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Paper prepared for an international conference on "From Heiligendamm to the Hokkaido Toyako Summit and Beyond: Priorities for the G8's Future Agenda and Options for Reform," sponsored by the State University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, May 15-16, 2008. The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Jenilee Guebert, the contributions of Cliff Vanderlinden and Michael Erdman and other members of the G8 Research Group, and the financial support of the Canadian government's Government Advisory and Exchange Program through Universalia. Version of May 21, 2008.

Introduction

On July 7-9, 2008, the Group of Eight (G8) holds is 34th annual summit at Lake Toyako in Hokkaido in northern Japan. It promises to be a summit of special significance and one of substantial success. In the economic domain, a sharp, spreading American growth slowdown and mortgage meltdown, a global credit crunch, and soaring prices for oil, commodities and food give G8 governors a set of severe challenges they last confronted and conquered three decades ago. In the environmental domain, where the summit has taken climate change as it centrepiece concern, the interlinked financial, energy and food crises, compounded by the recent ecological ones in Myanmar (also known as Burma) and China, will spur the summit toward shaping an effective, inclusive, binding framework for all major emitters to replace the failed Kyoto architecture expiring in 2008-12. In the development domain, these shocks will propel action on health and water in Africa, as the international community enters the second half of its 15 years for delivering its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. In the political-security sphere, Japan has for the first time focused a G8 summit on nuclear non-proliferation, at a time when Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs are continuing, when the global regimes for nuclear non-proliferation are under stress, and when regional conflicts in the Middle East and Asia, starting in Iraq and Afghanistan, compound the challenges on many fronts. Above all, in the global governance domain, at a time when most G8 countries appear to be in decline while the Outreach Five (O5) partners of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa are on the rise, the summit will consider adapting itself institutionally to serve as an even more effective, legitimate centre of global governance for this new world.

As Japan and its G8 partners enter the final stages of the preparatory period for the summit, there are strong signs within the system that the Toyako Summit will be a substantial success. On the economy, summit leaders are likely, for the first time in a decade, to grapple seriously with core economic and financial subjects, extending rather than just endorsing what their more narrowly focused finance ministers have done. On the environment, they are likely to deliver a broad package of reasonable short-, medium- and long-term reference points, backed by practical measures, to combat climate change, with all of the world's major emitters from the developed and developing world credibly committing to real control. On development, they will move forward on health, water and education, an agenda well aligned with areas of proven G8 performance in the past and with key elements of the MDGs. On pressing political subjects the summit is likely to show steady progress in enhancing global security and promoting its cherished democratic ideals. On strengthening its global governance the summit is likely to monitor more credibly and thus improve its compliance with its many ambitious commitments, and take the next step toward institutionally including those outreach partners proving they want to join in the G8-led global fight for economic growth and financial stability, climate and environmental protection, African development, national and human security, and, above all, good governance, open democracy and human rights in the world.

These achievements will be driven by the sheer size, scope, simultaneity and synergy of several shocks in finance, energy, food and ecology. These are now showing G8 and O5 leaders their countries' own vulnerability and consequent need to come together with a far reaching collective response. These shocks are overwhelming the abilities and actions of the old multilateral organizations, and making the world's most powerful, instinctively unilateral countries realize that they need the overall and specialized capabilities of their weaker G8 and fast rising O5 partners to cope. Together this tightly knit triad of severe shocks, multilateral organizational failure and equalizing capabilities should overwhelm the weakness in the other three factors that have historically driven summit success. The 2008 summit has a priority agenda poorly designed to evoke the G8's common purposes of open democracy, individual liberty and social advance; leaders with weak political control, capital and continuity back home; and a large, new, changing combination of leaders at a summit of two short days. Yet as the climb to the Toyako Summit enters its final two months, the strength of the outside shocks should inspire G8 leaders to solve these still formidable inside roadblocks, most of which remain in their control.

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The Preparatory Process

Thus far the preparatory process for the summit shows some promise for its eventual success, as well as several obstacles. These obstacles should start to be removed in the seven weeks remaining before the summit starts.

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Japan's Approach to G8 Summitry

The first promising push is the inheritance from the summit's long past. Here host Japan has been the G8's most committed member (Dobson 2007, 2004, Kirton 2004a). It brings to its 2008 summit a proud and proven record of performance, as Appendix A shows. Japan is an experienced host, having mounted four previous summits in 1979, 1986, 1993 and 2000. It has always hosted summits that are successful, according to Nicholas Bayne's (2005) grading, and stands out as the only G8 member to have done do. The scores produced by John Kirton for the six dimensions of summit performance support this view (see Appendix A). In particular, Japan's first summit in 1979 produced the historic, initially fully implemented climate change consensus on the immediate need to stabilize concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 1979 levels.

Of particular importance is Japan's performance at the last summit it hosted, at Okinawa in 2000 (Kirton and von Furstenberg 2001, Kirton and Takase 2002). This was the first summit of the 20th century. The G8 leaders looked back on the failures of global governance in the past century defined by depression and war, reflected on the performance of their own G8 born in 1975 and discussed how it should be strengthened to meet the needs of the international community in the new, globalizing century ahead. Okinawa stood out for its broad and innovative agenda, its many achievements, and its production of the G8's highest ever compliance with its commitment in the G8's 34 years. Japan delivered this strongly successful summit despite suffering from its "lost decade" of development during the 1990s, from changing prime ministers suddenly (from an internationally oriented Keizo Obuchi to a domestically oriented Yoshiro Mori) during the lead-up year, from having a lame-duck U.S. president, Bill Clinton, at the end of his eight years in office, and from welcoming a brand new Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to the summit for the first time.

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The Recent Momentum

A second promising push is the momentum from a rising, if at times rocky, ride in summit performance over the past seven years. Across most dimensions of performance, notably the number of commitments produced, the G8's record has been rising from reasonably good to robust levels during this time. It has shown remarkable resilience, recovering rapidly from the dips in 2003 (due to the Iraq war) and in 2006 (when Russia hosted for the first time).

Less powerful is the more proximate push coming from compliance by G8 members with their 23 priority commitments from last year's summit, assessed as they reached the halfway mark between the previous and next summit and as Japan settled into the chair (Erdman and Vanderlinden 2008). As Appendix B details, this interim compliance was +33 (on a scale where +100 is high or full compliance, 0 is partial compliance or a work in progress, and -100 is no or minimal compliance). This was the lowest score since Kananaskis in 2002 (+27), well below Evian in 2003 (+43) and Sea Island in 2004 (+39), but about the same as St. Petersburg in 2006 (+35).

However, as the summit approached, there were signs that the final compliance score would rise. A preliminary assessment of Russia's record gave it a respectable +30, up from +17 at the halfway point.

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The Global Agenda and Japanese Host's Plans for 2008

The third promising push towards high performance is the close fit between, and leaders' ensuring familiarity with, current global challenges and those the G8 confronted and conquered in its early years. Indeed, at their summit G8 leaders face challenges all too reminiscent of those that inspired the G8's birth in 1975. In finance a made-in-America, globally contagious financial crisis is driving major American banks, if not New York City toward bankruptcy, afflicting credit and currency markets, affecting global growth and inflation, and assaulting an international financial system still centred on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1944 and struggling to cope with today's globalized world. In energy, world prices for oil, driven again in part by conflict in the Middle East, have surpassed in real terms the previous peaks from the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, placing a new premium on energy conservation, efficiency, alternatives, renewables and climate change control. In development newly interconnected global financial, energy, food and ecological crises compound the challenge of bringing the benefits of globalization to Africa, the one region of the world that has largely been left out. In the political-security sphere, nuclear proliferation, now in Iran, North Korea and elsewhere, again commands centre stage, as it did in the wake of India's nuclear explosion in 1974. In the broader Middle East, war is again taking lives on Israel's borders, and now within Iraq and in Afghanistan, as terrorists still kill at will. Here as elsewhere democracy itself is endangered in fragile states, while other closed countries such as Myanmar await its return or arrival for the first time. It is a compelling call for action from a G8 whose foundational mission is to protect and promote open democracy, individual liberty and social advance world wide.

