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Analysis

Strengthening T20 Influence

John Kirton,
Director, G20 Research Group, December 15, 2021
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Study prepared for presentation to the 27th CII Partnership Summit session on "Leveraging the Power of the Research Community and Policy Makers: Role of the Think 20," on December 15, 2021. I am grateful for the contributions of Brittaney Warren, Julia Kulik and Madeline Koch and other members of the G20 Research Group.
Watch presentation here with Kazuo Matsushita, Sachin Chaturvedi and Anita Prakash, moderated by Rakesh Bharti Mittal

Introduction

Since its formal start in 2021, the Think 20 (T20) has properly sought to design and deliver analytically sound, evidence-based recommendations for G20 leaders to adopt as commitments at their summits, and comply with when they return home.

How well and why does the T20 succeed and how can it improve in the next two years?

This study offers the following answers.

1. The T20 has several unique advantages, which no other engagement group has.

2. The T20's work and recommendations have coincided with a general increase in the G20's commitments and compliance.

3. But so has the work of other engagement groups, notably the Women 20 (W20) on gender commitments and compliance, and the Youth 20's (Y20) publicized priority recommendations on the commitments at Rome.

4. Since 2016, the match of T20 recommendations with G20 commitments has not steadily grown, starting high at Hangzhou in 2016, then plunging for two years and reviving at Osaka in 2019.

5. At Rome, the T20 had 24% of its recommendations match G20 commitments on the summit priorities of people, planet and prosperity. T20 recommendation on climate, the environment and energy did best, at a 30% weighted match. They were followed by health at 25% and the economy at 18% (see Appendix E). Elsewhere, the digital economy had 25%, infrastructure 22%, development 13%, and sustainable finance 9%.

6. There is little systematic analysis of what causes T20 influence. The best candidates are:

• annually assess the effectiveness of the recommendations;
• have a strong permanent secretariat for support;
• make fewer recommendations;
• and make those recommendations sooner;

7. To increase T20 influence in the Indonesian and Indian presidencies, the T20 should:

• assess its effectiveness annually;
• acquire an permanent supporting secretariat;
• target the ministerials;
• strengthen the synergies among recommendations;
• and forge alliances with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other actors.

The Think 20's Unique Role

Among the expanding array of formal G20 engagement groups, the T20 has a unique position as the only analytically focused, evidence-based one, focused on what is good for G20 members and the global community as a whole. It does not advocate on behalf of a single, self-interested constituency, no matter how large and important, such as the business, labour or science community, or for women, youth and cities.[1] The T20's influence comes solely from the quality of the recommendations and supporting analysis and evidence, rather than from the political power of the billions of people the other engagement groups may claim to speak for or whose interests they represent.

The T20 thus has the advantage of addressing the full range of the G20 leaders' agenda, adding items they have overlooked and highlighting the synergies among otherwise separate subjects. It matches the singular responsibility of G20 heads of state and government back home, who, uniquely within their countries, must cover, arbitrate and integrate the often competing demands constantly made by their ministers of finance, industry and trade, or labour, or women, or youth, or science and technology.

The T20 also has a responsibility to consider and speak for critical subjects that have no engagement group of their own.[2] It is notable that there is still no heath 20 engagement group, two years after COVID-19 arrived. There is still no environment 20 engagement group, six years after the Paris Agreement was produced. There is no separate engagement group to advocate for aged populations, Indigenous peoples or many other vulnerable but easily overlooked groups. This places a critical responsibility on the T20 to do so, at time when COVID-19 and climate change have made health and the natural environment the central issues that the G20 leaders do and must confront.

It is thus urgently important to understand how influential the T20 has been, what has made it influential and how its influence can be strengthened in the Indonesian and Indian years as host. This study takes up these tasks.

T20 Recommendations Realized, 2012–2021

Assessing the past influence of the T20 requires recognizing that it would not exist without the G20 leaders' summits. The T20's central task and source of influence is making recommendations that are realized as commitments in G20 leaders' summit communiqués and that are then complied with when they return home. It is not an "ideas bank" from which anyone can borrow for free whatever they want, whenever they want. Other international assemblies of think tanks, such as the Council of Councils, have that job.

Engagement Group Influence at G20 Summits

In its central task, the T20 now competes with 10 formal engagement groups making similar sets of recommendations, with several informal engagements groups (such as for young entrepreneurs, and girls) and many other organizations and individuals required or eager to tell G20 leaders what to do (see Appendix A). It is a very crowded playing field, as many want to influence where the effective centre of global governance genuinely is.

Amid all these competitors and colleagues, how well has the T20 done, since it first sprang formally to life for the Los Cabos Summit in 2012?

