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Analysis

The 2022 G20 Bali Summit's Substantial Performance

John Kirton, Director, G20 Research Group
January 19, 2023

Introduction

The G20's 17th regular summit, held in Bali, Indonesia, on November 15–16, 2022, was a highly significant event.

It built on the G20's Rome Summit hosted by Italy in October 2021, the United Nations Glasgow climate summit in November 2021, the first part of the United Nations conference on biodiversity in Kunming, China, in spring 2022, the G7 summit in Elmau, Germany, in June 2022 and the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Egypt in November 2022.

Bali was the first G20 summit hosted by Indonesia, the anchor of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and an important democratic power. Indonesia's large, young, majority Muslim population and its strong economy, vast geographic expanse, long coastlines and natural assets made it globally critical in the ecological, social, economic and security domains.

On its eve, Gideon Rachman (2022) declared the Bali Summit to be "the first global summit of the second world war" with the US-led West confronting both Russia and China. Edi Prio Pambudi and Yulius Purwadi Hermawan (2022) noted that "the G20 Bali Summit constitutes the most strategic forum for global leaders to demonstrate their true commitment to pursue constructive collaboration in response to the deteriorating global economy and to the overwhelming geopolitical uncertainty. The Covid-19 pandemic is not yet over. The economic recovery remains very fragile. The G20 Bali Summit is a moment for its leaders to live up to the spirit of solidarity and collaboration among G20 members and to consolidate their concerted efforts in preventing catastrophic economic collapse."

The Debate

On the eve of the summit, prospects for its performance inspired a debate among several schools of thought.

The first school forecast failure, due to the deep divisions between G7 members and Russia over the latter's invasion of and annexations in Ukraine. This came despite the efforts of Indonesia, Turkey, China and India to bridge this deep geopolitical divide.

The second school saw a severe struggle for success despite the unprecedented global shocks, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the members' deep domestically embedded divisions on energy and climate change. Syed Munir Kharsu (2022) argued that "in the face of numerous globally interconnected crises, one would expect international cooperation to be stronger than ever. Instead, widening geopolitical divides will make it difficult for Indonesia to steer leaders toward a consensus in addressing pressing global issues … In a world marred by war and still reeling from the longest pandemic in living memory, setting common agendas and attainable action plans will be a challenge for Indonesia." Tristen Naylor (2022) similarly saw little progress possible as the G20 moved "from crisis committee to a committee in crisis," due to the decline of the Washington consensus, the G20's expanding agenda to embrace issues where disagreements abounded, resurgent authoritarian regimes willing to use military force and the G7's new sense of purpose. He concluded that "the G20 may soon find itself consigned to the past as a utopian relic." Tom Chodor (2022) judged that the G20 was the "talk fest we need at a time of growing division," as "creating a platform for the biggest players to talk is the best the G20 can do." Djisman Simandjuntak (2022) agreed that "against the background of the difficult policy environment, it will be difficult for G20 Indonesia to agree on a meaningful set of commitments … However, the forum is currently the only leadership-level governance mechanism which cares to meet, despite its imperfections."

The third school saw the G20 summit saved, to make many modest advances across its broad built-in agenda. It did so by relying on the agreements among its working groups and ministerial meetings, due primarily to the skilful approach of the Indonesian chair (Pambudi and Hermawan 2022).

The fourth school saw substantial success, spurred by the unprecedently severe and widespread set of security, ecological, energy, food and economic shocks, and the G20's uniquely predominant global power to address then, as a compact club that its leaders valued, with nowhere else for them to go to do the job (Kirton 2022).

After the summit's ended, the debate continued.

The first school saw differences papered over, due to India's mediation and Indonesia's hosting. Rezaul H. Laskar (2022) argued the G20 was able "to paper over its differences on the Ukraine conflict by agreeing on a joint communiqué at the eleventh hour … due to a concerted push by India and Indonesia, but the document itself pointed to the continuing differences."

The second school said that Bali showed the G20 still matters, in moving global governance away from a "G8-centric worldview, where all foreign and trade relations are seen through the prism of America, Russia and China," to the new reality of an emerging Indonesia, India and Brazil (Czarnecki 2022).

The third school saw encouraging results on Ukraine, due to the influence of middle powers from the global south. The Financial Times (2022) editorialized: "The G20 statement after November's summit in Indonesia was also encouragingly tough in its condemnation of Russia – showing its would be a mistake to give up on influencing the middle powers of the global south."

