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Analysis > Compliance

2014 Brisbane G20 Summit
Final Compliance Report

17 November 2014 to 1 October 2015

Prepared by Krystel Montpetit, Theodora Mladenova, Mickael Deprez,
Jonathan Tavone, Phil Gazaleh, Taylor Grott and Antonia Tsapralis
G20 Research Group, Toronto,
and
Andrei Sakharov, Andrey Shelepov and Mark Rakhmangulov
International Organisations Research Institute, Moscow

12 November 2015 (texted added 14 November 2015)

"The University of Toronto … produced a detailed analysis to the extent of which each G20 country has met its commitments since the last summit … I think this is important; we come to these summits, we make these commitments, we say we are going to do these things and it is important that there is an organisation that checks up on who has done what."

— David Cameron, Prime Minister, United Kingdom, at the 2012 Los Cabos Summit

The 2014 Brisbane G20 Summit Final Compliance Report reviews progress made on selected commitments set out at the 2014 Brisbane Summit for the period of 17 November 2014 to 1 October 2015.

Download the full 2014 Brisbane G20 Summit Final Compliance Report (PDF, 433 pages). The report contains the following sections, which can be downloaded separately:

• Introduction and Summary
• Macroeconomics: Fiscal Strategies
• Macroeconomics: Investment
• Macroeconomics: Exchange Rates
• Trade
• Labour and Employment: Youth Unemployment
• Labour and Employment: Social Protection
• Climate Change
• Energy: Fossil Fuels
• Energy: Clean Technology
• Health: Ebola
• Health: Antimicrobial Resistance
• Gender
• Financial Regulation
• Development: Remittances
• Development: Tax Administration
• Development: Aid for Trade
• Infrastructure

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Preface

Since the G20 leaders met at their first summit in 2008 in Washington, the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto and the International Organisations Research Institute of National Research University Higher School of Economics (IORI HSE) in Moscow have produced reports on their progress in implementing the priority commitments made at each summit. These reports monitor each G20 member's efforts to implement a carefully chosen selection of the many commitments produced at each summit. The reports are offered to the general public and to policy makers, academics, civil society, the media and interested citizens around the world in an effort to make the work of the G20 more transparent, accessible and effective, and to provide scientific data to enable the meaningful analysis of the causes of compliance and the impact of this important informal international institution. Previous reports are available at the G20 Information Centre and the IORI HSE.

The G20 Research Group has been working with the team at IORI HSE since IORI HSE initiated this G20 compliance research in 2009, after the Washington Summit in November 2008. The initial report, covering only one commitment made at that summit, tested the compliance methodology developed by the G8 Research Group and adapted it to the G20.

To make its assessments, the G20 Research Group relies on publicly available information, documentation and media reports. To ensure accuracy, comprehensiveness and integrity, we encourage comments from stakeholders. Indeed, scores can be recalibrated if new material becomes available. All feedback remains anonymous. Responsibility for this report's contents lies exclusively with the authors and analysts of the G20 Research Group and its partners at IORI HSE.

This report assesses performance by G20 members with 17 priority commitments among the total of 205 commitments made at the 2014 Brisbane Summit, held on 15-16 November 2014. This final report covers compliant behaviour between 16 November 2014 to 1 October 2015. The final report, will be released on the eve of the 2015 Antalya Summit.

I am most grateful to Marina Larionova and her team in Moscow at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, as well as to Antonia Tsapralis and our own team in Toronto.

Professor John Kirton
Co-director, G20 Research Group

Introduction and Summary

The G20 2014 Brisbane Final Compliance Report, prepared by the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto and the International Organisations Research Institute of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (IORI HSE), analyzes compliance by G20 members with a selection of 17 priority commitments of a total of 205 commitments made at the Brisbane Summit on 15-16 November 2014. The report covers compliance-relevant actions taken by the G20 members between 16 November 2014 to 1 October 2015. This timeframe allows for an assessment of compliance of the full period between the 2014 Brisbane Summit and the Antalya Summit, which will be hosted by Turkey on 15-16 November 2015.

Methodology and Scoring System

This report draws on the methodology developed by the G8 Research Group, which has been monitoring G7/8 compliance since 1996 (IORI HSE joined this multiyear project in 2005, and Bond University participated in 2014). The use of this methodology builds cross-institutional and cross-member consistency and also allows compatibility with compliance assessments of other institutions.