There is some prima facie evidence to suggest that the growing number of formal G20 engagement groups has coincided with, and may have helped cause, the slow increase in the number of commitments each G20 summit makes, and the compliance that they secure (see Appendix B). But the relationship is neither regular nor strong.

With no formal engagements groups at work for the four summits in 2008 and 2009, G20 leaders made an average of 117 commitments at each summit and complied with them at an average of 69%. In 2010, aided by two groups – the Business 20 (B20) and Labour 20 (L20) – their average commitments dropped to 107 and compliance stayed at 69%. Then, notably, from 2011 to 2021, with the addition of the Civil 20 (C20) and T20, average number of commitments soared to 231 and compliance to 75%. From 2013 to 2014, with the addition of the Y20 (and the end of financial crises), commitments rose a little to 243, but compliance dropped back to its normal level of 69%. Then, from 2015 to 2017, with the addition of the W20, commitments rose substantially to 313, but compliance dropped to 68%. Both reflected the 2017 outlier, when Angela Merkel hosted and Donald Trump first arrived. From 2018 to 2020, with Trump still there, now including the Science 20 (S20) and Urban 20, the number of commitments dropped to 126, but compliance rose to 79%.

The Women 20

There is also some similar prima facie evidence that the appearance of an engagement group dedicated to a specific subject coincides with increasing G20 commitments and compliance on that subject. This is seen with the arrival in 2015 of the W20, which made recommendations to seven summit, and represents half of the people in the world, arguably more than any other advocacy engagement group.

Julia Kulik (2021a, b) has found that the arrival of the W20 in 2015 strongly increased the number of G20 leaders' commitments on gender and their compliance with them. From 2008 to 2014 gender commitments averaged one at each summit and 0.5% of all commitments made. From 2015 to 2021, they averaged 15 at each summit for 7% of all commitments made there.

Compliance with the gender commitments before 2015 averaged only 55%, and averaged 65% afterward. The increase was 66% for the core gender commitments – those where gender was the primary aim of the commitment.

Background Book Priority Recommendations Rome 2021

Further evidence of engagement group influence, and that of the T20 in this context, comes from how well G20 leaders' commitments matched the recommendations the heads of the engagement group chose to include in G20 Italy: The 2021 Rome Summit, the "background book" prepared by the G20 Research Group (see Appendix C). This publication was designed for, directly delivered to and read by G20 leaders, and had an extensive global audience with 211,000 views two weeks after its digital release. Here the T20 had a 33% match with its 12 recommendations, as did the W20 with its 15 ones. The highest match, 44%, was with the Y20 with its nine recommendation, followed by 38% with the Interfaith Forum's four recommendations and 37% with the C20's 15 recommendations. (This was the first time the Interfaith Forum, which first convened in 2014, was recognized by the G20 presidency as an engagement group.)

T20 Recommendations Realized Reports

Since the T20 started its work in 2012, the match of its recommendations with G20 commitments has generally grown, but not steadily (see Appendix D). There was a full or partial match of 80% at Hangzhou in 2016, dropping to only 26 in Hamburg in 2017 and 24% at Buenos Aires in 2018, then rising to 46% in 2019 (Warren and Williams 2016; Kirton and Warren 2017, 2018; Tops and Hou 2019, 2020). Compliance with the matched commitments rose to a peak of 91% for 2017, but dropped for 2018.

T20 Recommendations Realized at Rome

At the Rome Summit, the T20 had 24% match of the recommendations on the three summit priorities of people, planet and prosperity with the 225 commitments made by the G20 leaders. The matched commitments were led by climate, the environment and energy at a 30%, followed in turn by health at 25% and the economy at only 18%. On other subjects, the digital economy had a weighted match of 25%, infrastructure 22%, development 13% and sustainable finance 9%.

Of the three pillars of the Indonesian presidency – "Prosperity" centred on the global economy, "People" centred on health and "Planet" centred on the energy transition (including climate change and the environment) – the G20 made a total of 92 commitments of its total of 225 in its 2021 Rome communiqué. The 2021 T20 made a total of 65 recommendations on these three core subjects. Of these 65 recommendations 21, or 32%, matched fully or partially with one or more of the 92 Rome commitments. Eight recommendations matched fully, for 12%. Thirteen matched partially, for 20%. And 44 were unmatched, for 68%.

On the global economy, centred on macroeconomic growth, the G20 made seven commitments and the T20 made 36 recommendations. Nine of the T20 recommendations matched the G20's related commitments, for 19%. Four, or 11%, matched fully. Five, or 14%, were partially matched. The vast majority, 29, for 75%, were unmatched. The weighted score, where partial matches count for only half of the full matches, was 18%.