The fourth School saw Indonesia's Bali Summit success that showed the country's big global role, due to President Joko Widodo's bridge building on Ukraine. Antara News (2022) saw success in the summit's "condemnation of the war in Ukraine," the "formation of a pandemic fund, the formation and the operation of a resilience and sustainability trust (RST) … as well as the energy transition mechanism, under which Indonesia also received a commitment of US$20 billion from the Joint Energy Transition Partnership … [and] a joint commitment to protect at least 30 percent of the world's land and 30 percent of the world's oceans by 2030."

The Argument

At Bali, G20 leaders produced a substantial success, relative to the advances made by the previous 16 regular annual G20 summits before (see Appendix A). Their standout achievement was to produce a collective, 12-page consensus communiqué that contained clear new messages and made important advances on the major issues, led by Russia's war in Ukraine, the global health architecture, the renewable energy transition and food security.

The Bali Leaders' Declaration stated that "most members … strongly condemned the war in Ukraine." They similarly condemned any threat to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, in a clear repudiation of Russian president Vladimir Putin's hints that he might do so. Leaders warned against the weaponization of energy and food, another clear message to Putin to stop destroying the energy infrastructure in Ukraine as winter began, and to let Ukraine's grains flow out though the Black Sea to feed the many starving people in the world. G20 health and finance ministers on November 14 formally created the new Pandemic Fund, managed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank, to ensure that the next Covid-19–like pandemic would quickly be stopped. On climate change G20 leaders agreed to reduce their use of fossil fuels.

These advances flowed from the broad array of big shocks that highlighted the vulnerability of all members, notably China, India, and Russia – reeling from its recent military defeats in Ukraine – and the failure of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), COP27, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to stop these shocks. They also flowed from the collectively predominant power and internally equalizing capability of G20 members, the predominance of democratic polities in the group, and the high domestic backing the leaders of the United States, India and Indonesia. Above all, the G20 remained resilient as the valued hub of an expanding network of global summit governance, with the G7 and BRICS holding on-site summits, many leaders coming from the surrounding summits of ASEAN and the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Forum, and the most difficult and disruptive leaders – Russia's Putin and Brazil's electorally defeated Jair Bolsonaro – staying home.

The Preparatory Process

Priorities

Guided by the Indonesian chair's summit theme of "Recover Together, Recover Stronger," the Bali Summit was designed to focus from the start on three priorities: the global health architecture, digital transformation and sustainable energy transition. It also sought to enhance economic resilience, recovery and connectivity disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, increase people's digital literacy and skills, standardize digital payment systems, and highlight Indonesia's culture, tourism and creative industries.

As Indonesia's presidency began in December 2021, the Bali Summit faced an unusually large list of pressing problems across the social, economic, ecological and security fields. Ten stood out.

• Vaccine equity, as the omicron variants of Covid-19 spread and new variants could – and did – arrive at any time.
• Economic growth, which was increasingly uneven, with different rates across different countries, depending on their vaccination rates, the ability to recover, and the sustainability of fiscal and monetary support.
• Green recovery, with everyone wanting an inclusive, smarter, greener recovery and increasing carbon prices gradually, but disagreeing about what "gradual" meant.
• Fiscal and monetary stimulus, along with reducing the unprecedented government fiscal deficits, the debts of public and private actors, the monetary stimulus from the major central banks, and inflation, which was stronger for longer than first thought.
• Tax, where the G20 had to implement its newly agreed corporate tax regime.
• Allocation of the IMF's special drawing rights. By late February 2022, G20 members had only given $60 billion of the $100 billion they had promised at the 2021 Rome Summit to channel voluntarily to poor countries through the IMF's new RST and its old Poverty Reduction and Growth Trust. The United States led with $21 billion, but China had given only $14 billion.
• Debt relief for vulnerable countries, with China resisting disclosing and writing down or off the debts of its client countries.
• Trade, where the deadlock over reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO) remained.
• Resources for the international financial institutions, which needed to be raised to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the promised climate finance.
• Russia, whose invasion of Ukraine had raised energy prices, increased financial stress and reduced the willingness of all G20 members to cooperate on all the key challenges they faced.

Meetings Planned

By November 2022, Indonesia had planned to mount, very intensively, "184 G20-related events, including the Bali Summit, 20 ministerial and central bank governors' meetings, 17 sherpa or deputy-level meetings, 56 working group meetings, and 90 engagement groups meetings. Indonesia … also held more than 253 side events. In total, there will have been over 437 events in 25 different cities" (Pambudi and Hermawann 2022).

The G20 sherpas first met on December 7–8, 2021, to discuss Indonesia's G20's theme and priority agenda. Finance and central bank deputies first met on December 9–10, focusing on the finance track priorities, amid high hopes of agreeing on spurring a strong recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic recession.

