Breaking deadlocks in global governance: how to make the L-20 work.

Xue, Lan

The rapid economic, social, and ecological changes around the world over the past half-century have generated tremendous new challenges that beg for a different global governance system: one that can, in the words of Paul Martin, "form the consensus required to deal on a timely basis with issues of all kinds that have global repercussions" (p. 302). Martin makes a compelling case for a new mechanism, the L-20. This body would be "a summit gathering of the leaders of twenty important states from all major world regions" (p. 301). According to Martin, the fundamental criteria for L-20 membership are states that have global economic weight, domestic stability, and regional leadership. In addition, he specifies that membership of the L-20 should be the same for all issues, avoiding a so-called "variable geometry" (p. 303). Few would question the need for an occasional meeting of this sort. However, constituting this mechanism of global governance and making it work effectively present some complex and intriguing problems.

With regard to difficulties in convening the L-20, one must first ask what the L-20 can achieve that cannot be obtained through other mechanisms. If the L-20 is envisioned as an important decisionmaking mechanism, one could immediately challenge its legitimacy. While the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, and other global governance institutions have not been very effective in addressing some global deadlocks, they are legitimate venues where important global decisions are taken through due processes. As Martin notes, the L-20 should make "the framework for international decisionmaking more effective, while not detracting from the strengths of existing bodies" (p. 303). If the L-20 is designed as a forum for consultation and coordination to help resolve global deadlocks, it would have to be set alongside a dazzling array of other regional and global governance forums, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, that already provide leaders of different countries with many opportunities to convene. In addition, many other semiofficial and nongovernmental meetings, such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, also bring leaders together. The last thing that leaders are short of is occasions to meet. If the L-20 is to become a continuing event, it must offer unique benefits that are not available elsewhere.

Another difficulty is that the self-selected nature of this platform of global power could make participating governments feel uneasy. Take China, for example. Recent rapid economic growth in China has generated a wave of media hype regarding a supposed China threat. Chinese leaders have countered with global and regional diplomacy that tries to convey the message that China will stick to its peaceful development policy and pose no threat to any country. Chinese leaders are keenly aware of the domestic development challenges that face their country. They do not want to raise expectations from the international community that China is not able to meet. Neither would China want to become entangled in international debates that fuel the hype of a "China threat." As part of this policy, China has insisted that it will work with existing global governance frameworks and not take the lead in the international arena. This approach was first proposed by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. It was recently reaffirmed in an article in People's Daily by the current premier, Wen Jiabao. There, he writes that:

 Peaceful development is the long-term strategic choice that we have to
 stick to. It is also the guideline of foreign policy that we must
 retain. We must focus on our own development. We will not "hold the
 flag"; nor will we take the lead in the international arena. (1)

Assuming that the above concerns about convening the L-20 are satisfactorily addressed, other issues regarding the effectiveness of the L-20 mechanism also would have to be handled. A first operational challenge for the L-20 would be agenda setting. Given that many of the current global deadlocks have existed for years, it would be unrealistic to expect that the new summit architecture could perform magic. The L-20 must be selective and focused. At the same time, deep differences between the developing and the developed members would make such choices difficult. The major developed economies place issues like terrorism, climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, intellectual property protection, drug traffic, and trade negotiations at the top of their agenda. In contrast, major developing countries are more concerned about issues that mean life or death for millions, such as extreme poverty, huge financial debt, pandemic diseases, corruption, crime, and social upheavals. Developing countries recognize that many of the items being emphasized by developed countries are global public goods or global evils that require global responses. At the same time, these developing countries could argue that their priority issues, while appearing on the surface to be domestic concerns, are in fact the root causes of the global deadlocks that we now face. Unless these issues are tackled systematically through the joint efforts of developed and developing countries, the world will never be able to sustain peace and development.

