Editor’s Note: The National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) project reports on public perceptions of national leaders’ performance at important international events. This fifth installation of the NPGL Soundings provides insight on the issues facing leaders at the Seoul G-20 Summit and the coverage they received in their respective national media. Read the other commentary »

The fifth G-20 Summit held in Seoul seems to show signs of a gradual maturing of the process and the forum as a mechanism for communication among leaders and a means of connecting leaders and finance ministers with their national publics, judging from National Perspectives on Global Leadership (NPGL) country commentaries. These growing strengths — looking from the G-20 capitals toward the Seoul summit contrasted with looking from the summit toward the countries — seemed particularly impressive at this Seoul summit, which was characterized by the most intense policy conflicts yet at a G-20 meeting.

Policy Conflicts and the Trajectory of G-20 Summits

The responses to the first question — “Did coverage seem to threaten or enhance the viability of G-20 summits?” — seemed to indicate that, despite the conflicts over external imbalances and currency policies, these issues did not threaten the viability of the G-20 summits as much as one might have expected. Given the focus of the NPGL project on national leadership, what is interesting about this positive result is that the coverage in the media was not just of the debate itself, but the portrayal of their national leader at the summit.

With the exception of an excellent and balanced article on Saturday, November 13 in The Washington Post by Howard Schneider and Scott Wilson, the coverage in Washington and in the Financial Times would lead readers to conclude that the Seoul G-20 Summit was less successful than anticipated, and did not enhance the viability of G-20 summits as much as the Koreans hoped it would.

“Agreements did not have to be worked out,” Andrew Cooper wrote, quoting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “this month or next month in order to avert [a] cataclysm…I’m confident we will make progress over time.”

Olaf Corry reported from London that UK Prime Minister David Cameron was quoted in The Guardian as saying that rebalancing “is being discussed in a proper multilateral way without resort to tit-for-tat measures and selfish policies.”

U.S. President Barack Obama said in his press conference that “in each of these successive summits we’ve made real progress.”

Lan Xue and Yanbing Zhang wrote that Chinese President Hu Jintao “highlighted the importance of (the) framework (for strong, sustainable and balanced growth) and also pointed out that it should be further improved,” a far cry from a rejection of it.

“In contrast to previous summits,” Peter Draper reported from Johannesburg, “President Zuma’s interventions did receive some press coverage at home…To judge from this coverage, he seems to have played his cards reasonably well and to have been visible.”

Melisa Deciancio commented from Buenos Aires that ”Cristina Fernandez’s contribution to the G-20 summits has always been substantive…She has also called the members of the (G-20) to work together, cooperate and avoid entering into conflict in relation to the ongoing currency war between China and the U.S.”

“Both (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel and (finance minister) Schaeuble spent considerable effort to explain the positive aspects of summit agreements and praised the ‘spirit of cooperation,’” reported Thomas Fues from Germany.

In each of the cases above, the leader offered a positive interpretation of the Seoul G-20 Summit and the G-20 summit process even in the context of intense policy disputes, which constrained the practical agreements that could have been reached, especially on the global economic adjustment issues. This optimistic stance indicates a forward movement by G-20 leaders on a metric of global leadership in Seoul that the four previous NPGL “Soundings” had found to be wanting at previous summits.

In some countries, the problem continued with the press focusing on the shortcomings and failures of the Seoul G-20 Summit, including the coverage in the influential Financial Times. G-20 leaders were, however, more aggressive in pushing against the media’s interpretation of weakness and failures at the G-20, advancing an alternative narrative that focused on the gradual progress being made and stronger relationships developing with each G-20 summit experience. Leaders now need to assure that the G-20 “framework” and the “mutual assessment process” (MAP) of peer review that goes with it, are able to deliver a credible way forward for global economic adjustment by the time of the French G-20 Summit in November 2011.

