El G20, el G8, el G5 y el papel de las potencias en ascenso

As the 21st century progresses, emerging powers are playing an increasingly active and influential role at the heart of world governance. Since 2003, they have been participating in forums such as the summits held by the G8 (which groups together the major free-market democracies) and, since 2005, in expanded dialogue between the G8 and the G5 (China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa). They have also had a presence at meetings of countries of systemic importance to the G20, on a ministerial level since 1999 and among heads of state as of 2008. According to John J. Kirton, rising powers are no longer second-class participants occasionally invited to the meetings of the G8, but have become fully fledged members of the G20, with a degree of influence practically on a par of that of the more developed, established powers. The institutional leadership assumed by the G20 in the form of agreements to undertake an overhaul of international financial institutions and on macroeconomic, trade and development policies is a recent example of this. Kirton believes this move toward greater equality was prompted, on the one hand, by the reluctance of the established powers of the G8 to view emerging democratic powers willing and able to help them address new vulnerabilities as their equals and, on the other, the decision to elevate the G20 to a forum of heads of state capable of addressing the severe financial and economic crisis that hit the United States and then spread to the rest of the world in 2007-2010 —a decision that was to turn the G20 into the world’s leading forum for economic collaboration and cooperation. In 2012, emerging powers will be able to claim another victory in institutional and thematic leadership when Mexico becomes the first G5 member to host and preside over a G20 summit.