A more representative world order

The West has enjoyed its groups for a long time.

The Group of Six was formed after the 1973 oil crisis and the subsequent global recession when the United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Italy decided to meet annually on the state of the global economy.

Canada joined soon after that, and Russia was accepted into the club after the Cold War.

Fortunately, the Group of 20 is now set to become the premier international body on global economic issues. This would bring developing countries and emerging economies like Brazil, China, India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia into the fold.

The shift to this new group leaves plenty of questions about how relevant the now-Group of Eight can continue to be, as the economies of several third-world countries catches up with the West. Diplomats say the group will continue to exist, but that it will focus mostly on non-economic issues.

But the decision to upgrade the G-20 from a ministerial to a leader’s level forum after last year’s recession will surely go down as a watershed.

As the distribution of relative economic power has shifted, developing countries have argued for years that they are underrepresented in international institutions. The United Nations still has a Security Council made up of countries that dominated the world decades ago.  

There have also been complaints about voting rights in the International Monetary Fund, and the G-20 has already pledged to shift voting rights by about 5 percent to under-represented countries.

This recent recession proved that we need to work with long-overlooked developing countries, not out of any sort of charity, but out of necessity. The actions of countries like China played a big role in how the recession ultimately panned out.

Those countries are sure to be even more influential by the time the next crisis rolls around.