Global Economic Adjustment as a Visible Theme

With regard to question two — “How was the rebalancing issue dealt with?”— the common thread running through each of the country commentaries is reflected in Olaf Corry’s comment that “explicit mention of the G-20’s formal ‘framework for strong, sustainable and balance growth’ is very sparse in UK public debate, but the themes it highlights definitely shine through.” The one exception may have been the explicit, detailed understanding of the issue conveyed by Schneider and Wilson in their Washington Post article titled “G-20 nations agree to agree; Pledge to heed common rules; but economic standards have yet to be met.” (See U.S. country commentary.)

The G-20 framework and the MAP may not have received much visibility or coverage from the media, but the intensity of the currency wars, the debate about U.S. quantitative easing (QE 2) and the differences over current account targets were all widely covered, and the message communicated to most publics was that global imbalances are a real problem for all countries and a concerted global economic adjustment is essential. The G-20 leaders will, therefore, have to do far more than simply explain the process to their publics; they need to continue to push each other and their economic officials to reach agreement on a path forward by the time of the French summit in November of 2011.

The difficulty of reaching agreement is reflected in a comment by Ryozo Hayashi of Japan who wrote, “Therefore, it sounds wise to let these countries (the U.S. and China) keep their current policy paths with a political commitment to avoid a currency war and for the G-20 to agree to develop economic indicators. It may become urgent or it may become irrelevant as the situation develops. Given the difficulty of establishing agreed economic indicators, the time element would be important.”

Leadership at Summits and Its Linkages to Domestic Political Support

What emerged more clearly at this summit than in previous G-20 summits was the degree to which the role of individual countries and their leaders (or finance ministers) in G-20 processes had domestic political valence in their home countries.

“The amount of attention devoted by the media to this summit was considerably more than previous ones,” wrote Andres Rozental, “partially because the Calderón administration will host the G-20 in 2012 and Mexico is now part of the G-20 ‘troika.’”

Thomas Fues commented that “The media also appreciatively noted that Germany had been asked to co-chair the G-20 working group on the international currency system, tasked with formulating policy proposals” for the French G-20 Summit.

In South Africa, Peter Draper also found that the press paid attention to the fact that it co-chairs the G-20 working group on development with South Korea, and “the importance of this group’s work to the future of the G-20.”

“In terms of summit diplomacy,” wrote Andrew Cooper, “Harper’s main success was in gaining the role for Canada as one of the co-chairs (with India, supported by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]) with respect to the process of working out a set of economic indicators that all members of the G-20 could use as guideposts for a stable global economy.”

This is all evidence that G-20 activities now generate positive repercussions in domestic public opinion.
Other dimensions of linkages between international committee positions assumed at G-20 summits and domestic political capital are beginning to emerge as the G-20 matures.

In South Africa, Finance Minister Gordhan’s strong criticism of U.S. QE2 in the international press seems “to have added to his growing reputation at home” commented Peter Draper.

German Finance Minister Schaeuble’s criticism of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s move as “clueless,” “forced Merkel to reiterate unswerving support of her key official” at the Seoul summit, Thomas Fues noted.

Cristina Fernandez has consistently and adroitly used her substantive policy positions at G-20 summits to buttress her position at home. Argentina is head of the G77, so Argentine support for development increases its status as a leader of the South and her domestic prestige. Argentine discontent with the IMF has been legend since the 1990s; support of President Fernandez for the G-20 framework and MAP process arises as an alternative to the IMF article IV exercise, which most Argentines are against, reported Melisa Deciancio.

Conclusion

Despite media attention being riveted on the showdown between the United States, Germany and China on currency manipulation and external imbalances at the Seoul G-20 Summit, leaders defended the G-20 processes for working through these issues over time, rather than emphasizing the failure to reach agreement at Seoul. The leaders and their finance ministers found that taking an aggressive stance on key issues paid dividends in terms of their domestic political support.