At the Toyako Summit the G8 will confront these challenges head on, based on a plan the Japanese had prepared for well over a year before they assumed the chair. It included the four multi-year commitments to be met in 2008 and the five remit mandates from 2007 that Japan had allowed into earlier G8 communiqués (see Appendix C). In keeping with Japan's highly strategic approach to G8 summitry, reaching several years back before as well as after its hosts (Dobson 2005), Japan from a very early stage had determined to focus on climate change. By the spring of 2007, African development had been added as a key theme. Intellectual property and nuclear safety rounded out the priority list by October 2007.

The key theme, initially signaled by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in March 2007 and continued by his successor, Yasuo Fukuda, was the environment, with climate change at its core. Here Japan sought ambitious results from the start, in the form of G8 discussions on a "new framework that will ensure participation by the United States and China, the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitters."¹ The summit would also receive the report, mandated at Gleneagles in 2005, on how to carry forward the sustainable energy dialogue and the interim report on the Heiligendamm Process, specified in 2007 (see Appendix C).

The second priority, African development, was first publicly signaled as early as November 18, 2006. Then a senior official from Germany announced that its 2007 summit would not focus on debt relief and increased aid to Africa because the 2005 report of the Commission for Africa (CFA) left the issue to be taken up again by the Japanese G8 presidency in 2008. Another signal came following an April 2007 meeting in Tokyo between Italy's then prime minister Romano Prodi and Abe, when the latter stated: "as both our countries will be chairing these summits, co-operation is essential. The issues to be taken up at the G8 summit meeting are long-term issues." Prodi added: "it is necessary to build a joint policy towards Africa ... Africa is developing economically amid globalisation. We have up until now discussed major environmental and human disasters in Africa at our G8 meetings."² Also in 2008 Japan planned to hold the Fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD-IV), a gathering of African leaders and their development partners that has taken place every five years.

The third initial priority of intellectual property flowed from Japan's 2007 summit success in securing recognition of the need to streamline and harmonize the international patent system, and its failure to get its desired agreement on a treaty to prevent the spread of counterfeit and pirated products. Japan sought to build on the 2007 leaders' statement that "We recognize the need for continued study by national experts of the possibilities of strengthening the international legal framework pertaining to intellectual property rights enforcement."³ Japan hoped to move to the treaty stage at its summit in 2008.

Japan's fourth initial priority of nuclear safety appeared in May 2007. A news report noted that "Japan plans to discuss compiling international safety guidelines for nuclear power plants with other members of the G8 nations, with an eye to reaching agreement at next year's G8 summit in Hokkaido, government sources said ... The guidelines are expected to include assistance from the G8 nations on techniques for safety inspections and maintenance, as well as stipulating training for local staff and unified regulations on management in order to prevent the transfer or leakage of technologies or nuclear-related materials."⁴ This item would repeat the one area of nuclear power that an otherwise divided G8 could agree on in 2006 and 2007. It also responded directly to the deadly nuclear accidents that Japan had suffered from at home (Donnelly 2001). The most recent shock from a deadly earthquake that struck Japan in July 2007 damaged a nuclear power plant and produced radiation leaks.

Well before Japan assumed the chair at the start of 2008, these contenders crystallized into three summit priorities: the world economy, climate change and environment, and development and Africa. Japan subsequently added nuclear non-proliferation as the centrepiece subject in the political-security sphere.

These choices reflect a judicious combination of iteration and innovation. The world economy returns G8 leaders' attention to the topic that dominated the early years of the summit, long before Russia joined in 1998. But economic and financial issues had been delegated to G7 and G20 finance ministers during the past decade, including at last year's summit when the current global financial crisis was starting to erupt (Kirton 2007). Climate change and African development continue to be the G8 leaders' focus, as they were at Gleneagles in 2005, Heiligendamm in 2007 and, in the form of energy and health, at St. Petersburg in 2006. Nuclear non-proliferation, a classic political-security subject, has made it into the summit host's planned top tier for the first time.

In addition, Japan highlighted North Korea (including nuclear proliferation and abductions) and other Asian issues, which the G8 summit had dealt with before. Japan was very cautious on G8 expansion given its ongoing dispute with Russia over the occupied Northern Territories and Japan's reluctance to give a non-democratic neighbouring China a greater place in Japan's G8, while China continued to keep Japan out of a permanent place in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

When Fukuda replaced Abe as prime minister in September 2007, quite predictably little changed. Japan's agenda was publicly announced by Fukuda (2008) at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 28, 2008. As summarized in Appendix D, it was a wide-ranging, internally interlinked and ambitious agenda that added surging oil prices, terrorism, keeping existing G8 commitments and multi-stakeholder participation to the earlier list. It was also an unusually specific agenda, accompanied by details about the proposals, goals and initiatives Japan would propose and unilaterally take. It also clearly steered Toyaka toward using the G8 once again as a great global fundraiser, by identifying several new funding packages, with a $10 billion Climate Investment Fund (CIF), that it would launch and ask its G8 partners to help fund. It was an agenda that would prove to be prescient as new global crises erupted, and should serve as a stable platform for preparing the summit in the months ahead (see Appendix E). It included boosting agricultural productivity, which was to become a favoured medium-term response when the global food crisis arose in April.

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The Sherpa Preparatory Process

The fourth, less promising push was the set of four sherpa meetings the Japanese planned to prepare the event (see Appendix F). The first took place very early, in Tokyo on January 10. Others took place in February and April. The sequence include a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Sous Sherpas (FASS) on May 8-9 and a gathering of the sherpas parallel with the FASS on June 23-25.

The sherpas were led by Japanese G8 sherpa veteran Masaharu Kohno. But several other countries sent newcomers. Canada's newly appointed (if G8 experienced) Len Edwards went to his first sherpa meeting in April. In mid May Russia's Dmitri Medvedev announced that Arkady Dvorkovich would replace Putin's Igor Shuvalov, now deputy prime minister in the latter's cabinet, as G8 sherpa. The new Berlusconi government took time to put its sherpa in place.

As of mid May, several summit members felt Japan's preparatory process was about two months behind the pace of recent years. They felt that each sherpa meeting had gone over the same issues, including those of outreach and expansion, where the G8 was badly divided. Some were surprised that the Japanese had not followed the German example and called a special sherpa meeting, although the FASS was to meet in early June.

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The G8 Ministerial Meetings

A fifth promising push was the unusually dense series of lead-up ministerial meetings the Japanese predictably planned (see Appendix F). A draft of the schedule unveiled at Heiligendamm on June 6, 2007, contained ministerial meetings on justice and the interior, labour and development, as well as energy and the environment and a meeting of the Gleneagles Dialogue among 20 countries devoted to global warming and clean energy.

This unusually dense web unfolded in the spring of 2008 through G8 meetings of ministers: for finance on February 9 in Tokyo, April 11 in Washington DC and June 13-14 in Osaka; for development on April 5-6 in Tokyo; for labour on May 11-13 in Niigata; for environment on May 24-26 in Kobe; for justice and home affairs on June 11-13 in Tokyo; for energy on June 7-8 in Amori; and for foreign affairs on June 26-27 in Kyoto, just before the summit's start. There was also a meeting of G20 environment and energy ministers of the Gleneagles Dialogue on March 14-16 in Chiba, and, innovatively, the fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) on May 28-30 in Yokohama.

At the senior official level, the Heiligendamm Process, a structured dialogue of the G8 and O5 members on investment, innovation, development and energy got off to an initially slow but subsequently encouraging start.