Ministerial Meetings

But then geopolitical divisions surged, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24. This caused immediate deadlock among G20 members. Bali's G20 leaders were thus left to build on the results of the many working group and ministerial meetings that Indonesia had planned.

There was a large array of 15 ministerial meetings to start (see Appendix B). There were five on finance and three on health, and each for education, tourism, research and innovation, digital economy, energy, environment and climate, and agriculture. The list expanded to 20 meetings in all.

Although Russia prevented these meetings from issuing standard communiqués agreed by all, for most of them the Indonesian chair produced a statement or summary that accurately reported what had been agreed. At the Joint Environment and Climate Ministers' Meeting, in Bali on August 31, ministers made 47 commitments, if not highly ambitious ones.

Working Groups

Eleven working groups were scheduled to meet. Only one was mandated to address climate change.

Engagement Groups

There were active engagement groups for business, labour, civil society, think tanks, science, audit institutions, parliamentarians, urban affairs, youth and women. The Indonesian presidency added a Religious 20 engagement group, which met in early November. The informal Interfaith 20 was also active and issued its recommendations in September. Indonesia also recognized the Values 20, an informal engagement group set up in 2020 to improve the understanding of values in public policy.

Compliance Momentum

As the summit approached, Bali's leaders could take encouragement from G20 members' 68% compliance by June with the priority commitments from the Rome Summit in October 2021. By October 14, 2022, a month before the summit, compliance had reached 73% (G20 Research Group and Center for International Institutions Research 2022). This was slightly above the G20's overall average of 72% since the summit's start in 2008. Although it was lower than the peak of the Covid-19–fuelled 86% compliance with the priority commitments from Riyadh in 2020, it was above the level from all G20 summits from London in 2009 to Los Cabos in 2012 and from Brisbane in 2014 to Hamburg in 2017. The great disagreement between Russia and the rest of the G20 members thus did not prevent the group's members from complying with priority commitments, from increasing compliance after Russia's February invasion of Ukraine, and from raising it by 5% between June and October.

To be sure, Russia's final compliance of 57% was the lowest among the G20 members – but still in the positive range. Russia has often been among the lowest compliers. In a familiar cadence, final compliance with Rome's priority commitments was led by the United Kingdom's 95%, followed by Germany's 90%, the European Union's 88%, Japan's 83%, the United States and Canada's 81%, France's 80%, Argentina and China's 76%, and 2021 host Italy's 73%. Below the overall 72% compliance average came Brazil and Korea's 71%, Australia's 69%, India's 67%, Mexico's 64%, and Saudi Arabia's 62%. Indonesia ranked 17th along with Turkey at 60%. The lowest compliance came from South Africa's 50% and Russia's 57%. All members thus had positive compliance. The spread between the highest and lowest complying members was 45%.

The compliance of the eight G7 members averaged 84%, or 12% above the G20's 72% average. Seven of the eight G7 members took the top spots, with Italy coming tenth with 73%. The five BRICS members' compliance averaged 64%, or 9% below the G20's 72% average, led by China's 76%, Brazil's 71% and India's 67%.

By subject, final compliance with the Rome Summit's 21 priority commitments was led by the macroeconomic policy commitment on inclusive growth and the development commitment on inclusive recovery, both at 95%. They were followed by the climate change commitment on national plans, the food and agriculture commitment on malnutrition, and the environment commitment on natural resources at 93% each and by the health commitment on One Health at 90%. The lowest compliance came on the energy commitment on non-unabated coal power at 30%.

The Sherpa Meetings

At the sherpa meetings to prepare the summit, from the start Italy, Germany and France led in demanding a strong condemnation of Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. With Russia refusing, no resolution came.

The final sherpa meeting was held on site in Bali over four days of lengthy, intense negotiations. It ended at 9.00 pm on November 14, with the sherpas finally agreeing on the text of a 12-page communiqué for their leaders to adjust and approve.

The final and greatest sticking point since the start was the language on Ukraine. This was resolved only when someone suggested using language that all had already accepted elsewhere and that had publicly appeared. This was agreed. Among the many available candidates, a UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution passed on March 2, 2022, which was highly critical of Russia, was chosen as the relevant document to reproduce in the G20's Bali Leaders' Declaration to which all members, including Russia, agreed.

India played a major role in producing and securing consensus on the text that directly followed the passage criticizing Russia. That text stated that it was inadmissible to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. Only Vladimir Putin has done that recently.

