Prospects and Possibilities for Japan’s 2019 G20 Osaka Summit
We hosted a one-day international conference at Soka University in Tokyo on December 10, 2018, on the theme “Prospects and Possibilities for Japan’s 2019 G20 Osaka Summit.” This was held shortly after the inauguration of the Japanese Presidency of the Group of Twenty (G20), which will be compressed by holding an early summit, on 28-29 June 2019. Conference participants stressed their doubts about the capacities of the G20 to meet contemporary global governance challenges, especially due to failures to implement previous summit commitments and the growing tensions between members. They emphasized the important role of stakeholders in holding the G20 to account, by focusing on policy compliance and implementation.
In Buenos Aires on 30 November and 1 December 2018, the G20 is having its 10th anniversary as a summit format at the leaders’ level. On 14 and 15 November 2008, this previously-obscure group of finance ministers and central bankers of the nineteen most “systemically relevant” countries and the EU was transformed into a forum for international leaders to meet with a view into the abyss of the global financial crisis that originated in the US and spread fast across the world. Ten years and 12 leaders’ summits later, the G20 has moved beyond its 2008-09 role as a crisis-management forum and became the self-described “premier forum for […] international economic cooperation.” In this capacity it is now facing new demands to tackle global challenges such as climate change, digitalization and pandemics. As its agenda has expanded and the urgency of the crisis fades, the G20 faces questions regarding its relationship to other formal institutions of global governance, such as the United Nations, its effectiveness in dealing with global challenges as well as its legitimacy and accountability vis-à-vis its people and the 174 non-members.