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The Lead-Up Summitry

The sixth promising sign was the configuration of lead up bilateral visits among G8 leaders (see Appendix G). While the domestically constrained Fukuda and his sherpa did not take a full scale pre-summit tour of their partners, Fukuda met most of his G8 colleagues in the half year before the summit was held. He led off with America's Bush, followed with the visiting EU Commission president and French prime minister, then Russia's leaders and China's Hu Jintao. Left out were Canada's Harper, Italy's Berlusconi, and the other big four European leaders back home. The G8 leaders would thus largely be familiar with one another when they all met together for the first time at Toyako, at the peak of a summit system designed above all to let real leaders lead.

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The Propellers of Performance

As they approached the final stages of their journey up to the Toyako mountaintop, G8 leaders were pulled toward success by several powerful forces from the outside world that had reliably produced high G8 summit performance in the past (Kirton 2004a).

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Shock-Activated Equalizing Vulnerability

The first force, pushing powerfully for strong summit success, was the increasing and interconnected, equalizing vulnerability of G8 members to physical assaults from abroad, a vulnerability becoming ever more activated and apparent by severe shocks. These shocks sprung up in finance, energy, food and ecology. They spread simultaneously in a complex, closely interconnected cluster as never before.⁵

The classic old and new political-security vulnerabilities of defeat in war, nuclear explosions and terrorist attacks remained at serious levels for a now hyper-sensitive G8, even if none produced a single, galvanizing shock or the sort that the July 7 London subway bombings had in 2005. In Iraq, the war America and Britain were conducting remained unwon and was not going well, even with a surge in U.S. troops that threatened to become permanent — at least under the U.S. presidential and Congressional elections were held in November, eight short months away. In Afghanistan, the poppies, police and porous border with Pakistan remained serious problems, especially with the approach of summer when Taliban offensives traditionally took place. In the Middle East in early May, Hezbollah, considered by many G8 members to be a terrorist organization, assaulted and threatened to overthrow the western-backed government in Lebanon, in ways reminiscent of the conflict in that country at the time of the G8 summit in 2006.

Yet beyond these slow-burn, still essentially attrition events, in other core areas there were several serious shocks with the strength to pull the summit onto high success. The clearest and most familiar vulnerability came from soaring energy prices, which reached historic highs of almost US$130 a barrel for month forward West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude on the NYMEX on May 20. As in 1979 this spike led to pocketbook pain at the pump and political protest in the U.S., other G8 countries, and now in China and other O5 countries as well. It also directly fuelled a food, inflation and stagflation crisis or concern in O5, African and other developing countries, and prospectively within the G8 too.

The second shock, similarly familiar from G8 history was a contagious financial crisis.⁶ In contrast to the most recent Asian-turned-global financial crisis of 1997-99, the current subprime credit crisis that started in the summer of 2007 and gathered force during the following year, started in the most powerful G8 member, America, spread to other G8 countries, and radiated outward to the rest of the world, if not into a rather resilient O5. This crisis was punctuated by the shock of bank failures (as distinct from an LTCM-like hedge fund collapse) — in America (Bear Stearns), Britain (Northern Rock) and Germany. It came in America with a classic run on the bank, but this time from fellow bankers who refused to lend, asked for the return of their money and forced central bankers to take unprecedented steps.

The third shock came from a burgeoning food crisis. It was bred by ecological vulnerabilities such as drought and the switch from food to clean biofuels, and by soaring energy prices. It hit hardest initially in developing Africa, Asia and the Americas, as had its predecessors. But it now erupted simultaneously around the world, and led to rampant inflation and political unrest in the G8's O5 partner of China. It threatened to bring back the dreaded stagflation of the 1970s to the G7 itself, as sharply slowing growth everywhere came with increasing inflation in the U.S.

The energy shock directly propelled higher performance on the summit's priority of climate change. It also complicated it by intensifying market pressures for re-carbonization of the world's fuel supply. It reinforced the nuclear nonproliferation priority and complicated the climate one by intensifying divisions over nuclear power. The food crisis similarly pushed and imperiled the African development priority. The finance crisis promised to divert attention from all three, while bringing the G8 back to its economic roots.

A fourth, ecological shock arrived in Asia, two months before the summit's start. Cyclone Nargis, which struck Myanmar on May 2-3, leaving more than 133,000 dead or missing, and endangering up to 2.5 million people due to a badly uncoordinated relief effort. The cyclone served as a second shock, especially for those in Asia, of the deadly Asian tsunami of December 2004 that had killed and attracted worldwide attention and action. Along within Hurricane Katrina that attacked America to devastate New Orleans in September 2005 and the major earthquake that struck China on May 12, killing 30,000 and rendering as many as 5 million people homeless, Cyclone Nargis and China's earthquake dramatically illustrated the frequency, speed and severity of extreme weather and geophysical events and, in concentrated if temporary form, the impact of sea-level rise that would be caused by climate change.

These ecological shocks instantly compounded the food crisis. The cyclone wiped out the area that produced 65% of the rice in a country that was regularly and reliably a major exporter of this global staple but now was immediately transformed into an importer for the first time. It also threatened to bring a health crisis. Two weeks after the strike, the needed relief had not arrived to assist Myanmar's poor and overwhelmed public healthcare system cope with the typhoid, dysentery, diarrhea, cholera and measles epidemics that erupted.

The cyclone shock further invoked and intensified the other causes that have reliably produced high G8 summit performance in the past (Kirton 2004a). It showed the failure of the established multilateral organizations to deal with this shock-activated new vulnerability from nature. For the major relief agencies — the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) — remained wedded to their old article 2(7) of non-intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, rather than giving precedence to the newer principles of human security or the responsibility to protect that had been proclaimed by all the leaders of UN member states at their recent world summit in September 2005. The UN agencies were thus unable to get their badly needed personnel and relief supplies into the country over the opposition of its suspicious, recalcitrant, repressive military regime.

The crisis also triggered the equalizing specialized capability of the G8, O5 and other participants invited to the Toyako Summit. The most powerful U.S., along with France and Britain, contemplated unilateral actions, by air dropping relief supplies into Myanmar without the host state's permission. But with Myanmar's military likely to use force in response, it chose not to use its capabilities in this way. Meanwhile, supplies from Myanmar's often poor Asian neighbours such as tsunami-recovering Indonesia, Thailand, China and Japan quickly arrived. Indeed, G8 host Japan, the world's second strongest power, was a highly geologically and geographically vulnerable country regularly attacked by typhoons and earthquakes and thus in the lead in cyclone monitoring, warning and relief capabilities. These nearby Asian capabilities were also allowed into an earthquake overwhelmed China, while those of more distant G8 powers were kept out.

The cyclone further evoked the common democratic purpose of G8 members. The refusal of Myanmar's military junta to allow international relief personnel into the country, coming in the wake of its recent crackdown on its Buddhist monks, defied the values of openness, democracy and human rights that stood at the core of the G8's missions and its citizen's convictions. The assault was compounded by the junta's diversion of relief supplies and dismissal of relief survivors' demands, in order to support a constitutional referendum that it refused to postpone, a referendum designed to cement and legitimize the military's rule. In Myanmar the Buddhist crackdown, relief refusal and aid diversion thus produced three successive shocks in one year to assault the core common principles the G8 held dear.

The cyclone also mobilized global public attention and action for Asia, poverty and disease reduction there and, potentially, demands to control climate change and the extreme weather events it bred. Across the globe publics were aroused, supported their government's relief efforts and gave directly themselves to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), all on a scale comparable to the Asian tsunami (when corrected for the number of countries hit, victims, and citizens from G8 and outside countries who had visited and vacationed there).

The Myanmar cyclone also rendered more appropriate the expanded participation at the summit, still done in a constricted, continuous, controlled way. The summit was held in Asia in nearby Japan, with the Asian O5 members of China and India attending for the fifth time in six years and the fourth time in a row. Japan's additional invited participants — South Korea, Australia and Indonesia — were all from Asia and had a habit of working together at the summit level in forums such as Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Association of South East Asian Nations Plus Three (ASEAN+3). The participation of tsunami-recovering Indonesia in particular would help Cyclone Nargis get greater attention and action when the summit came.

