by Alex Evans | Mar 31, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
Two days to go, and it’s probably time to start thinking through what to expect from the London Summit. (If you haven’t already seen it, check out our special page on the Summit – I’ll be there as one of the G20 Voice bloggers, so we’ll have updates throughout the day from the scene of the action).
By and large, expectations seem to be being managed downwards by the commentariat as well as in off the record briefings from officials. That’s what you’d expect at this stage, as then even modest progress looks like a triumph (in much the same way that Labour Party officials always brief journalists to expect an apocalyptic showdown with the unions in the days running up to the Party Conference every September). As the Wall Street Journal puts it,
It was supposed to be the inauguration of a Global New Deal, in the hopes of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a comprehensive policy response to the world economic crisis, a root-and-branch effort to reorder the way capitalism itself works. But by the time the much-heralded Group of 20 meeting of heads of government ends Thursday, it may be difficult to spot a new world order. It is already clear that the summit will mostly fall short of Mr. Brown’s original lofty goals.
Interestingly, though, one relatively upbeat note comes from Alastair Newton, who’s just published a Nomura briefing note on the summit – and who can claim rather more expertise on summits than most banker, having been head of G8 policy at 10 Downing Street from 1998 to 2000. Newton’s bottom line: while he doesn’t expect a ‘miracle cure’ turnaround in markets or the real economy, it’s nonetheless
“just possible that we may look back on the 2 April 2009 G20 Summit in due course and see it as ‘the end of the beginning’ of the current crisis.”
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by Alex Evans | Mar 29, 2009 | London Summit
Dani Rodrik has found the following quote from HG Wells, writing in 1933. From the text, you might wonder whether Wells’ writing on time machines was altogether fictitious – actually, he’s writing about the other London Summit: the one held 75 years ago. Deja vu? Mmm hmm…
[For] some months at least before and after his election as American President and the holding of the London Conference there was again a whispering hope in the world that a real “Man” had arisen, who would see simply and clearly, who would speak plainly to all mankind and liberate the world from the dire obsessions and ineptitudes under which it suffered and to which it seemed magically enslaved. …
Everywhere as the Conference drew near men were enquiring about this possible new leader for them. “Is this at last the Messiah we seek, or shall we look for another?” Every bookshop in Europe proffered his newly published book of utterances, Looking Forward, to gauge what manner of mind they had to deal with. It proved rather disconcerting reading for their anxious minds. Plainly the man was firm, honest and amiable, as the frontispiece portrait with its clear frank eyes and large resolute face showed, but the text of the book was a politician’s text, saturated indeed with good will, seasoned with much vague modernity, but vague and wanting in intellectual grip. “He’s good,” they said, “but is this good enough?”
Read the whole post. H/t Duncan Green.
by Alex Evans | Mar 27, 2009 | Economics and development, Global system, London Summit
As we all know, Madonna and Justin Timberlake only had four minutes to save the world. The big question today: can Gordon Brown achieve the same in four hours 35 minutes? Sam Coates at Red Box has been looking at the London Summit timetable, and he’s come away sobered:
Leaders’ breakfast 8.30am – 9.45am
Morning session including finance ministers and central bankers 9.50am- 1.25pm
Lunch 1.25pm – 2.30pm
Afternoon session including finance ministers and central bankers 2.30pm to 3.30pm
Closing press conferences, 3.30 onwards
That adds up to 4 hours and 35 minutes of formal talks plus time spent chatting over three meals. Not much to work with: as Sam notes, Bretton Woods took all of three weeks. As Madona and Justin could no doubt tell Gordon if he were to ask them, when time is short to save the world, everything depends on the quality of the choreography.
