This chapter argues that summits tried to foster trust both “internally” and “externally”: summitry aimed at developing not only trust among the leaders, but also crucially trust with regard to the Western (economic) system. These two ambitions represented a vital transformation of the international system in the 1970s and 1980s.
G7/8/20 summits are often accused of many ills: club of the rich, producers of pointless communiqués, unduly gigantic gatherings, over-prepared meetings and media-show events – in a word, useless. This chapter argues for a more qualified assessment of their added value to global governance. This chapter assesses multilateral summitry along three lines, examining respectively the process (the G7 as a diplomatic instrument), the outcome (what agreements G7s actually reached) and the counterfactual (what if the G7 did not exist?).
As it begins its EU renegotiation, the UK risks antagonising even close allies such as Germany.
The traditional story of European monetary cooperation in the 1970s following the abandonment of the Werner Plan in 1974, most often told …
La crise de la zone euro a révélé les faiblesses constitutives de la monnaie unique ; mais les débats portant sur sa viabilité se limitent trop souvent à une vision purement économique de la zone euro. L’histoire complexe de la création de l’euro éclaire les enjeux financiers et politiques internationaux de l’unification monétaire.
L’annonce de la disparition des archives papiers de l’ancien secrétaire général de l’Élysée par l’actuel titulaire du poste Pierre-René Lemas pose plus de questions sur le traitement des archives nationales aujourd’hui que sur Claude Guéant lui-même.
The volume investigates the rise of regular international summitry and its impact on international relations. It brings together the best specialists of this new field of historical enquiry in order to explore those features of global governance in their historical context, and open up an interdisciplinary dialogue with social scientists who have studied summits from their own disciplinary perspectives.
This article deals with a significant institutional step in the history of European integration: the decision to hold EEC heads of state and government meetings on a regular basis.
Regular meetings of heads of state and government seem, in 2012, a common feature of international affairs. About forty years ago, however, such meetings did not really exist: ad hoc summits were the rule. Comparing the emergence of the European Council in 1974 and the G7 in 1975, this article explains why and how summitry has become routine in international politics.