This second Asian tsunami shock within a three-year interval connected directly with the summit's priority agenda of climate, poverty reduction, health and water, and food. It and the Chinese earthquake pushed the G8 to add natural disaster relief to its agenda in an enhanced way, as part of the G8's climate change discussion and perhaps as an item in its own right. This was an issue not in the Japanese and G8 plan for 2008 but one that the summit had recently dealt with at Gleneagles in 2005 and St. Petersburg in 2006. Together with the food agenda it showed the fast flexibility of the G8 in responding to shocks, especially those the new vulnerability bred.

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Multilateral Organizational Failure

The second force, also pulling forth substantial summit success, is the poor performance of the established multilateral organizations most relevant to the rising vulnerabilities, recent shocks and the priority agenda of the summit itself.

In the energy field, the multilateral system offered only a very partial International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), World Bank (dealing with energy poverty) and Atlantic-centric, plurilateral International Energy Agency (IEA). Much like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), these bodies functioned more as a G7 secretariat or platform (with Russia still excluded) than a global governance forum on their own. Nor did the multilateral system contain any established body to deal with the fast emerging renewable, alternative and efficient energy fields.

In the closely related climate field that was Toyako's first priority, the fragmented, fragile architecture from the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) showed few signs of growing coherence or capability. The UNFCCC continued to focus on emissions sources, with little coordination with a CBD that had expertise in sinks. The UNFCCC's Conference of the Parties (COP) in December 2007 at Bali added nothing essential to the Heiligendamm framework on long- or medium-term targets to help define a fast-approaching "beyond Kyoto" regime. Its belated recognition of the role of avoided deforestation did not propel it to a broader inclusion of the sinks that the G7 had agreed were equally important at the summit George H. Bush had hosted in Houston, Texas, in 1990.⁷ The energetic, G8-centric new plurilateral institutions — the American-pioneered Major Emitters Meeting (MEM) of 16 countries, the Asia Pacific Partnership (APP 7) of now seven countries (with the recent additional of Canada), the ministerial Gleneagles Dialogue and the Heiligendamm Process energy efficiency group — needed the G8 summit if their work was to culminate in the intended way.

The multilateral system was similarly missing in action in coping with the global growth and financial crisis, where its oldest and most powerful body, the IMF, had long claimed centrestage. Thanks to a deal brokered in the finance G20 in November 2007, the IMF had made its first stage of reforms on voice and vote. But despite the controversy over Paul Wolfowitz, the IMF and World Bank appointments of their new executive heads still preserved the ancient backroom deal brokered duopoly for the Europeans and Americans, freezing out the rest of the world. While the IMF was assigned a little of the analytic work required to cope with the new financial crisis, on key issues such as creating a regime to regulate sovereign wealth funds, the U.S. preferred an ad hoc coalition of the willing composed of itself and a few small friends such as Kuwait and Singapore. Most critical aspects of the new financial crisis lay beyond the IMF's mandate, its diminished resources or its professional competence. Its new managing director's pleas for a Keynesian stimulus package to spur global growth and its gloomy forecasts for American and global growth were widely ignored.

Elsewhere across the agenda there were no signs the multilateral system could cope without the G8's help. This included the World Bank on African development, the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the WFP on the food crisis, the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the Doha Development Agenda, the IAEA on nuclear proliferation in North Korea, Iran and Syria and the UNSC on Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan and securing its porous borders with Pakistan.

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Predominant Equalizing Capabilities

The new vulnerabilities and shocks that overwhelmed the established multilateral organizations also increased the collective predominance and internal equality of the capabilities among the G8 and now O5 powers. Rising oil prices empowered the otherwise weakest G8 members of Russia and Canada, while hurting the overall most powerful of America and Japan. Among the O5 they helped smaller Brazil and Mexico while harming China and India. The finance crisis struck hardest in America, Britain and Germany, while Canada and especially Russia largely escaped. The credit crunch in particular called into question America's historic advantage, as the global reserve currency provider, of having the most liquid capital markets in the world. It put a premium on countries with large hard currency reserves in sovereign wealth funds and elsewhere, notably China, India, Russia and Japan. The food crisis similarly helped Canada and potentially Russia, if not directly harming a long agriculturally protectionist America, Europe and Japan.

The strong equalization of capability was faithfully reflected in and driven by the currency values governing the international worth of the G8 and O5 countries. During the year leading up to the summit the U.S. dollar plummeted, the Japanese yen and British pound remained stable, while the Euro, the Canadian dollar, and the Russia rouble soared. Even the still heavily controlled Chinese yuan appreciated, breaking historic barriers in the spring.

The equalization of overall capability was also apparent, if less comprehensively, in the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates among G8 and O5 members. U.S. GDP growth plummeted to an initially reported 0.6% in the first quarter of 2008. Japan, which had been growing at 2% for several years, was due to fall back to 1.5% for 2008. Britain and Europe similarly softened but were still stronger than the United States. Only tightly connected Canada plummeted below America, falling into slight negative growth for the first quarter of 2008. Outside the G7, there was still strong growth in Russia, China, India and a now robustly growing Brail.

The G8's global collective predominance thus increasingly depended on its most recent member Russia and an O5 that was being increasingly integrated into the G8 club. And within both the G8 and the O5 capabilities were equalizing. A relatively retracting America increasingly recognized it needed the help its G8 and O5 associates could provide. Their capability configurations pushed them away from repeating the polarized rich North-poor South confrontation of old.

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Common Democratic Purposes

These powerful pulls from outside were, however, offset by the weakness in those pushes from inside the summit system that had proven effective in propelling performance in the past. The first was the fragile fit between the summit's priority agenda and the values of open democracy and individual liberty that constituted the G8's foundational raison d'être, constitutional charter and ultimate shared social purpose (see Appendix K).

The G8's planned priorities did not directly connect well with these values. Transparency was only a small part of the world economy and financial stability agenda. Development focused on health, water and education rather than on corruption and good governance. And climate change has no direct connection to open democracy at all. It was a sharp contrast to the 2004 summit with the Broader Middle East and North Africa (BMENA) initiative at its core.

Fukuda in his Davos speech had set forth several principles to explain how Japan would approach these priorities. But the speech was largely devoid of direct references to democracy beyond the few civil society and multi-stakeholder participation ones. Openness appeared only in reference to reforming the Japanese economy. Transparency arose only in a technical reference to measuring the bottom up approach and climate control. On development and Africa, infrastructure was highlighted but institution, good governance, and anti-corruption were notably absent, in sharp contrast the 2002 G8 Africa Action Plan's emphasis on them.

Such democratic guides did begin to appear as the G8 agenda took shape by May. But much would depend on what built-in and breaking political security issues the G8 leaders chose to focus on. On Kosovo, Tibet and Zimbabwe, the G8 was somewhat divided among itself and especially its O5 partners, and a discussion here was not destined to put a devotion to democracy in as a powerful performance-inducing force. But the G8 was more united on Myanmar and, above all, Afghanistan. Last year at Heiligendamm the G8 leaders' discussion had led to a rousing demonstration of G8 solidarity on the need to fight to defend open democracy, individual liberty and social advance there. That demonstration of democratic cohesion could appear again at Toyako, for the G8 leaders themselves and perhaps all the world to see.

A prospective outbreak of a common democratic purpose was heightened by the configuration of players at the summit. Russia would be sending a new president, who was thought by some to be more inherently devoted to open democracy and the rule of law than Putin had been. His presence would at least offer an opportunity to set aside the chill surrounding Putin for a while. Moreover, the three additional Asian participants that Japan added were all from democratic polities, meaning that there would be more and more diverse leaders to try to socialize a politically lonely Hu Jintao of China onto a more open democratic path.

