Introduction
Since its inception in 1975, the annual summit of the leaders
of the world's major industrial democracies and the European
Community has come to occupy center stage in the continuing
struggle to create order out of anarchy in the world's economic and
political life. From its fragile beginnings as an ad hoc response
to the international chaos of the early 1970s, this regular
gathering of heads of state and government, foreign ministers, and
finance ministers has rapidly grown to become one of the more
developed and effective institutions in world affairs. Indeed,
with its unrivaled combination of predominant power and common
purpose, the summit and its allied institutions are slowly
supplementing, and in some respects replacing, the much more
venerable, more familiar, and better documented multilateral
organizations of the United Nations [UN] and Atlantic Alliance
systems as the leading force in contemporary international
governance. For students of international relations, and of the
domestic polities and economies of the many countries of the North,
South and even East where the summit's impact extends, the
development of a richer understanding of the summit's deliberations
and decisions is a vital
intellectual task.
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