On November 14, US president Joe Biden rejected the idea of a "new cold war" with China and said he believed Taiwan faced no "imminent" threat of invasion. These remarks came after a three-hour meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping ahead of the G20 summit. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, planned to visit Beijing early in 2023 to follow up (Economist 2022).

The Summit Schedule

Just before the summit started, a two-day meeting of the Business 20 took place right next to the summit site. It ended on the evening of November 14, with addresses from several G20 leaders who had just arrived, including Canada's Justin Trudeau and Australia's Anthony Albanese.

The summit itself began on the morning on November 15, with the first working session on food and energy security from 9:30 am to noon. Then, the second working session on health was from 2 pm to 4:30 pm, which also included lunch. There was a welcome dinner, with a cultural performance, from 7 pm to 9 pm.

The following day, November 16, started with a side event from 9 am for an hour, followed by a private lunch and bilateral meetings from 11 am to 12:45 pm. In the afternoon, the third working session focused on the digital transformation from 1:30 pm to 3:00 PM, followed by the closing ceremony scheduled for 3 pm.

There was no family photo of the leaders, as the G7 ones did not want to be seen standing with the Russian representative.

Achievements

The G20 Bali Summit was a substantial success. It produced breakthroughs on the central immediate crisis of countering Russia's war against Ukraine and building the global health architecture. It made small advances on the urgently needed action on energy, food, climate change, biodiversity loss, debt and international corporate tax reform. And there were very few breakdowns of existing cooperation on any of the many subjects it addressed in its fully consensual communiqué.

G20 Governance

On G20 summit governance, the institution would survive intact, to thrive the following year when India would have the presidency. All leaders vital for advancing Bali's priorities attended in person, and engaged collectively in most sessions, despite the deep divide between the G7 leaders and Putin over Russia's ongoing invasion and annexations in Ukraine. The Russian president's absence made this much easier to do.

As Pambudi and Hermawan (2022) correctly observed, Indonesia "avoided a possible break-up of the G20 … [and] effectively navigated the sharp divide among G20 members and maintained the very existence of the G20 as a premier forum for global economic cooperation, with the participation of all 20 members." It expanded "inclusiveness through the active contribution of several invited countries and relevant international organizations" at G20 meetings and the summit. It "renewed the definition of consensus in a context where [the] unanimous agreement of all members is almost impossible to reach. It has also strengthened the principle of multilateralism in a context where members tend to adopt a unilateral approach for the sake of their utmost pivotal national economic interests … [and] not forced meetings to produce joint statements." It has "convinced G20 members to continue focusing on the main priority agenda and to deliver concrete implementable outcomes, in spite of some continuing deadlocks."

The G20 overcame any Russian veto to produce a lengthy, detailed, public communiqué of 16 pages and 52 paragraphs. It contained 10,402 words and 213 precise, future-oriented, politically obligatory commitments. Here, the Bali Leaders' Declaration was similar to the communiqués produced by the previous 16 regular G20 summits since their start in 2008.

Russia's War in Ukraine

On November 9, Putin had declared that he would not attend the Bali Summit in person, just as his government announced the retreat of its armed forces from Kherson and from the entire north bank of the Dnieper River in Ukraine. Zelensky would thus attend by video, having said he would not participate at all if Putin did. There was threfore no opportunity to foster a direct dialogue between the two leaders, to try to control or end the war in a just way. This was a sharp contrast with the dinner conversation among G20 leaders at the St. Petersburg Summit in September 2013, which led Putin to tell Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to end his use of chemical weapons in the civil war there.

However, as Biden said in his news conference on November 9, all other G20 leaders at Bali would discuss the war in Ukraine and could come to a unified position to present to Putin and Zelensky about what these two should do. Putin's absence, even with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov replacing him, would also make it easier for the G20 members to agree and act on their many other priorities.

On the summit's first day, Zelensky "thumbed his nose at Russia by addressing the 'leaders of the G19'" (Economist 2022). There were reports of a draft resolution with the stronger-than-expected language of most members condemning the war.

The biggest breakthrough did indeed come on the central, immediate crisis of countering Russia's war against Ukraine. The content on Russia was remarkable. The Bali Leaders' Declaration began in paragraph 3 by explicitly noting that the UNSC and UNGA Resolution No. ES-11/1 "as adopted by majority vote (141 votes for, 5 against, 35 abstentions, 12 absent) deplores in the strongest possible terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine and demands its complete and unconditional withdrawal from the territory of Ukraine." Here the G20 left no doubt that it knew who had started the war, and how it should end. China, India, Brazil and South Africa thus abandoned their BRICS partner, Russia, and joined the G7-led democratic side of the great immediate geopolitical divide.

