The fourteenth G-15 summit of select developing countries in Tehran this week was a reminder of the alphabet soup of multilateral forums that has littered diplomatic space in the post-Cold War era. With the hybrid G-20 already in top gear as the most influential locus of decision making on issues of global governance, and the G-7 still in play as the elite club of advanced industrialised economies, the G-15 represents a separate strain that has its own unique place and purpose.
Founded in 1989 as a summit-level body of countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it was meant to be a deus ex machina to overcome the unwieldiness of the large group size of the G-77. As more and more countries entered the folds of the G-77 with successive decolonisation (it has over 130 member states today), inordinate delays and practical difficulties of securing consensus arose. The idea of G-15 was that a cohesive set of states hailing from the non-aligned bloc could meet regularly, and formulate joint policy positions and bargaining strategies vis-?-vis the Global North to reform the world economy and international economic relations.
One could possibly argue now that the G-20 has already managed to fuse the Global North and South into a single structure and that the G-15 is a quaint relic. But dismissing the G-15 (which currently holds 17 member states) would be a cardinal mistake because the G-20 suffers from a legitimacy deficit in the eyes of smaller developing countries. The criterion for inclusion in G-20 is to be a ?major economy?, a condition that an Algeria, Kenya, Venezuela, Jamaica, Iran or Sri Lanka can never realistically satisfy.
Even Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the IMF, an institution that the G-15 wants to urgently overhaul, has commented that the G-20 leaves out many poor countries whose ?voices too must be heard? and who ?deserve a stake in the global economy?. Because the G-20 is a modus vivendi between the extreme desirable values of representativeness and small group efficiency, it naturally falls short of the expectations of least developed countries (LDCs) who seethe at their relegation to the bottom of the international system.
New tensions are emerging within the G-77 family as a result of the widely differential economic growth rates among its member states. Empirically, the era of globalisation provided opportunities such as market access and free movement of goods and capital to only a few upwardly mobile and large developing economies that had adequate capacities in place. Much of sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, however, stagnated or even went downhill in development indices over the last three decades.
G-20?s designers bought in the concept of recognising ?leaders? of each region of the world who were riding the crest of globalisation and demonstrating sustained economic growth. The followers, however, remained where they were or even witnessed worsening terms of insertion into the global economy. They continued to sense the iniquity of the existing world order even as China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa reincarnated themselves as partners and peers of advanced economies.
Intra-G-77 discord that has built up as a result of two-paced economic trajectories between the ?peripheral? and ?semi-peripheral? states exploded at the UN climate change meet in Copenhagen last December. When the BASIC group sat down with the US and the EU to draft the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, several poor G-77 members were outraged at what they felt was a betrayal by their own muscle-flexing kinsmen from the Global South. Latin American countries of the ALBA community denounced BASIC?s sell out to a ?tricky proposal? from the US.
Sudan, which held the chief climate negotiator chair of the G-77, slammed the Accord as tantamount to a Holocaust.
South-South cooperation has indeed found a fresh lease of life and concreteness in the new millennium, owing to the large capital bases of emerging economies and the spurt of M&As initiated by multinational corporations that are head-quartered in these dynamic developing countries. But a trust gap is taking hold inside the G-77 as prospects of a Sinopec or a Petrobras empire in poorer states of Africa appear on the horizon. Shibboleths about Global South unity on international economic injustices cannot paper over the conflicts of interest that are widening due to uneven rise of large middle income countries.
The G-15, with a blended mix of the star performers as well as the laggards from the G-77, therefore, has a special role to play in assuaging the anxieties of the weakest links in the chain. With some of the world?s leading producers of oil, natural gas and agricultural commodities in its ranks, the G-15?s dominant players can demonstrate generosity to LDCs through accelerated technology transfer, skill impartment, liberal trade and investment openings.
This week?s G-15 summit attendees also demanded, in one voice, comprehensive reform of existing global financial centres and institutions to prevent the repetition of the crash of 2008 that badly affected many states in the Global South. International financial regulation is an across-the-board unifier for the entire G-77, since the Wall Street model of unfettered expansion has not been adopted by even the most privatised economies of the Global South.
Do sincere appeals and calls for stricter regulation of the global financial industry from an internationally less significant formation like the G-15 make any real difference? They surely add to the chorus for change. Rhetoric that is timely and in sync with the prevalent international mood can often tilt the balance. Global policy coordination, involving rich and poor nations alike, is essential for foolproof regulation of the financial sector. The G-15 may prove its worth in this quest.
The author is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal Global University