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Political Control, Capital and Continuity

The fifth force of leaders' political control, capital and continuity at home also largely acted against summit success. The leaders had an unusually low ability to escape and re-shape the constraints of their domestic polities to flexibly come to fast, far-reaching consensus and collective action abroad (see Appendix L).

In host Japan, 71-year-old Fukuda had only recently assumed office, had no popular mandate of his own, and was already facing rumors that he would depart soon after the summit, or conceivably even face an election before. His Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) did not control the upper house of the Diet. Its candidate overwhelmingly lost a by-election in a previously safe seat in April. Fukuda's approval rating, which had stood at 60% when he assumed office in September 2007, had plunged to 25% by April. The summit designed by his predecessor Shinzo Abe approached amidst severe political constraints at home.

Elsewhere things were seldom brighter for Fukuda's G8 colleagues. In the U.S. a lame duck president George Bush, who no longer controlled Congress, saw his popularity plunge from its historic high of 90% in the wake of 9/11 to the lowest ever recorded in the 70-year history of polling in the U.S.⁸ New historic lows were also reached when Americans were asked if their country was going in the right direction. Bush's Republican party lost a previously safe congressional seat in Mississippi in a special election in the spring.

In Germany, Angela Merkel's approving rating also sagged, as members of her sister party and the Social Democrats in her grand coalition became restive well before the next general election in autumn 2009. In Britain, Gordon Brown's approval rating plummeted from the majority highs when he took over to new lows by April, in part because he had backed off going to the polls to get a popular electoral mandate of his own. In early May his Labour party suffered a devastating loss in local elections, as he faced a general election in 2010. In France a similar popularity plunge deflated Nicolas Sarkozy. In Canada, Stephen Harper's minority government remained tied with the opposition in the polls, even as a sagging economy threatened to drag the government down. Only in Italy did Silvio Berlusconi come with a very fresh mandate and honeymoon popularity. So did Dmitry Medvedev, assuming the honeymoon glow bequeathed by his predecessor and mentor, Vladmir Putin, still very much at his side.

The continuity of leaders at the summit and the familiarity with colleagues and the experience it breeds were also not promising. Fukuda, as chair, was attending and hosting the summit for the first time. Also coming to their first summit were Brown and Medvedev. It was the second summit for Sarkozy, the third for Harper and the fourth for José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. Bush was at his eighth and last.

Low summit performance was also likely from the particular combination of ideology and experience these leaders brought. The most experienced leader, Bush, with his conservative ideology, came from the most powerful member, but had low political capital and control. Most other weighty members were relatively new, ideologically mixed and domestically weak. Only in the weaker members did high political control, with mixed experience, come.

A more promising projection comes from an alternative conception of the impact of political control, capital and continuity. Offered by Nicholas Bayne (2008), it argues that summit success comes when leaders are new, anxious to make their mark and determined to deliver abroad to compensate for their poor popularity at home. Toyako is thus blessed with a new generation of many fresh leaders, with Germany's Merkel, and Canada's Harper at only their third, France's Sarkozy at his second, and Britain's Brown, Italy's Berlusconi, Japan's Fukuda and Russia's Medvedev at their first (even though Berlusconi hosted two and attended many before). The low polls that many have will, by this logic, drive them to high ambition and achievement abroad, perhaps led even by a veteran Bush in his legacy year.

In Bush's case, it bears noting that the two previous summits with a two-term lame-duck U.S. president had a solid performance. Ronald Reagan's last summit at Toronto in 1988 performed poorly overall, but made substantial advances on climate change and African development (especially debt relief for the poorest and South African apartheid). Bill Clinton's last summit at Okinawa in 2000, the last one Japan hosted, was very successful; it produced, inter alia, the highest compliance record of all time and made notable advances on African development. It is also worth recalling that Fukuda, despite his domestic weakness in the spring of 2008, was willing and able to use his extraordinary powers against his reluctant upper house to have Japan's Self-Defence Forces (SDF) continue to support an America, Britain, Canada and France fighting to defend democracy in Afghanistan.

Also promising well for summit success is the strong public support across virtually all G8 and some O5 members for the summit's defining priority of climate change. In a long skeptical U.S., in 2007 37% of Americans identified environmental problems as a leading global threat, an increase of 61% from 2002 (Pew Global Attitudes Project 2007). Consistent with this shift, in mid April Bush declared the U.S. would commit to binding emissions targets. He also signed the first increase in auto efficiency standards since the 1980s and supported alternative fuels. In the same 2007 survey 45% to 66% of west Europeans chose environmental issues as a top threat, as did 70% of Chinese and large numbers in India, Brazil and other developing countries. Among the new leaders attending the summit, Australia's Kevin Rudd had just won his first election, in a landslide after campaigning to ratify the Kyoto protocol, and South Korea's new president Lee Myung-bak had become prominent by greening Seoul as mayor from 2002 to 2006.

Moreover, there was strong support for the G8 as an institution in its most powerful member. Those looking into the long shadow of the future beyond November 2008 could take hope from the publicly declared G8 proposals of the presidential candidates seeking to succeed Bush. All had clear G8 institutional reform polices in their campaign platforms. Republican senator John McCain wished to remove the Russians from the G8. Democratic senator Hillary Clinton (2007) promised to use the G8 as a model to create an E8 summit, with an adjusted membership, dedicated to climate change. Democratic senator Barack Obama offered a new forum of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters, composed of the existing G8 and O5, "to focus exclusively on global energy and environmental issues."⁹

Within the G8 family, there was also much wariness about one another, especially where Russia and the U.S. were concerned. In regard to a Russia, a GlobeScan poll from October 31, 2007, to January 25, 2008, found G7 citizens saw Putin as a net negative influence on democracy and human rights in Russia (56%-26%), peace and security in the world (47%-38%), quality of life in Russia (44%-39%), and Russia's reliability as an energy partner (41%-37%), even if they felt he had a net positive impact on Russia's overall relations with other countries (40%-45%). They felt similarly about Russia's overall role in the world (44%-30%). The most negative of the 31 countries surveyed were the Germans (56%) and the Italians (53%), while the most positive were the Egyptians and (78%) and Chinese (69%). Views of the U.S. were no more flattering.

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Constricted, Controlled, Continuous Participation

The sixth factor of constricted, controlled, continuous participation also presented drags on the summit's likely success. It was comprehensive, rather than constricted, reasonably controlled, if with a regional Asian bias, but brought new leaders who would not participate throughout (see Appendix M).

For the fourth straight year the G8 heads would meet the O5 leaders of China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa. Also attending were the leaders of Australia, South Korea and Indonesia from democratic Asia, leaders from several African democracies, and the heads of the multilateral organizations most relevant to the summit's agenda this year.

The summit itself, at the selective, remote Windsor Hotel Toya Resort and Spa, allows maximum time for the leaders to be alone together, cut off from the world. With the invited leaders housed half an hour away by helicopter or two hours away by car along a sometimes windy foggy route, the G8 leaders should have maximum opportunity for spontaneous encounters and conversations among themselves. But they could also have to deal with the psychological dynamic from their outreach guests who could feel like second class participants who are largely left out. The summit site would showcase a range of Japan's environmental technologies. The media centre was in the Rusutsu Resort hotel in the village of Rusutsu, a 30-minute drive from the summit site. No plans for civil society consultation or involvement were in the public plan.

This large number came from a new combination that included leaders of countries that have never attended a G8 summit before. They would meet in changing combinations, depending on the issue under discussion, over the summits three days, with only the G8 leaders there throughout.

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The Prospects for Performance

Taken together, these six forces are likely to produce a summit of significant success, both overall and across most of its priority themes and tasks.

