond the national jurisdictions of the governments present. Debt relief for the world’s poorest countries and the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa are but two such topics. Most countries concerned are not included in decision-making at all.

To demonstrate openness, Germany’s Federal Government invited five African leaders to Heiligendamm, for 90 minutes of talks and a photo opportunity. However, the Africans did not have any influence on decision-making, as the G8 had already released their Africa Declaration the previous evening.

The O5 heads of state and government were involved at least in a joint communiqué with the G8. Unsurprisingly, the document invoked cooperation. It has been obvious for a long time that neither the G8 nor the strongest newly-industrialising countries are able to rise to the greatest challenges facing the global economy on their own. Tony Blair, Britain’s outgoing prime minister, therefore suggested to enlarge the G8 into the G13. However, the other G8 members did not adopt that proposal, with Germany’s Federal Government arguing the group’s “shared values” and “efficiency” needed protection.

Instead of starting the G13, the summit thus launched the “Heiligendamm Process” as a forum for dialogue with the O5. Results are to be presented at the G8 summit in Italy in two years. The brief statement issued by G8 and O5, however, hardly reveals what tangible results one should expect.

Evidently, however, the agenda for the Heiligendamm Process only indirectly addresses pressing global issues such as climate change or financial-market stability. From the outset, this Process lacks what political scientists call “output legitimacy”. This phenomenon depends on results which, in the eyes of the people affected, can justify institutions or procedures.

But even if G8 plus O5 had dared to tackle the main challenges humankind is facing, large sections of the world’s peoples would still be excluded. Accepting a few additional members into its ranks would not make the exclusive club of G8 nations more representative and transparent. In this respect, the G8’s attempt to commit the O5 countries to “joint responsibility for development, with particular attention on Africa” is strange. It looked as if old and new donors were staking their claims – indeed, without even consulting the African nations affected. The G8 accordingly seems even more like an anachronistic relic from the past century, similar in this respect to the United Nations Security Council.

There is an alternative. The UN General Assembly recently resolved to strengthen the UN’s hitherto weak Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Under its auspices, a high-level Development Cooperation Forum will be held every two years, to discuss strategies, funding and coherence of various partners’ activities. The pilot meeting was held in Geneva in early July, and – with the exception of Italy – all G8 and O5 members were present, along with numerous African, Asian and Latin American countries. That would have been the appropriate forum to discuss, as partners among equals, all issues relating to economic and social development.

Expanding legitimacy

G8 membership largely reflects the 1970s’ international power structure. Accordingly, the Group of Eight leading industrial nations is facing a double crisis of legitimacy and efficiency. As it does not include developing countries, the G8 is unable to set priorities for the international community, and this fact, in itself, reduces its capacity to broker solutions to pressing global problems. While the Heiligendamm summit was a step in the right direction, many questions about representation persist.

Technically, enlargement was not on the agenda of this year’s G8 summit. However, an important underlying theme was the relationship between the G8 and big emerging markets. In the end, the summit was marked by a move to formalise G8 relations with the O5.

Of course, the O5 had already been invited to expanded talks on selected topics at previous G8 summits. Still, it was the prerogative of the summit host to decide to whom the “outreach branch” was extended. In 2003, Jacques Chirac, then president of France, invited several of the rising powers to discuss a diffuse agenda at Evian. Two years later, Tony Blair, at the time prime minister of Britain, combined O5 participation on climate change and energy security with African participation on debt relief and development assistance at Gleneagles.

Last year Russian President Vladimir Putin was reluctant to invite even the O5 to St. Petersburg. Their eventual involvement indicated that host prerogative had been trumped by the logic of including indispensable leaders. Indeed, the idea of the O5 acting as “anchors” in their respective regions for G8 activities is growing ever more popular.

Additionally, concerns about Russia’s “managed democracy” had weakened the argument that this was a club of democracies, opening the door not only to robust democracies such as India and Brazil but also to authoritarian China.

At Heiligendamm, the O5 were officially invited to the next two summits. Moreover, it is clear that this invitation is to be followed up by some stable arrangement for the future. The OECD has been asked to facilitate this “Heiligendamm Process”. Whether this will lead to the establishment of a permanent secretariat for the G8 remains to be seen. Nonetheless, it was the first time the G8, which is basically an informal setting for discussing policy rather than making binding agreements, assigned the OECD, a formalised multilateral institution, with a job of this kind.

Today, it is undisputed that major international challenges cannot be addressed without ongoing cooperation of the large countries of the Global South. Blair, for example, stated that Heiligendamm’s breakthrough on climate change would not have been possible without the ongoing G8 plus O5 dialogue that evolved out of the 2005 meeting.

Does the Heiligendamm Process mean that the G8 is willing to consider moving from extending outreach offers to those of membership in a G13? Alternatively, do these countries even want to be part of an enlarged club? All of them, after all, have diverse options outside of the G8, including championing the traditional sense of solidarity with the developing world and emerging regional associations. In this sense, the window of opportunity to socialise China vis-à-vis democratic governance structures may be closing as its leadership may soon decide that it need not bother with the G8 at all.

These questions are not only at the centre of the internal G8 debate on expansion. They are also what O5 members are grappling with, as witnessed by the holding of their own meeting in Berlin prior to the Heiligendamm summit. Some observers in these countries even demand that a parallel and distinctive O5 summit be established. The G8’s future relevance – both in terms of making the global political architecture more inclusive and setting the international agenda – will depend on the O5 countries’ willingness and ability to participate. Such cooperation, however, may well be contingent on how this initiative fits into other complex negotiation processes through the UN and the WTO.

D+C, 2007/07-08, Debate, Page 306