On health, the G20 made 35 commitments at Rome and the T20 made 14 recommendations. Six, or 43%, of these recommendations matched. Only one, for 0.07%, was a full match. Five were a partial match, for 36%. And eight were unmatched, for 57%. The weighted score was 25%.

On the energy transition, including climate change and the environment, the G20 made 50 commitments and the T20 made 15 recommendations, largely coming from Task Force 3.[3] Six, or 40%, of the T20's recommendations matched the G20 Rome commitments. Three matched fully and three matched partially, for 20% each. Nine, or 60%, were unmatched. The weighted score was 30%. The G20 at Rome made 21 climate change commitments, compared to the per summit average of 6.3 at its summits from 2008 to 2020 (Warren 2021).

Causes of T20 Influence

Identifying the causes of T20 and engagement group influence is a complex task. There are many causal candidates, which combine and interact in complex ways. Many lie well outside the control of the engagement groups or G20 leaders about how they do their work. Although the task of finding reliable answers is just beginning, some early clues exist.

The evidence suggests that the most influential engagement group has been the B20 (Hardy and Bonnier 2018). This may be because for several years its recommendations were systematically monitored by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) for their match with G20 leaders commitments, in keeping with the adage that "that which is measured is treasured." All other engagement groups focus only on producing the recommendations before the summit, with few analyzing their match afterward with communiqué commitments using a common, stable, transparent set of criteria. Without this, each T20 host may have a bias to overestimate how influential their work has been. The metrics that the T20 hosts monitor are overwhelmingly input ones, such as the number of people and institutions involved, from what geographic regions and with other attributes, the number of policy briefs and recommendations produced, and the number selected to be sent to the G20 leaders.

A second cause of B20 influence could be that for many years it was backed by an influential, long-established non-governmental organization – in this case the ICC – which produced its own matching monitoring but served as a multiyear, well-resourced secretariat for the B20's work as a whole. Similar support comes from Business at OECD (also known as BIAC), an integral part of the OECD's structure and work since its start in 1960, and increasingly relevant as the OECD's involvement and influence in the G20 have increased enormously since 2016. It co-produced the greatest achievement of the G20 Rome Summit – that on international tax reform.

A third cause could be the number of recommendations each engagement group makes, with the logic of "the more the merrier" competing with that of "fewer for focus." For the Riyadh Summit in 2020, the T20 made 131 recommendations, far more than any other engagement group (see Appendix F). At the other extreme, the S20 made only 10. The average of the 379 recommendations from the eight formal engagement groups was 47. It is doubtful that the G20 leaders themselves had the time to read all, or even any, of the 379 recommendations.

A fourth cause could be the time at which the recommendations were finalized and delivered to leaders, through the host sherpas in the standard case. Here "the sooner the better" is backed by the need to give the sherpas and their leaders time to read, understand and incorporate the recommendations in their draft communiqué, negotiated before the summit itself. The alternative of "the later the better" allows the recommendations to respond to fast-breaking conditions, events and priorities on the summit's eve, with which the leaders must deal. For Riyadh in November 2020, the fastest set came from the S20 in May, followed by the L20 in September. The others delivered in October, with the T20 doing so on October 26. Thus none of the engagement groups had any recommendations for the G20 leaders at their emergency summit on March 26, to address the COVID-19 crisis then taking off. Most missed saying anything again in 2021 to leaders at their emergency summits on health and Afghanistan.

Increasing T20 Influence

In the absence of reliable evidence of what causes T20 and engagement group influence, ideas about improving it must rely on the wisdom, derived from participant observation, of those who have served as T20 co-chairs in the past and of those who have been involved from the start. As someone who was present at the creation in 2012 and has been involved since then, I offer my top five suggestions (see Appendix F).

The Top Five

1. Assess effectiveness. Each annual T20 chair, task force chairs and policy brief authors should assess the effectiveness of their recommendations in being realized in G20 summit commitments, identify why those recommendations were (and were not) realized and, on this basis, how their T20 process and product can be improved. Have a "lessons learned" conference to share the results. More broadly, focus on outputs and impact, not inclusiveness and inputs.

2. Secure a permanent secretariat, to assist with this assessment task and others, as the B20 has had with the ICC. The Global Solutions Initiative is available to serve. Use its Global Solutions Summit in the spring to get a fast start.

3. Target ministerial meetings. Pre-G20 summit ministerial meetings increase compliance with the leaders' commitments on the same subject (see, for example, Warren 2021). T20 task forces should produce recommendations in time and tailored for the ministerial meetings. Produce similar recommendations for any emergency summits likely to arise during the year.

