Can the architecture of international governance be changed without world conflict? Has economic strength become a diplomatic tool of emerging powers? Would expanding the membership of the G8 address its double crisis of legitimacy and efficiency?
These were among the questions posed to a group of international experts assembled by CIGI to discuss how the current, peaceful and economic-led shift in global order has put a set of major emerging economies are commanding a greater presence in world affairs. There was consensus that the G8’s inadequecies were rooted in the self-selected nature of its membership that does not reflect current global realities and that deepter integration of the Outreach 5 countries in the processes of the G8 could work to address the body’s structural and functional limitations.
The report advances the idea that “Economic Diplomacy” can be conceived as the application of a nation’s favourable economic conditions, by conferring rewards or penalties, toward particular foreign policy objectives. As an area of study, it explores the multiplicity of tensions between politics and economics, between international and domestic pressures, and between governments, business and civil society. Existing literature largely focuses on how economic diplomacy is practiced in trade-related negotiations; however, emerging economies are increasingly employing it in wider policy arenas. In recent years, economic diplomacy has been used by both state officials and corporate leaders in rising powers to leverage foreign investment and integration in global supply chains into diplomatic power on political issues.
CIGI’s research in this area is an extension of the BRICSAM project on the rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, ASEAN, and Mexico and the pathways by which each country has integrated into the world economy. The economic diplomacy project is operated in tandem with CIGI’s project on Breaking Global Deadlocks (with the Centre for Global Studies), which over the last two years has assembled groups of former diplomats, practitioners, and G8 sherpas to discuss opportunities for G8 summit expansion and alternative ways to address major global issues.
The report examines progress in the Heiligendamm Process of dialogue between the G8 and the Outreach 5 countries and examines whether effort is “democratizing” global governance. The full report can be found at:
Reaching Out to BRICSAM: Economic Diplomacy and the Heiligendamm Process
Andrew Schrumm and Agata Antkiewicz
Waterloo: The Centre for International Governance Innovation, June 2008
Tags: Brazil, China, Diplomacy, Emerging Powers, G8, Heiligendamm Process, India, Mexico, South Africa