The next paragraph proclaimed that "the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible." This was a clear repudiation of Putin, who had recently hinted he might do use nuclear weapons to win in Ukraine.

Health

The second greatest advance came on building the global health architecture, by formally creating the Pandemic Fund, to be governed by the WHO and World Bank. Leaders declared, in paragraph 20, that "we welcome the establishment of a new Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic PPR [pandemic preparedness, prevention and response] (the 'Pandemic Fund') hosted by the World Bank." They acknowledged that "the WHO's technical expertise and central coordination role in this endeavor, reflects its leadership role in the global health architecture." They thus authorized at the highest political level what their finance and health ministers had agreed at their joint meeting in Bali two days before.

However, after noting the "annual pandemic PPR financing gap of approximately USD 10 billion" and the over $1.4 billion already pledged, they mobilized no new money, promising merely to "encourage additional voluntary pledges."

Climate Change

Climate change and clean energy saw only modest advances. Unlike nuclear war, climate change is an existential threat to all life on the planet that is actually happening and is certain to get worse in the coming years. Bali's G20 leaders did begin, in paragraph 2, by noting the climate crises after Covid-19 and ahead of economic downturn and increased poverty. In paragraph 12 they promised: "We will rapidly scale up the deployment of zero and low emission power generation including renewable energy … including accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power." The word "phasedown," however, was a retreat from the word "phaseout" that had appeared in earlier drafts of the Declaration. This was due to resistance from India, backed by China (Warren 2022).

Leaders also promised to "increase our efforts to implement the commitment made in 2009 in Pittsburgh to phase-out and rationalize, over the medium term, inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and commit to achieve this objective." On their target for a post-industrial temperature increase, they said "we resolve to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C." The 2°C target proclaimed at recent UN climate summits had entirely disappeared.

Food

On food security, leaders promised to "take further coordinated actions to address food security challenges including price surges and shortages of food commodities and fertilizers globally." They declared: "We will avoid adversely impacting food security deliberately." But on the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which took all of paragraph 8, they only welcomed the existing agreements, emphasized "the importance of their full, timely and continued implementation by all relevant stakeholders" and highlighted "other efforts that ensure the flow of agri-food goods such as the EU Solidarity Lanes." Nothing new appeared.

Other Subjects

Rising threats addressed by previous G20 summits were entirely blacked out. One was mental health, which was soaring as eco-anxiety and the burden on long Covid and Covid-19 constraints grew. There was no serious action on terrorism, a deadly threat that still killed many and that G20 summits had dealt with since the start.

However, there were very few breakdowns of existing cooperation on any of the many subjects G20 leaders addressed in their fully consensual communiqué.

Dimensions of Performance

The Bali Summit's substantial success is seen in its supply of global governance across the major dimensions of performance.

Domestic Political Management

On the first dimension, domestic political management, the in-person attendance of G20 leaders was substantial. Of the 20 G20 members, including the two EU presidents, 17 leaders or 85% attended in person. Only Russia's Putin, Brazil's Bolsonaro, and Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador stayed home. This 85% in-person attendance was an increase from the 70% at Rome in 2021. It was just below the 90% at five other G20 summits (see Appendix C). All G7 leaders came, as did Xi Jinping of China, Narendra Modi of India and Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa.

Deliberation

On the second dimension, deliberation, in its public components, after four days of intense negotiation among the leaders' personal representatives, at 9.00 pm on November 14 the G20 sherpas overcame any Russian veto to produce a draft communiqué for their leaders to approve and issue in their name. The leaders released it at the end of their two-day summit, with no change. This was a major achievement, for many had feared that no agreed outcome document would appear at all.

Moreover, the Bali Leaders' Declaration was a lengthy, detailed, public communiqué of 16 pages and 52 paragraphs. It contained 10,402 words – more than in the outcome documents of eight of the previous 16 summits, if a bit below the average of 12,871 words. It was more productive that the previous three G20 summits, as it exceeded the 10,060 words at Rome in 2021, the 5,697 at Riyadh in 2020 and the 6,623 at Osaka in 2019.

Private deliberation was constrained a little but also spurred by the absence of three G20 leaders. Moreover, Russia's Lavrov, representing Putin, went straight to hospital upon arrival due to a heart condition. He left early from the opening dinner and the summit itself. Argentina's President Alberto Fernández was ill throughout the summit.

Direction Setting

On the third dimension, principled and normative direction setting, through affirmations of the G20's distinctive foundational missions of promoting financial stability and making globalization work for all, Bali made 70 affirmations. It produced 27 or 39% on the first mission of financial stability and 43 or 61% on the second of globalization for all.