Still, there’s no doubt that more time would be preferable. Let’s not forget Bill Lind‘s observation on the difference between the Congress of Vienna and the Versailles peace talks a century later:
In 1814, the Congress of Vienna, which faced the task of putting Europe back together after the catastrophic French Revolution and almost a quarter-century of subsequent wars, did what aristocrats usually do. It danced, it dined, it stayed up late playing cards for high stakes, it carried on affairs, usually not affairs of state. Through all its aristocratic amusements, it conversed. In the process, it put together a peace that gave Europe almost a century of security, with few wars and those limited.
In contrast, the conference of Versailles in 1919 was all business. Its dreary, interminable meetings (read Harold Nicolson for a devastating description) reflected the bottomless, plodding earnestness of the bourgeois and the Roundhead. Its product, the Treaty of Versailles, was so flawed that it spawned another great European war in just twenty years. As Kaiser Wilhelm II said from exile in Holland, the war to end war yielded a peace to end peace.
The fact that today, it’s inconceivable that leaders could spend a whole summer negotiating with each other, as at Vienna – or even three weeks, as at Bretton Woods – is a major worry. Time to brush up on your Joseph Tainter: it’s all about diminishing returns from greater complexity…
by Alex Evans | Mar 26, 2009 | Global system, Influence and networks, London Summit
In comments on Jules’s post on the Put People First march, the Bretton Woods Project’s Peter Chowla takes me to task for what he argued was a sloppy and unfair critique of PPF’s policy platform that I made in my own comment on Jules’s post.
Actually, Peter’s right. I said PPF had a “shockingly weak policy position: just warmed up leftovers from Make Poverty History”, and that there was almost nothing to it other than the traditional calls for more aid and less conditionality. In fact, as Peter accurately points out, there IS more to PPF’s platform than that: he cites its positions on tax havens, reform of the IMF and World Bank, Green New Deals and investing in public services, for instance.
On the other hand, I don’t think I was exaggerating that much. On some of these areas, as Peter admits, work is still underway within the PPF coalition to clarify its policy position. And I stand by my argument that PPF’s position on a post-Kyoto climate deal really is shocking: the 2 degree C temperature limit it advocates has been EU policy since 1998, and says nothing about the much more fundamental issues of (a) what this means in terms of a climate stabilisation target expressed in parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent and (b) how the resulting global emissions budget ought to be shared out.
Still, fair’s fair: it was a snippy comment, and I should have reflected PPF more accurately. But my deeper frustration with NGO coalitions like PPF remains. NGOs are supposed to set agendas; to open up new political space; to dream up big ideas about possible futures. Sure, you can’t pursue big ideas without big coalitions. But equally, what’s the point of big coalitions without big ideas?
What we have today is a situation in which civil society always seems to be one step behind the curve. Back at the time of the Make Poverty History, for instance, it was clear to anyone that wanted to see it that climate change was the coming issue in international development. Yet it was absent from MPH’s policy position; ironically, DFID’s 2006 White Paper was way ahead of where development NGOs had got to on climate. (I remember thinking at the time: isn’t this supposed to work the other way round?)
Now, the context has changed again: and again, civil society is lagging. Look around the international development landscape. Scarcity issues like energy security, water scarcity and food prices are joining climate change as defining features on the map. There’s serious cause for concern that the post-Cold War decline in conflict in developing countries may be bottoming out. The real discussion about power-shift in the international economy is finally starting. Security of supply is set to become the biggest issue in international trade (and has already led to the collapse of a developing country government.) Emissions trading holds out the potential to become the most important source of finance for development. And so on.
So where are all of these issues in the PPF policy platform? Nowhere! Instead of opening up new agendas – at a time when vast tracts of virgin political space are opening up – NGOs are staying right in their comfort zone, articulating the same policy positions as they were five years ago. (more…)
by Jules Evans | Mar 25, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development, Influence and networks, London Summit
People in the City are muttering about being invaded by a horde of Swampies this weekend, for the Put People First march. There’s sure to be a lot of angry rhetoric – and rightly so – about the failure of free market capitalism.
But what exactly is the protest demanding?
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