Friday, January 10th, 2014 G8 and G20 Summitry: Past, Present, Future

Description

As 2014 opens, the hosting of the annual Group of Eight summit will pass from the United Kingdom to Russia and the hosting of the now annual Group of Twenty summit will have just passed from Russia to Australia. This moment also marks the end of the first five years of G20 summitry, the start of the fifteenth anniversary of the creation of the G20 at the finance ministers’ level and the end of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1988 G7 summit held in Toronto, in part at the University of Toronto itself. That last event inspired the creation of the G8 Research Group and its Robert H. Catherwood Scholarship Program, as well as the G20 Research Group and BRICS Research Group. It is thus an appropriate time to assess what has been accomplished by G8 and G20 summitry, where such summitry is headed in the years ahead, what we now know about how such summitry works and how it can be improved.

To address these key questions in contemporary global summit governance, the G8 Research Group and its co-sponsors are mounting a one-day conference at Trinity College at the University of Toronto on January 10, 2014. Assembling speakers from the greater Toronto area, across Canada, Russia and elsewhere, its specific purposes are to:

1. Educate our students in our relevant courses, programs, G8 and G20 Research Groups and their alumni about global summit governance through these central forums;

2. Present and evaluate the scholarship of the colleagues and students from the G8 and G20 Research Groups and their associates;

3. Have practitioners reflect on their experience in G8 and G20 governance;

4.Assess what we know and need to know about G8 and G20 summit governance;

5.Identify what can be improved and what initiatives can be developed for 2014; and

6. Commemorate our recent Catherwood Scholarship winners and the authors of books supported by the G8 and G20 Research Groups.