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Overall Priorities

By mid May, there was much continuity between the predominant global challenges, Japan's longstanding agenda, and Abe and then Fukuda's publicly stated goals on the one hand, and the summit agenda and prospects for action as they evolved. The unanticipated breaking challenges not on the earlier agenda — the food crisis and the natural disasters in Myanmar and China — had already been easily absorbed. The initial concern with terrorism had faded from G8's attention and agenda at an equal rate.

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World Economy

The G8's world economy agenda began with the dynamics of globalization, as they are currently and dramatically being felt in the areas of finance, energy, investment and food. Here the focus was on stimulating the world economy in response to the current slowdown, asking if more fiscal stimulus is appropriate, or if the recent reductions in interest rates and internationally co-ordinated injections of central bank liquidity had already generated too much present and future inflation in too many parts of the globe. A second concern was coping with the 21st-century style contagious credit crisis that started with the subprime mortgage problem in the U.S. but had caused a much wider array of credit markets to freeze around the world. Here G8 attention centred on the causes and transmission channels of the crisis, the role of mortgage lenders, commercial and investment banks, hedge and private equity funds, rating agencies and insurers, and what regulatory and supervisory measures should be taken, nationally or internationally, by whom and when.

Also prominent on the G8's economic agenda were trade, where the badly overdue Doha Development Agenda of multilateral trade liberalization was in big need of a boost. Equally important was investment protectionism, including the need for internationally harmonized rules for the ever wealthier and more internationally active sovereign wealth funds. Attention extended to innovation and intellectual property rights, to corruption, corporate social responsibility and natural resource management and to energy security. Here world oil prices spiking to new highs in May threaten to imperil global growth and the political fortunes of most G8 and O5 leaders back home.

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Climate Change and Environment

The second priority theme of climate change and environment stood as the make-or-break issue by which the summit as a whole would be judged. Here the first task was to have all G8 members and their O5 partners accept the ominous scientific findings of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and subsequent reports, to recognize that climate change imperils both the global environment and world economy, and to agree that major measures on the part of all major emitters are urgently required right now. They then needed to define the essential framework of a beyond-Kyoto climate control regime — one that is effective, inclusive and based on binding targets accepted by all countries that count. To do so they had to conclude their hard bargaining on long-term and medium-term targets, timetables and baselines, and the contribution that Japan's bottom-up sectoral approach would make.

While the G8's European and Pacific powers had long been divided here, both sides showed flexibility. Moreover, the O5 powers, led by China, were also moving to help the summit arrive at a meaningful deal. Part of the solution lay in agreeing on technology development and transfer, forestry, sinks and biodiversity, funding for technology and adaptation, and linkages to the summit's work on development, Africa, food and health. Also relevant was the role of various negotiation fora, notably the UN process, the Gleneagles Dialogue due to end this year and the MEM-16, whose first summit was likely to constitute the concluding climate change session of the G8 summit this year.

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Development and Africa

The third priority of development and Africa also builds on the G8's recent momentum and adds a new emphasis now. The framework for the summit's discussions will be the 2002 G8 Africa Action Plan at the summit. G8 leaders plan to hold an accountability session to review how well they have fulfilled their commitments made in 2002 and after, starting with their most high profile promise to double aid to Africa by 2010. They will review and support the progress Africa is making toward good governance at the national and regional level. Another major focus will be how well the G8 and world is doing at the halfway point on meeting the MDGs. At Toyako pride of place goes to education and especially health, starting with HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, polio and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and expanding to embrace health systems and the health workforce. Also prominent will be the response to the food crisis especially in its medium-term dimensions, and the tights links of development with climate change, biodiversity and trade.

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Political Security

Beyond this already ambitious agenda is the summit's de facto priority of nuclear non-proliferation. This is a subject of particular importance for Japan as the only G8 member which has experienced first hand the horrors of a nuclear attack and which lives so close to a new, unpredictable nuclear power — a totalitarian North Korea that invaded South Korea in 1950, shot a missile over Japan more recently, and is evidently exporting nuclear material to other non-democracies such as Syria now. Also of concern is a nuclear committed and non-transparent Iran that supports insurgents and terrorists and a precarious nuclear-armed Pakistan that could still fall further into Al Qaeda and Taliban hands. A central challenge for G8 leaders is preventing these groups from moving easily from their sanctuaries in Pakistan to terrorize and kill innocent civilians and the soldiers of many G8 members now fighting for freedom in Afghanistan. Also important are strengthening the successful G8's 2002 Global Partnership Against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction in Russia and confronting the conflicts in Sudan, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Kosovo, Tibet and Myanmar.

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Outreach, Expansion and Reform

Perhaps the greatest challenge for Toyako is the architecture of the G8 summit and system itself. Already a centre of global governance that many national governments, intergovernmental organizations and civil society want to part of, the G8 has responded at Toyako by inviting an unusually large number of participants to the summit, in ever changing combinations, through the summit's three days. But G8 members differ about how far, how fast and how the G8 should further integrate its now established O5 partners, or even make them full members of a new G13 as France's Sarkozy and Britain's Brown have publicly proposed or along with Egypt in a G14 that Sakozy has now suggested. G8 leaders must also decide whether to extend the Gleneagles dialogue beyond 2008 and steer the Heiligendamm Process which will issue an interim report to the summit in 2008 and a final report in 2009. And for 2010, the G8 has during the past decade has made 23 ambitious commitments to be reached in eight areas, including reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. The greatest drama and defining test of Toyako in 2008 will thus be whether it can move a reluctant America and the major ecological powers of China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa towards accepting binding targets to control their climate changing activity in the years ahead.

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Dimensions of G8 Performance

These prospective achievements are likely to be confirmed by the strong performance of the Toyako Summit across all of the six performance dimensions by which any international institutions summit can be assessed.

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Domestic Political Management

On the first dimension of domestic political management, the Toyako Summit in its long lead-up has already helped Fukuda from being eased out as prime minister or being forced to go to the polls before his summit starts. The summit also offers him and Britain's Brown an opportunity to show his party colleagues, fellow legislators and voters that he is a world leader who can deliver results and thus deserves to stay on as PM not least depart with dignity at an appropriate time.

In the U.S., the G8 summit, far more than his many other trips abroad, gives Bush a chance to boost his polling numbers in his last year and burnish his legacy as a global leader. If he continues his tradition of announcing shifts in American climate change policy on the summit's eve, it could also help his and the summit reputation on this critical issue for publics in America and elsewhere in the world. Already in America, as noted above, the G8 has also received attention from all three major candidates for the presidency, with the G8 priority issue of energy and the environment being the focus for those on the Democratic side.

In Russia, the summit also offers the new president Medvedev an opportunity to show he is a world leader, just as Putin did in 2000. Yet now Medvedev has the much larger task of establishing his reputation alongside that of a revered Putin with a powerful presence, in contrast to an ailing Yeltsin, who quickly faded away.

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Deliberation

The second dimension of summit performance is deliberation. The number of issues dealt with at a summit generally correlates with the number and length of the communiqués released in the leaders' name throughout the summit and at its end. In the lead-up to Toyako there were those who predictably pushed for smaller, shorter communiqués, reportedly proposing only two. But this was not agreed to in the sherpa process. However, the summit could issue at least one stand-alone declaration on one of the burning political-security subjects of the day.

The deliberative challenge lay with the G8 leaders' meetings with their invited guests. The latter, especially the new Outreach 8, who would join the G8 to discuss climate on the final day, had no G8-like tradition of coming to consensus so that a meaningful communiqué could be released. As of mid May, the G8 planned to release one comprehensive communiqué on terrorism, covering as well their own all-G8 discussion on climate on the summit's second day. The format for day three remained to be defined.

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Direction Setting

More promising was the dimension of direction setting, as measured by the number and breadth, if not the innovation, of the principles and norms the Toyako Summit is likely to set. A leading indicator here was the substantial list of principles by which the Japanese would address the agenda, as contained in Fukuda's Davos speech. That speech also identified several interconnections or "crosswalks" among the themes and issues, suggesting the probability of a coherent and consistent package of summit-produced principles and norms.