Bali made fewer affirmations than the average of 30 from the previous 16 summits for the public good of financial stability. But it produced more than average of 30 for the distributional value of globalization for all. Bali's stronger emphasis on globalization for all reflected Indonesia's emphasis on development.

Decision Making

On the fourth dimension, decision making, through precise, future-oriented collective commitments, the Bali summit made 223 commitments (see Appendix D). This was more than the 189 average of the previous 16 summits, and more than 11 of them.

By subject, the commitments were led by the environment with 24 for 11% of the total. Then came development with 22 for 9%, food and agriculture 20 with for 9%, and macroeconomic policy and climate change each with 18 for 8%, health with 17 for 8%, and labour and employment with 16 for 7%. After a gap came crime and corruption with 12 for 5%, energy and gender each with 11 for 5%, then trade and investment, digitalization, financial regulation, and education each with 8 for 4%.

In all, 22 subject areas had at least one commitment, including one each for terrorism and non-proliferation. This showed that Bali was a comprehensive decisional summit, covering the economic, social, ecological and security domains.

Of the Indonesian host's top three priorities, the global health architecture stood sixth with 17 on health. The digital transformation did less well with only eight and the renewable energy transition with only seven. Standing out were the environment in first with 24, and climate change with 18, followed by the G20's traditional subjects of development with 22, macroeconomy with 16 and financial regulation with eight. Newly prominent were food and agriculture with 20, infrastructure with five, and migration and refugees with three.

Delivery

The delivery of these decisions, which happens in the months after the summit itself, will likely be at least substantial, given the number of coinciding ministerial meetings that Indonesia's G20 held and the continuing severity and scope of similar-subject shocks in the period after the Bali Summit.

Development of Global Governance

The institutional of global governance was substantial (see Appendix E). The Bali Leaders' Declaration made 40 references to five different institutions inside the G20 – for example, institutions created by the G20: the G20 itself with 18, the Financial Stability Board with 11, ministries with five, the Financial Action Task Force with four and the Global Infrastructure Hub with two. The declaration made 91 references to 28 different institutions outside the G20, led by the IMF with 11, the WHO with 10, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) with nine. Of the total 131 references, in 55 the G20 led, in 55 it followed, and in eight it was neutral.

The 40 references to inside institutions were fewer than the G20 average of 67, but the five different bodies noted were above the average of 4.3 and consistent with the rise above four since 2017. The 91 references to outside institutions were below the G20 average of 142, but the highest since the 307 references in 2017. The 28 outside bodies referenced were higher than the average of 21, and the second highest ever. Bali was clearly an outward-looking summit.

Propellors of Performance

Bali's substantial prospective substantial performance was propelled by the current condition of the six causes contained in the systemic hub model of G20 governance (Kirton 2013).

Shock-Activated Vulnerability

The first cause was the unprecedented set of severe, interrelated shocks proliferating during 2022. These can be characterized as shocks recognized in the G20 communiqué, shocks recognized in the media and material shocks.

Communiqué-Recognized Shocks and Vulnerabilities

The Bali Leaders' Declaration recognized 24 shocks, the fifth highest of all G20 regular annual summits. Among the 24, health led with eight, followed by food and agriculture with five, energy and finance each with three, and climate change and general/plural (i.e., not specified or grouped together) each with two (see Appendix F). In terms of substance, this ranking corresponds with the subject breakdown and number of commitments per subject (see Appendix H).

Media-Recognized Shocks

The front pages of the leading global newspapers featured a similar distribution of vulnerabilities (see Appendix G). From October 31 to November 16, democracy appeared on 12 of the 13 days, due to Russia's war against Ukraine. Digitalization appeared on eight, the economy on seven, and climate change and the environment on six each. After the summit, the distribution was similar, but with climate change now rising to take second place after democracy.

Material Shocks

The first material shock was Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February and the ensuing crises in energy, food, inflation, developing country debt, declining economic growth, financial stability, trade and development. As the Bali Summit approached, there were no signs that Russia's invasion, assault and annexations would soon end, even with the Ukrainian defeat of Russia force in Kherson on November 11.

The second shock was the continuing Covid-19 pandemic with recent outbreaks in China, the new mpox pandemic, polio in the United States and United Kingdom, Ebola in Africa, and influenza and respiratory syncytial virus in G7 members. By November 8, Covid-19 was spreading throughout a locked-down China at a rapid rate, even as, three days later, Xi relaxed the restrictions of his zero–Covid-19 policy to stimulate China's sagging economic growth.

The third shock was the escalating assault from climate change and biodiversity loss, fuelling historic extreme weather events across the G20 and globe in 2022.