4. Strengthen the synergies in each recommendation by having them credibly identify co-benefits for other subjects, the trade-offs they require and the least costly way to finance them, starting with stopping subsidies for fossil fuels, unsustainable agriculture and much else.

5. Forge alliances from the start, as with the OECD, with each member's sherpa team, the guest international organizations and countries, and other engagements groups.

A longer list of candidates is contained in Appendix G. Appendix H also contains suggestions made by recent chairs and co-chairs of the T20.

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References

Hardy, Jeff and Louis Bonnier (2018), "The ICC G20 Business Scorecard," in John J. Kirton and Marina Larionova, eds., Accountability for Effectiveness in Global Governance (Abingdon UK: Routledge), pp. 216-227.

Kirton, John and Madeline Koch (2021), G20 Italy: The 2021 Rome Summit (London: GT Media). https://bit.ly/g20it.

Kirton, John and Brittaney Warren (2017), G20 Insights: T20 Recommendations Realized." G20 Research Group, November 3. https://www.g20.utoronto.ca/analysis/t20-2017-recommendations-realized.html.

Kulik, Julia (2021a), "G20 Performance on Gender Equality," in John Kirton and Madeline Koch, eds., G20 Italy: The Rome Summit (London: GT Media), pp. 74-75. https://www.globalgovernanceproject.org/g20-performance-on-gender-equality-4.

Kulik, Julia (2021a), "The Women's 20 Influence on G20 Summit's Performance," Research Report, G20 Research Group, December 12.

Tops, Julia and Angela Min Yi Hou (2019), "T20 Recommendations Realized: 2016 Hangzhou." G20 Research Group, October 25. https://www.g20.utoronto.ca/analysis/t20-2016-recommendations-realized.html.

Tops, Julia and Angela Min Yi Hou (2020), "T20 Recommendations Realized: 2019 Osaka Summit." G20 Research Group, March 7. https://www.g20.utoronto.ca/analysis/t20-2019-recommendations-realized.html.

Warren, Brittaney (2021), "G20 Performance on Climate Change," in John Kirton and Madeline Koch, eds., G20 Italy: The Rome Summit (London: GT Media), pp. 80-81. https://www.globalgovernanceproject.org/g20-performance-on-climate-change-4.

Warren, Brittaney and John Kirton (2018), "T20 Recommendations: From T20 to G20 2018." G20 Research Group, March 12. https://www.g20.utoronto.ca/analysis/t20-2018-recommendations-realized.html.

Warren, Brittaney and Meredith Williams (2017), "Recommendations Realized: The 2016 G20 Hangzhou Summit." G20 Research Group, May 5. https://www.g20.utoronto.ca/analysis/t20-2018-recommendations-realized.html.

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Appendix A: G20 Engagement Groups ↩

Formal

Other

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Appendix B: Engagement Groups and G20 Commitments and Compliance ↩

Notes: See Appendix A for sequence of the establishment of engagement groups.

[a] London Summit.
[b] Pittsburgh Summit.
[c] Toronto Summit.
[d] Seoul Summit.

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Appendix C: 2021 G20 Recommendations Made and Realized from G20 Italy: The 2021 Rome Summit ↩

Note: Compiled by Brittaney Warren, December 10, 2021. Recommendations as published in Kirton and Koch (2021).

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Appendix D: Think 20 Performance, 2016–2021 ↩

Notes: Compiled by John Kirton, December 13, 2021. See Warren and Williams (2016), Kirton and Warren (2017, 2018), and Tops and Hou (2019, 2020).

[a] T20 = Number of final T20 recommendations to G20 summit.
[b] G20 = Number of commitments in G20 summit outcome documents, identified by the G20 Research Group.
[c] T20's full set of recommendations.
[d] T20's priority recommendations in the T20 Chair's Statement.

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Appendix E: T20 2021 Recommendations Realized at the G20 Rome Summit ↩

Note: Compiled by Brittaney Warren, December 14, 2021. Percentages are derived from dividing the number of recommendations matched by the total number of recommendations made.

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Appendix F: G20 2020 Riyadh Engagement Group Recommendations ↩

Note: Brittaney Warren, October 30, 2020. Includes only the groups' summit communiqués; excludes any other statements.

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Appendix G: Suggestions for Increasing T20 Influence ↩

The Top Five

1. Assess effectiveness. Each annual Think 20 (T20) chair, task force chairs and policy brief authors should assess the effectiveness of their recommendations in being realized in G20 summit commitments, identify why those recommendations were (and were not) realized and, on this basis, how their T20 process and product can be improved. Have a "lessons learned" conference to share the results. More broadly, focus on outputs and impact, not inclusiveness and inputs.