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Decisional Commitment

The same conclusions carry over into the prospects for collective decision making, in the form of a large number of commitments, including ambitious ones. The specificity of the proposals in the Davos speech points in this direction too. This judgement is reinforced by the range and amount of money mobilized, both in the Davos speech and in subsequently announcements. These include the $10 billion CIF, which could be counted as official development assistance (ODA) as outlined by Fukuda at Davos; the CIF was to be financed by Japan, Britain and the United States. As of mid May, none of their G8 partners had signalled they would join this donors club.

The strong stress in the summit preparatory process on fulfilling outstanding commitments rather than making new ones, and the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) numbers showing dropping ODA flows, place some restraint where ambitious new commitments, especially those mobilizing money, are concerned. Still, it is worth recalling that a similar restraint dominated in the immediate lead-up to Heiligendamm in 2007, only to be overturned at the last minute by NGOs pressing for more giving and by popularly elected politicians under the glare of the summit's global publicity proving eager to please.

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Delivery through Compliance

On the dimension of delivery, on compliance with commitments, the G8's emphasis on keeping existing commitments suggests that Toyako is likely to perform well, subject to the cautions identified immediately above. Also suggesting caution is the fact that money mobilized — where momentum is concentrated at the moment — has not proven productive in catalyzing compliance in the pas (Kirton et al. 2007b; Kirton 2006). Nor has referring implementation to other international organizations and Toyako is heading toward asking the IEA in energy and the UN on climate to help do its work. However, the G8's prospective reliance on the IMF and World Bank to assist with finance and development, and the invitation for the World Bank to attend the summit are promising, for these are the core international organizations (and G7 controlled ones) in the finance and development field. They have proven their compliance boosting potency before (Kirton 2007b, 2006).

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Development of Global Governance

The prospective performance on the development of global governance is also somewhat promising. The MEM-16 formula will be strengthened and Tokayo could even produce to a plurilateral summit institution similar to the MEM-16 dedicated to climate change. The Gleneagles Dialogue will be continued in rebranded fashion as the Toyako Dialogue, dedicated to devising a low carbon society. Both legacies will strengthen the principle and practice of a G20, at the level of leaders and ministers alike.

In contrast, there will be no bold moves on the outstanding questions of outreach and expansion. Japan is reluctant and has thus far been increasing outreach at the summit in ways that dilute China's distinctiveness and that could delay and make more difficult any expansion of the G8 toward or into a G13/14.

In regard to civil society, this G8 has been good on the multi-stakeholder principle in the host's proclamation at Davos but, beyond the new "Academic 8," not in practice in the lead-up to or at the summit itself. With so many invited guests to attend to, the G8 leaders and host will have little time to deal directly with civil society at the summit, especially in ways that repeat Japan's innovation at Okinawa the last time.

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Appendix A: G8 Summit Performance by Function, 1975-2007

*Bayne Grade: the 2005 grade of A- is a confirmed grade. 2006 and 2007 are unofficial grade. They are not for citation or publication.

*Domestic Political Management: % Mem is the percentage of G8 countries that made a policy speech referring to the G8 that year. Ave # refs = the average number of references for those who did mention the G8 that year.

*Directional: number of references in the communiqué's chapeau or Chair's Summary to the G8's core values of democracy, social advance and individual liberty.

*Compliance scores from 1990 to 1995 measure compliance with commitments selected by Ella Kokotsis. Compliance scores from 1996 to 2007 measure compliance with G8 Research Group's selected commitments.

*2007 score is Interim score for that year. It is not included in the overall or cycle average.

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Appendix B: 2007 Heiligendamm Interim Compliance Scores

Appendix C: Japan's Built-In Agenda

Multiyear Commitments Due in 2008 (4)

2004-2: To ensure that polio does not reemerge, we will work to ensure the full integration of necessary measures in national health strategies and structures in the post-eradication period through 2008. (Polio)

2005-10: We welcome Japan's offer to receive a report at the G8 Summit in 2008. (Gleneagles Dialogue: Climate Change)

2006-43: We urgently call for mobilization of financial support and will continue to work collectively and with bilateral and multilateral donors to close the funding gap for 2007-2008, and will continue to work with others towards securing the resources necessary to finish the program and declare our planet polio-free in the near future. (Polio)

2006-96: We have instructed our relevant ministers to continue the dialogue on climate change, clean energy and sustainable development and report its outcomes to the G8 summit in 2008. (Climate Change).

2008 Remit Mandates (5)

2007-22: The progress on these pilot plans will be reviewed by the G8 in 2008 (Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy; Issue-area: IPP)

2007-30: [To maintain the momentum of that groundbreaking achievement, we] will prepare national reports, with the assistance of the IEA, evaluating G8 member states' efforts to adhere to those principles, for delivery at the 2008 G8 summit (Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy; Issue-area: Climate change, energy efficiency and energy security)

2007-55: We will report on the progress achieved in the areas mentioned above at the G8 Summit in 2008 (Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy; Issue-area: Adapting to Climate Change)

2007-63: [To this end, we will] report on progress in the policies and measures on energy efficiency outlined below at the G8 summit in 2008 (Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy; Issue-area: Energy Efficiency)

2007-141: The G8 Summit in Japan in 2008 will receive an interim report on the progress made and at the G8 Summit in Italy in 2009 a final report on the outcomes of the Dialogue Process will be presented (Growth and Responsibility in Africa; Issue-area: Heiligendamm Process)

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Appendix D: Japan's Planned Agenda

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, World Economic Forum, January 26, 2008

A. World Economy

A1. Global Economy

Downward turn in global economy

(Avoid pessimism, add urgency, coordinated action, domestic responses)

A2. Financial Markets 21rst century style crisis

Sub-prime mortgage problem in the US

(swift response, nip credit crunches from diminished capitalization)

Causes of financial turbulence and medium and long term responses

(Advance G7 finance ministers actions)

A3. Reform Japanese Economy

(Advance Market Liberalization)

(Foreign direct investment)

(Trade)

(Financial and capital market liberalization)

A4. Energy: "Surge of petroleum prices to record levels"

B. Climate Change: "Climate change is top priority"

B1. Post-Kyoto Framework

Targets and Timetables (IPCC): peak 10-20 yrs, cut 50%+ by 2050

(All major emitters participate)

(Fair and equitable emissions target)

(Bottom-up sector approach to energy efficiency per Japan's national target)

(Base year reviewed)

B2. International Economic Co-operation

Technology Transfer

Energy Efficiency (global target of +30% by 2020)

Assistance to developing countries (Cool Earth partnership of $10 bn)

Adaptation assistance

(Multilateral Fund: Japan, US, UK ask aothers)

B3. Innovation: Development and Diffusion

Technology development: clean coal, rooftop solar, Green IT

International Framework for collaboration with IEA etc.