The fourth shock was mounting U.S.-China tensions, especially over Taiwan, and concerns about the open, rules-based multilateral order itself.

The fifth shock was financial fragility, erupting in the housing market in China, followed by market reaction to former UK prime minister Liz Truss's budget in October and the collapse of the second largest crypto currency fund on November 11. These small shocks came amid mounting debt crisis in developing countries.

Multilateral Organizational Failure

The second cause was multilateral organizational failure, as none of the ministerially governed foundational bodies from the 1940s Bretton Woods–UN system successfully controlled or curbed these shocks and the vulnerabilities they exposed.

On Russia's war against Ukraine, the UNSC failed to stop the war, due to Russia's veto as a member of its Permanent Five. The International Atomic Energy Agency failed to ensure nuclear safety at the Russian-occupied reactors at Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. However, UN secretary general António Guterres, along with Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan did succeed in brokering the Black Sea Grain Initiative, so that Ukrainian and Russian grain could be shipped out to feed desperate people in the Global South.

On climate change, COP27 in Egypt in early November failed to attract the participation of several key leaders, notably Xi – China being by far the greatest climate polluter in the world – and Putin, Albanese and Trudeau. To be sure, Germany's Olaf Scholz, France's Emmanuel Macron and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa did attend. So did Biden, but only after his G7 colleagues and the November 8 U.S. mid-term Congressional elections.

On health, the WHO still struggled to control the continuing Covid-19 pandemic as deadly variants spread. It did, however, join with the World Bank to manage a new Financial Intermediary Facility for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response – now renamed the Pandemic Fund – but still relied on G20 health and finance ministers to raise to targeted total of $10 billion.

On the economy, finance and development, the IMF and World Bank made limited progress at their semi-annual ministerial meetings in October in containing the escalating debt crisis or restoring progress toward the SDGs.

On trade, the WTO's ministerial conference in June made some long overdue progress, notably on curbing fisheries subsidies, but left much undone.

At the leaders' level, the G7's Elmau Summit in June had been the highest performing one to date, especially in countering Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the other regional security threats to the democratic world (Kirton and Koch 2022). But on the these and the other crises, it left much for the G20, with China and Russia as members, to do.

Predominant Equalizing Capability

The third cause, the globally predominant equalizing capability of G20 members, was mixed.

Their collective global predominance was very strong. Together they contained 60% of the world's people, produced over 80% of its economy, greenhouse gas emissions and the natural sinks that remove them, cereal production and agricultural exports. They also dominated military spending and the global financial system.

However, their internal equality was mixed, declining in their currency values but strengthening in economic growth. The soaring U.S. superdollar, appreciating strongly in 2022, led to major declines in those of the Japanese yen, the euro, the British pound, the Canadian dollar and the renminbi. Economic growth slowed in the United States and China, while rising in India and Saudi Arabia.

Converging Principles and Practices

The fourth cause, converging principles and practices, on a democratic core, increased a little across most of G20 members (see Appendix I). But it did so from a low base in 2021 and was not nearly enough to offset the deep retreat in Russia, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine and with Xi's acquisition of a third term as China's president and his purge of any reformist rivals. This great divide stopped much major G20 progress throughout 2022 and helped keep Putin from attending the Bali Summit in person.

Beyond the advancing authoritarianism in these big two G20 members, democracy expanded in the most powerful country, United States, with the results of the mid-term elections promising to retain Biden's Democratic Party control of the Senate, and having a strong, if even slim, minority position in the House of Representatives. Democracy also advanced in Brazil, with the election of the well-loved G20 veteran Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October, in Italy with the election of the coalition led by Giorgia Meloni, and with the rapid, constitutionally compliant changes of the United Kingdom's prime minister in the autumn of 2022.

Domestic Political Cohesion

The fifth cause, domestic political cohesion, declined in most G7 members.

Summit experience was substantial. The summit's chair, Indonesian president Joko Widodo, was a G20 veteran, having attended them since 2014. The other veterans were India's Modi, scheduled to host in 2023, Turkey's Erdogan, Canada's Trudeau, Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman, China's Xi, France's Macron, and South Africa's Ramaphosa, Argentina's Fernández, and the European Union's Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel.

The six newcomers were Germany's Scholz, who had hosted the G7 in June, Japan's Fumio Kishida at his first in-person G20 summit, the United Kingdom's Rishi Sunak, Italy's Meloni, Australia's Albanese and Korea's Yoon Suk-yeol.

The absentees were Mexico's López Obrador, represented by his foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard, Russia's Putin, represented by Lavrov and Brazil's Bolsonaro, whose presidential term ended at the end of the year.