Such differences may be reconcilable, provided that the leaders from both developing and developed countries are willing to engage in frank dialogues that are based on informality and familiarity, as a result of personal relationships developed out of frequent meetings. Further, they have to be willing to go beyond ideologies and superficial media reporting to develop empathy and understanding for the real thoughts and emotions of their peers on the other side. An anecdote from John Thornton, the former chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, is instructive in this regard. Last year, together with the board of the Brookings Institution, he had the opportunity of a face-to-face conversation with Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. In the two-hour conversation, Thornton was impressed by Wen's sincerity and enthusiasm to promote democracy in China. He wrote a memo about what Wen had said and shared it with friends in the United States. Weeks later, Premier Wen published the above-mentioned People's Daily article that conveyed basically the same ideas in an understandably more formal language. However, the Western media's reports on the article painted a very different story, with headlines like "No Democracy for China in 100 Years," "Chinese Premier Calls Democracy a Distant Goal," and "Chinese Premier: Democracy Years Away," which was precisely the opposite of what Wen intended to convey.

Another challenge that the L-20 would confront involves policy deliberation. Martin has rightly emphasized the unique role that national leaders can play in making hard choices to break global deadlocks. Yet one should not underestimate the influence of broader policy networks on contentious global issues. Such networks include different government agencies, think tanks, nongovernmental organizations, mass media, and other actors. While the constellations and the roles of these players in the policy system may differ from country to country, they exert in all cases tremendous influence on political leaders.

The L-20 mechanism also faces major challenges in the questions that it seeks to tackle. Global deadlocks are, by definition, hard to break. Take climate change as an example. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development background paper has identified some major obstacles to making progress on this problem. (2) For one thing, parties at the international level are unable to agree on the overall stringency of the necessary greenhouse gas emission reductions and on the allocation of these reductions among countries. In addition, the parties fear that the costs of climate change action are too high and will hurt economic competitiveness. Furthermore, climate change competes at the national level with other policy priorities that are perceived to be more urgent. The matter is also politically unattractive, given that the costs of acting on climate change hit today, but the benefits primarily accrue to future generations. Moreover, leaders must overcome a commonly held belief that, if we wait long enough, new technologies will become available to solve the problem at less cost. In short, there are reasons for the deadlocks, and the L-20 cannot avoid them by the mere fact of assembling leaders.

Neither are leaders by themselves enough. True, as Martin comments, "only leaders can take the leap of faith, the calculated risk, and the reversal of an established precedent that are needed to achieve real progress. The resolution of difficult problems requires a willingness to take chances" (p. 303). The tension between the intricacy in substance and the informality in process has to be solved by extremely competent assistants who provide the necessary analysis in advance and the technical support on-site. Only then can advantage be taken of the "opportunity" of "spontaneity." Given the complexity of the issues, this demand is quite towering. At a recent meeting about the L-20, Martin recalled that, in one of the free-flowing meetings among the G7 leaders, there was a moment that offered a breakthrough on trade negotiations, but unfortunately there was no technical expertise on-site to capture the moment.

In summary, the L-20 is a bold idea that has tremendous potential for breaking global deadlocks. At a time when innovation is the currency of the day, our existing global governance system should also be ready to accept novel ideas such as the L-20. That said, it is common knowledge in innovation studies that there is a long and rocky road from initial design to actual production for the market. Thus, proponents of the L-20 must be ready to address the challenges that lie ahead, some of which have been discussed in this commentary. A crucial test of the L-20 as an innovation in global governance will be whether it can select a global deadlock, galvanize the interests of relevant leaders around it, and generate practical solutions that would not be achievable otherwise.

Notes

Lan Xue is executive dean of the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His teaching and research interests include public policy and management, science and technology policy, and crisis management. He is a member of the Visiting Committee for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and is on the Board of Governors of the International Development Research Center (IDRC).

1. People's Daily, Theory section, 27 February 2007.

2. Organization for Economic Coordination and Development, Background paper on climate change, Conference on Breaking Global Deadlocks, Beijing, 5-6 December 2006, available at www.oecd.org/env/cc.