The Group of 20 and Global Economic Affairs

Sammanfattning: The G20 leaders forum was created as a response to the economic and financial crisis of 2008-2009. However, well before the crisis, calls for a new order in global economic governance had mounted as the credibility and importance of existing patterns of global governance had waned. Accordingly, the G20 replaced the G7 for dealing with international economic matters and designated itself as the premier forum for global economic governance. By way of its informal and nonlegal structure, the G20 has been able to promote international cooperation between interdependent states in some areas. Among other things, the G20 rapidly coordinated international stimulus packages to contain the recent financial crisis. It also furnished the Bretton Woods institutions with new resources and created a new international financial institution – the FSB. However, the informal, soft-law, nature appears to threaten the effectiveness of the G20, as it leaves it without an effective mechanism for ensuring compliance of its agreements. Due to this, the international financial architecture has not yet been re-regulated. Moreover, despite including the world’s most systemically significant industrial and developing countries in its membership, the G20 is criticized for being undemocratic and self-selected, as well as exclusive and illegitimate for refusing to increase its membership. Against this background, the G20 does not appear to have reduced the global governance deficit, as it does not entirely represent a new, more legitimate and effective order in global economic governance.