2. Secure a permanent secretariat, to assist with this assessment task and others, as the Business 20 has with the International Chamber of Commerce. The Global Solutions Initiative is available to serve. Use its Global Solutions Summit in the spring, to get a fast start.

3. Target ministerial meetings. Pre-G20 summit ministerial meeting increase compliance with the leaders' commitments on the same subject. T20 task forces should produce recommendations in time and tailored for the ministerial meetings. Produce similar recommendations for any emergency summits likely to arise during the year.

4. Strengthen the synergies in each recommendation by having them credibly identify the co-benefits for other subjects, the trade-offs they require and the least costly way to finance them, starting with stopping subsidies for fossil fuels, unsustainable agriculture and much else.

5. Forge alliances from the start, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with each member's sherpa team, the guest international organizations and countries, and other engagements groups.

The Remaining Suggestions

6. Understand the G20 and how it works.

7. Adopt two-year timetables, e.g., one trillion trees.

8. Fill United Nations gaps, from Glasgow's climate conference and Kunming's biodiversity conference.

9. Fund T20 meetings.

10. Identify and involve a champion from each G20 member champion in each policy brief and its recommendations.

11. Go beyond the host sherpa funnel to involve finance deputies and other ministerial groupings, including working group chairs (although there is no systematic evidence on this).

12. Ally with other engagement groups' specific recommendations, without watering them down to the lowest common denominator compromise.

13. Involve the OECD from the start, with a relevant OECD official serving as a task force co-chairs.

14. Add a task force on Indigenous peoples.

15. Recognize that dual citizens abound and the Global South also resides in the Global North.

Dissemination and Promotion

16. Present both priority and regular recommendations to the G20, as the T20 did at Hangzhou in 2016, and as the G20 Research Group background book contributors do, for the leaders and every one to see.

17. Translate recommendations into all G20 languages. Avoid Anglo-American linguistic imperialism.

18. Attend G20 summits to push recommendations to the media and government officials, as was done for T20 at Osaka in 2019.

19. Target special emergency summits arising well before the long-scheduled regular summit.

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Appendix H: Suggestions from Recent T20 Chairs and Co-chairs ↩

Indonesia 2022

• Use the Network of Southern Think Tanks (NEST) to broaden the base.
• Address the Sustainable Development Goals, climate change, financial inclusion, social cohesion, job creation and women's empowerment.

Rome 2021

• Focus on recommendations to summit leaders.
• Produce recommendations well in advance, before June.
• Issue joint statements with other engagement groups, at ministerial meetings.
• Disseminate and engage, so political leaders listen (9 million people globally participated).
• Invite other engagement groups to Think 20 (T20) events.
• Keep multiyear continuity, but do not rewrite old policy briefs.
• Get big names for inception conference, Global Policy Forum and the T20 summit.
• Include policy brief co-authors from the Global South.

Osaka 2019

• Address old and new topics, such as infrastructure.
• Focus on COVID-19 variants and fiscal deficits.
• Do not demand consensus to accept and advance each policy brief.

Buenos Aires 2018

• Get gender and geographic balance, represent all regions.
• Embed a communications strategy.
• Tell governments from the start of the topics, timetable, etc.
• Hold many associated events.
• Have only 10 task forces and select co-chairs.
• Use a peer review process for policy briefs.
• Use a specific framework for policy briefs.
• Get private sponsors, in return for in-kind visibility.

Hamburg 2017

• Relate T20 topics to the G20 agenda.
• Ensure policy briefs are written jointly.
• T20 co-chairs should regularly speak to sherpas and present policy briefs to sherpa meetings.
• Connect with the G20 working groups.
• Select policy briefs by invitation and produce fewer of them, cf. an open call.
• Assemble an advisory group to ensure continuity among co-chairs.
• Have a steering committee, as all other engagement groups do.
• Communicate among task forces, as was done on climate and digitalization in 2017.

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Notes

[1] These advocacy engagement groups do make recommendations from their expertise for the values of other engagement groups, but focus on recommendations for their own values and constituencies.

[2] Here it is relevant that the multilateral Bretton Woods–United Nations system since its 1944–1945 start began with the International Monetary Fund for economy and finance, of concern to the business community, and the World Bank Group for development and inherited the International Labour Organization for labour, the International Maritime Organization and International Civil Aviation Organization for maritime and aviation transportation, and the World Health Organization for health in 1948. The global community thus recognized that these subjects required global governance. The G20's now 10 engagement groups have not caught up, even though the G20 itself has.

[3] Although the author served as a co-chair of Task Force 3, this analysis was done independently by Brittaney Warren.

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