The methodology uses a scale from −1 to +1, where +1 indicates full compliance with the stated commitment, −1 indicates a failure to comply or action taken that is directly opposite to the stated instruments or goal of the commitment, and 0 indicates partial compliance or work in progress, such as initiatives that have been launched but are not yet near completion and whose full results can therefore not be assessed. Each member assessed receives a score of −1, 0 or +1 for each commitment. For convenience, the scores in the tables have been converted to percentages, where −1 equals 0% and +1 equals 100%.

A failing compliance score does not necessarily imply an unwillingness to comply on the part of G20 members. In some cases policy actions can take multiple compliance cycles to implement and measure. As the G20 Research Group and IORI HSE continue to monitor developments in this issue area, progress made by members can be recorded in future compliance reports.

[The formula to convert a score into a percentage is P = 50 × (S + 1), where P is the percentage and S is the score.]

Commitment Breakdown

The G20 made a total of 205 commitments at the Brisbane Summit. These commitments, as identified by the G20 Research Group and HSE, are drawn from the official G20 Leaders' Communiqué, the Brisbane Action Plan, the Statement on Ebola, the Note on the Global Infrastructure Initiative and Hub, and the Principles on Energy Collaboration.

[A commitment is defined as a discrete, specific, publicly expressed, collectively agreed statement of intent; a promise by summit members that they will undertake future action to move toward, meet or adjust to an identified target. More details are contained in the Reference Manual for Summit Commitment and Compliance Coding).]

Selection of Commitments

For each compliance cycle (that is, the period between summits), the research team selects commitments that reflect the breadth of the G20 agenda and also reflect the priorities of the summit's host, while balancing the selection to allow for comparison with past and future summits, following the methodology developed by the G8 Research Group. The selection also replicates the breakdown of issue areas and the proportion of commitments in each one. Primary criteria for priority commitment selection are the comprehensiveness and relevance to the summit, the G20 and the world, as well as individual and collective pledges. Selected commitments must also meet secondary criteria of performance measurability and ability to comply to some degree within a year, as well as tertiary criteria of significance as identified by scientific teams and relevant stakeholders in the host country.

For the 2014 G20 Brisbane Final Compliance Report, 17 priority commitments were selected from the 205 commitments made at Brisbane Summit (see Table 1).

[Guidelines for choosing priority commitments, as well as other applicable considerations, are available in the Reference Manual for Summit Commitment and Compliance Coding.]

Final Compliance Scores

The assessment is based on relevant, publicly available information relating to action taken from 16 November 2014 to 1 October 2015. The compliance scores by commitment are contained in Table 2. Country rankings are listed in Table 3 and commitment rankings are listed in Table 4. Table 5 allows a comparison of the 2014 interim compliance scores with the final scores of previous G20 summits.

For the period from 16 November 2014 to 1 October 2015, G20 members achieved an average final compliance score of +0.42, which translates to 71%. This final compliance score surpasses the final compliance score for the London, Pittsburgh and Toronto summits.

Final Compliance by Member

For compliance with the Brisbane Summit's priority commitments, the United Kingdom and the United States are tied in first place with a score of +0.76 (88.2%), followed by the European Union at +0.75 (87.5%), Canada at +0.71 (85%) and Germany at +0.69 (84%). The lowest scoring member is Saudi Arabia with a score of −0.24 (38%). The difference between the highest and lowest G20 member compliance scores is +1.00. For more information about compliance by G20 members, see Table 3.

Final Compliance by Commitment

This particular compliance cycle produced a high level of compliance for a few different issue areas: infrastructure and the health commitment on antimicrobial resistance tied for first place at +0.95 (98%), followed by the clean energy commitment at +0.90 (95%) and the macroeconomic commitment on investment, the commitment on unemployment and the commitment on financial regulation tied in third place at +0.70 (85%). The lowest score was on fossil fuels subsidies at −0.45 (28%). For more information on scoring by commitment, see Table 4.

Considerations and Limitations

Several elements affect the findings contained in this report.

With regard to the commitment on fiscal consolidation, the text holds only the “advanced economies” of the G20 accountable. The G20 has identified those members as Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union. The average for this commitment was therefore calculated based on this group of 10 and not the G20 as a whole. An argument can be made that this commitment does not reflect compliance of the full G20. Nonetheless, all G20 members, regardless of the status of their economy, agreed to this commitment.