The leaders' legislative control was less strong than the year before with Biden's prospective minority in the House of Representatives, and a presidential election in two years, with Lula's narrow, second-round victory in Brazil, and with Meloni's complex coalition that could be forced to hold an election at any time.

In terms of popular support, Biden's approval rating remained well below 50%, and Kishida, Macron, Sunak and Trudeau struggled too. In Canada, in the four weeks up to November 11, Trudeau's Liberals led, as Canadian's top issue of concern were led by jobs and the economy, then inflation, health care, and the environment.

Among BRICS members, Putin's popularity declined and hundreds of thousands of his citizens left the country due to their dissatisfaction with his conduct of his war in Ukraine. In China, popular dissent with the hard Covid-19 lockdowns and government financial regulation grew.

Club at the Hub

The sixth cause, the G20's position as the valued club at the hub of an expanding network of global summit governance, declined at the core, due to Putin's decision not to attend, but expanded with the surrounding summits that many G20 leaders attended.

Putin signalled he would skip the summit, thus lessening its potential as an opportunity for him and G7 leaders, and him and Zelensky virtually, could meet face to face for the first time since the invasion on February 24. There would thus be no repeat of the success of the G20's St. Petersburg Summit in 2013, which led directly to stopping the use of chemical weapons and removing their stockpiles by Syrian president Bashir Assad. But Putin's absence freed the other leaders to focus on their bigger, broader agenda of advancing action on climate change, energy security and transition, and food security. And the scheduled on-site bilateral between Biden and Xi set the stage for broader G20-wide consensus and cooperation on Putin's war in Ukraine, climate change and much else. Indeed, only Putin, Bolsonaro and, as usual, López Obrador stayed home. There was much that the remaining 17 systemically significant leaders could do without Putin, whose declining Russia remained a superpower on only part of one of Widodo's initial three priorities – climate change – with far less relevance on the global health architecture and digital transformation. On the new crisis-fuelled priorities, Russia was still a superpower on nuclear weapons and ecological capabilities, but no longer clearly on conventional military capabilities, energy and food security, economics, finance, development and debt.

Regular guests included Pedro Sánchez of Spain, Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, as well as the Senegal's Macky Sall, chair of the African Union, and Rwanda's Paul Kagame, chair of NEPAD. Other invited leaders include the United Arab Emirates' Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Suriname's Chan Santokhi representing the Caribbean Community, Cambodia's Hun Sen representing ASEAN and Fiji's Frank Bainimarama representing the Pacific Community. Ukraine's Zelensky participated by video link.

Also attending were the heads of the Financial Stability Board, International Labour Organization, OECD, WHO, IMF, World Bank and UN, among others.

Conclusion

Despite severe geopolitical conflicts, all key G20 leaders realized that to provide the global governance all needed now, more than ever, there was nowhere else to go.

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Appendix A: G20 Summit Performance, 2008–2022 ↩

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Appendix B: G20 Ministerial Meetings, 2022 ↩

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Appendix C: G20 Leaders' Bali Summit Attendance ↩

Note: Compiled by Brittaney Warren, November 13, 2022.

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Appendix D: G20 2022 Bali Commitments ↩

Note: Identified by Brittaney Warren and John Kirton, December 10, 2022.

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Appendix E: 2022 Bali Development of Global Governance ↩

Notes: Compiled by Brittaney Warren, November 28, 2022.

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Appendix F: Communiqué-Recognized Shock-Activated Vulnerabilities ↩

Notes: Assembled by John Kirton, November 26, 2022.
Shocks by subject include double counting, i.e., a single shock notes two or more subject types.
Data for 2008–2010 are from August 20, 2015, compiled by John Kirton, Julia Kulik, Alissa Wang and Sarah Scott.
Data for 2022 are compiled by John Kirton.

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Appendix G: Media-Reported Shock-Activated Vulnerabilities ↩

Notes: Coded by John Kirton, November 29, 2022. Bold indicates the dates of the summit.
Excludes appearance in any continuation of the story on inside pages.
Health-economy and health-climate is their co-appearance on the front page part of the same story.
Numbers are percentage of stories on front page.

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Appendix H: Bali Commitments, Recognized Shock-Activated Vulnerabilities and Subordinate Bodies ↩

Note: NA = not available. General/plural = reference to non-specific or multiple unspecified shocks.

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Appendix I: Democracy Scores of G7 Members and Global Powers, 2021 ↩

Source: 2021 scores are from the Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index, with countries categorized as 1 = full, 2 = flawed, 3 = hybrid, 4 = authoritarian.

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