Originally published on the CGS blog on July 1, 2013.
France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada.
These countries comprise, in whole or part, the Group of 8 (G8), over 40% of global gross domestic product (GDP), the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), and the top position at the International Atomic Energy Agency, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Interpol, and European Central Bank. In other words, a huge percentage of the world’s money as well as almost all of the major international institutions are controlled by only eight of the 196 countries on earth, a mere 4%. If examined more closely, the power in these organizations is even more centralized with only France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany controlling many of the leadership positions.
This is a different kind of 1%. The Occupy Wall Street movement popularized the phrase in reference to the super rich in the United States that control political and economic systems. The global 1%, or 4% in this case, is made up of states rather than individuals and concentrated groups of decision-makers in those states. Just like the United States’s 1%, the global elite are failing the world’s poor and pushing them to the margins through infantilization, uneven globalization, and disingenuous development.
Moreover, economically marginalized states have few ways to affect global economic and political systems because they are largely excluded from decision-making structures at international organizations. The G8 countries, the world’s super-rich, control arguably the four most important institutions – the United Nations Security Council, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. This means that the bulk of multinational economic and diplomatic policy is set by countries that are typically not the recipients of aid, peacekeepers, “development” projects, and so on. This leaves economically marginalized states to fend for themselves in small-scale, bilateral, or regional agreements.
In 2009, the G8 somewhat admirably ceded control over the the G20 as the main economic council of rich states. Astonishly, this body accounts for over 80% of the world’s GDP despite having only two-thirds of the world’s population. But even this liberalized structure excludes most of central and southwest Asia, eastern South America, and all of Africa except for South Africa which means that a third of the world is left out of important conversations about climate change, international human security, trade policy, and development, despite being most affected.
Proposed solutions – expanding from eight countries to twenty, relying on BRICS to be the torchbearers of the future, adding Germany to UNSC business (P5+1), or ad hoc working groups (e.g. Friends of Syria) – are unlikely to be successful and largely maintain the status quo. Any solution that continues to concentrate power in the hands of a few rich countries is doomed to fail by any measure that accounts for inclusiveness, the voices of the marginalized, a more egalitarian global economy, and a just future for oppressed people in the Global South. President Obama’s recent trip to Belfast that yielded few results and his unilateral, modest plan for action on climate change are evidence that our international institutions need to change if we hope to solve big problems like the atrocities in Syria or rising sea levels. A careful examination of neoliberal policies created and maintained by the G8, broader participation from the Global South, and a push for bold long-term strategizing rather than short-term, banal solutions are a few potential starting points for reform.