To complement the fiscal consolidation commitment’s focus on developed economies, the commitment on emerging market resilience focuses on the accountability of emerging economies. The G20 considers Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey to be emerging economies. The case for emerging market resilience is the same for fiscal consolidation: while the argument can be made that assessing compliance for a sub-group of the G20 does not reflect compliance for the G20 as a whole, all G20 members agreed to it.

While the purpose of the report is to monitor compliance with G20 commitments, it is necessary to ensure that the monitoring mechanism is realistic and considers the context within which the commitments are made. With new commitments, more attention must be paid to the initial implementation constraints faced by members. One way to accommodate these constraints is to regard the intent to implement policy measures as an illustration of compliance, or being “on track” towards compliance. This initial leeway should only granted for new commitments; intent is not a suitable indicator of compliance for medium-term or longstanding commitments. Over time as commitments become integrated in the G20 compliance mechanism, compliance guidelines should become more stringent (as members become more accustomed to the nature of the issue and the requirements for compliance).

See also Appendix: General Considerations.

Future Research and Reports

The information contained in this report provides G20 members and other stakeholders with an indication of their compliance in the period immediately following the Brisbane Summit. This draft has been produced as an invitation for others to provide additional or more complete information on compliance before the finished final report will be published in near future. Feedback should be sent to g20@utoronto.ca.

Appendix: General Considerations

In evaluating the results of this report, the following considerations should be kept in mind.

1. Assessments contained in this report apply to commitment-related actions taken by G20 members only since the commitments were declared publicly at the last summit.
2. Compliance has been assessed against a selected set of priority commitments, rather than all commitments contained in the summit documents. The selection is intended to produce a representative subset of the total body of commitments. An ideal set of priority commitments represents proportionally the amount of attention paid to each policy area in summit documents, reflects the relative ambition of summit commitments, and holds as many G20 members to account for compliance as possible.
3. In addition to producing commitments, summits provide value by establishing new principles and norms, creating and highlighting issues and issue areas and altering the traditional discourse used to discuss priorities. Some of the most important decisions reached at summits may be done in private and not encoded in the public record of the summit documents.
4. Some commitments cover several years and thus compliance takes longer than the summit-tosummit timeframe applied in this report. For this reason, full compliance (denoted by a +1 score) might not require that G20 members carry out a given commitment completely, but might instead demand clear, visible progress commensurate with the overall timetable as well as public statements of support of commitment objectives.
5. In some cases, a G20 member might choose not to comply with a particular summit commitment for good reason, for example if global conditions have changed dramatically since the commitment was made or if new knowledge has become available about how a particular problem can best be solved.
6. As each G20 member has its own constitutional, legal and institutional processes for undertaking action at the national level (and in the case of the European Union at the supranational level), each member is free to act according to its own legislative schedule. Of particular importance here is the annual schedule for creating budgets, seeking legislative approval and appropriating funds.
7. Commitments in G20 summit documents might also be included, in whole or in part, in documents released by other international forums, as the decisions of other international organizations or even national statements such as the State of the Union Address in the United States, the Queen’s Speech in the United Kingdom and the Speech from the Throne in Canada. Merely repeating a G20 commitment in another forum does not count fully as compliant behaviour.
8. This report assesses G20 members’ action in accordance with the text of actual, specific commitments made in G20 summit documents. Because commitments demand that policymakers and regulators act specifically to meet the identified objectives, this report holds policymakers accountable for pushing and passing recommended policies. Furthermore, compliance is assessed against the precise, particular commitment, rather than what might be regarded as a necessary or appropriate action to solve the problem being addressed.
9. As individual members can take different actions to comply with the same commitment, no standardized cross-national evaluative criterion can be universally applied. The interpretive guidelines attempt to provide an equitable method for assessing compliance.
10. Because the evaluative scale used in this compliance report runs from −1 to +1, any score in the positive range represents at least some degree of compliance.
11. These scores represent compliance only with commitments made at the G20 summit and do not indicate whether commitments made elsewhere are complied with to a higher or lower degree than those made at the G20 summit.
12. In some cases, full compliance by all members of the G20 with a commitment is contingent on cooperative behaviour on the part of other actors.

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Table 1: 2014 G20 Brisbane Summit Commitments Selected for Compliance

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Table 2: 2014 G20 Brisbane Summit Final Compliance Scores

N/A = Not applicable.

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Table 3: 214 G20 Brisbane Summit Final Compliance by Member

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Table 4: 2014 G20 Brisbane Summit Interim Compliance by Commitment

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Table 5: G20 Final Compliance by Member, 2008-2014

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