(Shift Japan to a low carbon society)

(Cool Earth Promotion Program)

C. Development and Africa: Poverty and the MDG's

C1. Health

Safe motherhood and health of children under fine

Human resources in health

(Framework for health care system with participation of all)

C2. Water

Effective management of water supply and access

C3. Education

Dakar Education for All goals

(vocational training, secondary and higher education)

C4. Economic Growth

(blueprint for regional wide infrastructure development)

Trade and investment

Agricultural productivity

Peace-building: (African PKO centers to boost Africa's peacekeeping capacity)

D. Security

D1. Terrorism

D2. Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction

E. G8 System

E1. Fulfilling Existing Commitments

E2. Participatory Approach: government, business, civil society, academia

Note: (Japan's goals, proposals and initiatives are in parentheses)

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Appendix E: Japan's Prospective Agenda, May 2008

1. World Economy

a. Globalization: Finance, Food, Energy, Investment

b. Trade and Investment Protectionism

c. Intellectual Property Rights

d. Corruption, Corporate Social Responsibility, Natural Resource Management

e. Energy Security

f. Sustainable Growth, Climate Change, Energy Efficiency

g. Africa's G8 Partnership

h. Development and the Millennium Development Goals

2. Climate Change and Environment

a. Science (Endorse IPCC, urgency)

b. Beyond Kyoto Framework (by 2009, effective, inclusive, binding)

c. Technology

d. Forests, Sinks and Biodiversity

e. Sectoral Approach

f. Targets: Medium term; Long Term

g. Technology Transfer

h. Adaptation (Fund)

i. Linkages (to Africa, Development, Food, Health)

j. Negotiation Forum (UN, Gleneagles Dialogue Extension, MEM Role)

3. Development and Africa

4. Political-Security

a. Nuclear Non-Proliferation

b. Nuclear Safety

c. Global Partnership against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction

d. North Korea

e. Iran

f. The Middle East, Iraq and Lebanon

g. Afghanistan

h. Haiti

i. Kosovo

j. Tibet

k. Myanmar

l. Zimbabwe

5. Summit Reform

a. Expansion and Outreach

b. Heiligendamm Process

c. Civil Society

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Appendix F: Sherpa and Ministerial Meetings

Sherpa/FASS Meetings

-Sherpas on January 10 in Tokyo

-Sherpas in early April

-FASS May 8-9

-FASS early June

-Sherpas and FASS June 23-25 in Toyako

Ministerial Meetings

-Finance on February 9 in Tokyo, April 11 in Washington, D. C. and June 13-14 in Osaka

-Development on April 5-6 in Tokyo

-Labour on May 11-13 in Niigata

-Environment on May 24-26 in Kobe

-Justice and home affairs on June 11-13 in Tokyo

-Energy on June 7-8 in Amori

-Science and Technology on June 15 in Okinawa

-Foreign affairs on June 26-27, Kyoto, just before the summit's start

-G20 Environment and Energy Ministers of the Gleneagles Dialogue on March 14-16 in Chiba

-The fourth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD IV) on May 28-30 in Yokohama.

Official Meetings

-G8 Health Experts' Meeting on April 9-10 in Tokyo at the United Nations University

-Second Round of the International Experts Meeting on Illegal Logging on March 3-4 in Tokyo

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Appendix G: Lead-Up Summitry

To come

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Appendix H: Vulnerabilities and Shocks

Shocks

Energy

On April 9, 2008, world oil prices reached a new nominal and real intraday high of over US$111.00 a barrel on the NYMEX month forward contract.

On May 16, 2008, they reached almost US$128.00.

Disasters

May 3: Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, 78,000 confirmed dead (May 21)

May 12: Earthquake in China, 41,353 confirmed dead (May 21)

Ecology

Finance

Northern Rock bankruptcy

Bear Sterns takeover

Food

Appendix I: Multilateral Organizational Performance

To come

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Appendix J: Capability

To come

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Appendix K: Common Purpose

A. Reference to Democratic Principles in Host's Davos Speech

To come

B. Balance of Democratic to Non-Democratic Participants (Freedom House Score)

To come

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Appendix L: Political Control, Capital, Capacity

A. Political Control

A1. Last (Recent and Current) Election: Date from previous election

A2. Next Election: Date

Japan: (0-8 months from May); could come at any time, widely thought it would come just after summit

Canada: (0-19 months from May); October 19, 2009

United States: (8 months from May); November 4, 2008

Germany: Autumn 2009

Britain: Mid 2010

A3. Executive/Party Control of Leader (Coalition/Factions)

A4. Legislative Control

A5. Institutional Control

Central Bank

Subfederal Units

Supra-nationally ceded Policy Areas

B. Political Capital

B1. Leaders Popularity (Personal and Party Approval)

Japan:

United States: Historic low

Germany:

Britain: Historic low. In September 2007, Labour stood at 43% to the main opposition Conservatives at 32%. However, following its historic defeat in local election in late April, by May Labour had dropped to 23% — the worst ever since polling had come to Britain in the 1930s — compared to the Conservatives 49% (YouGov poll taken the first week in May showed).

France:

Italy:

Canada:

Russia: Within Russia, a GlobeScan poll from October 31, 2007, to January 25, 2008, found that Russians, in sharp contrast to their fellow G8 citizens (see below), saw Putin as having a positive influence on Russia's foreign relations (86%), quality of life (77%), world peace and security (76%), Russia's energy role (72%), and democracy in Russia (64%) (BBC World Service 2008).

European Union:

B2. G8 Issues' Popularity

B3. G8 Partners' Popularity

B4. G8 Institutions' Popularity

C. Political Capacity

C1. Summit Experience

C2. Professional Experience

C3. International Experience

Appendix M: Constricted, Controlled, Continuous Participation

To come

Number and Diversity of Invited Participants

Summit Experience of O5 and Outreach Leaders

Average Portion of Summit an Invited Participants Would Attend

Proximity of Leaders' Location (Spontaneous Encounters)

Civil Society Participation

References

Bayne, Nicholas (2008), Staying Together: The G8 Summit Confronts the 21st Century, 2nd ed. (Ashgate: Aldershot).

Bayne, Nicholas (2005), Staying Together: The G8 Summit Confronts the 21st Century, 1st ed. (Ashgate: Aldershot).

BBC World Service (2008), "G7 Citizens Critical of Putin's Impact on Russian Democracy: BBC Poll," February 25.

Clinton, Hilary (2007), "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-first Century," Foreign Affairs (November/December).

Dobson, Hugo (2007), The Group of 7/8, (London: Routledge).

Dobson, Hugo (2004), Japan and the G7/8, 1975-2002, (London: RoutledgeCurzon).

Donnelly, Michael (2002), "Nuclear Safety and Criticallity at Toaimura: A Failure of Governance," in Kirton, John and Junichi Takase 2002), New Directions in Global Political Governance: The G8 and International Order in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate: Aldershot), pp. 117-140.

Erdman, Michael and Cliff Vanderlinden (2008), G8 Interim Compliance Report 2007-08 (G8 Research Group: University of Toronto, Toronto).

Fukuda, Yasuo (2008), "Special Address by H. E. Mr. Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister of Japan On the Occasion of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum Congress Centre, Davos, Switzerland," January 26, 2008.

Hajnal, Peter I. (2007), The G8 System and the G20: Evolution, Role and Documentation, (Aldershot: Ashgate).

Kirton, John (2007d), "G8: An Economic Forum of the Enlarged Western Alliance? The Record from Rambouillet 1975 through Heiligendamm 2007 to Canada 2010," Paper prepared for a program on "The Relations Between Europe and North America," at the North American European Summer Academy of le Centre International de Formation Européenne, Nice, and the Zentrum für Wissenschaft und Weiterbildung Schloss Hofen, Lochau, Austria, July 24, 2007.

Kirton, John, Nikolai Roudev, Laura Sunderland (2007b), "Making G8 Leaders Deliver: An Analysis of Compliance and Health Commitments, 1996-2006," Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 85(3), March 2007.

Kirton, John (2006), "Explaining Compliance with G8 Finance Commitments: Agency, Institutionalization, and Structure," Open Economies Review, 17, (4): 459-475.

Kirton, John (2004a), "Japan's Global Leadership through the G8," Paper prepared for the Faculty of Law, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, July 13, 2004.

Kirton, John (2004b), "Explaining G8 Effectiveness: A Concert of Vulnerable Equals in a Globalizing World." Paper prepared for a panel on "Explaining G8 Effectiveness" at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Montreal, March 17-20, 2004.

Kirton, John and George Von Furstenberg, eds. (2001), New Directions in Global Economic Governance: Managing Globalisation in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate: Aldershot).

Kirton, John and Junichi Takase (2002), New Directions in Global Political Governance: The G8 and International Order in the Twenty-First Century (Ashgate: Aldershot).

Sustainable Energy Development Centre (2006). Available from: <www.sedc.ru>

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