Explicit efforts by leaders to link international policies to domestic politics is a positive step forward for G-20 summits toward a greater engagement between leaders and their publics. NPGL observers have been watching this dimension of G-20 summitry in London, Pittsburgh, Toronto and now Seoul. (See: www.cigionline.org; Papers; “Soundings”)

The challenge going forward will be finding a way to align the global economic adjustment policy with domestic political linkages in a consistent and reinforcing manner, that will allow for policy convergence rather than the divergence manifested at the Seoul G-20 Summit.

On the heels of the U.N.’s adoption in late September of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030, an Asia Pacific volunteering alliance recently convened a forum for hundreds of youth and development partners from northeast Asia at the Korea Council on Foreign Relations in Seoul.

In his keynote address highlighting the role of volunteers in global development, Young-Mok Kim, president of the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), stressed the key role of Peace Corps volunteers and the Saemaul Undong village self-help model in Korea’s 50-year rise from a low-income to a high-income nation.

Since 1970, Korea’s Saemaul Undong (“New Community Movement”) has tested a combination of local self-help cooperative action with national development policy addressing poverty, relying on the spirit of rural communities. Local volunteering teams engaging youth and women have been tapped to guide and implement grassroots development projects and counter rural over-migration to urban areas, engaging in housing, local infrastructure and irrigation, credit unions, and cooperative businesses, among other holistic areas while enhancing an overall community spirit of ownership.

“As the first country to escape poverty and achieve economic and social development as well as democratization, the SDGs present us with an opportunity to expand our footprint and visibility in the development arena and live up to international expectations. In Korea, thanks to Saemaul Undong, the poverty rate was reduced from 34.6 percent to 6 percent and rural households’ income reached parity with that of urban households during the period from 1967 to 1984.” The Saemaul Undong model has been adapted in African and other developing nations and was featured in a special high-level forum on rural development during the recent U.N. General Assembly.

Kim stated: “It is important that we facilitate participatory engagement by harnessing the power of volunteerism to meet the key principle of the SDGs” and he indicated that the World Friends Korea (WFK) volunteer program learned from the nation’s experience with the Peace Corps. WFK has sent more than 50,000 volunteers abroad in service projects and to provide technical training. Kim noted KOICA ranks second in the world with regard to the number of volunteers sent to developing countries, sending 4,500 annually to 50 countries.

KOICA was a founding participant in the Asia Pacific Peace and Development Service Alliance (APPDSA) that was launched at the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) headquarters in Bangkok in October 2014 with the support of FK Norway, the Global Peace Foundation, KOICA, the Peace Corps and other partners. Kim hailed the effort “to form an alliance of upgrading our volunteer program and fostering the force of young people who can play crucial roles in the development cooperation arena.”

The multi-stakeholder platform forged in Southeast Asia is now engaging thousands of volunteers in climate-related projects, including massive river clean-up campaigns in Thailand and Nepal and ongoing “green Asia” tree-planting and eco-camps working to address desertification in Mongolia.   

After the Seoul convening, which launched the Northeast Asia volunteering initiative, I travelled to Kathmandu to assess the progress of the South Asia APPDSA Alliance hub for volunteerism. Convened in Nepal just prior to the April earthquake that took more than 9,000 lives, the Alliance’s South Asia convening provided a ready base of volunteers to implement the Kathmandu Call to Action after the disaster struck and served as a springboard for Rise Nepal, a youth-led relief and rebuilding initiative. To date, more than 1,600 young Nepali volunteers have helped nearly 3,000 households with emergency provisions, including food, and medical and hygiene supplies, and have constructed around 600 transitional homes.    

IBM stepped in to provide IT support, equipping youths with software and other technology to facilitate their efforts to rebuild their nation beyond short-term earthquake relief. Since the recent adoption of Nepal’s new constitution, this support is being broadened to include young leadership training in citizenship and service addressing longer-term goals, including SDGs across the South Asia region.

A recent Gallup article noted the power of the more than 1 billion people around the world who engage in volunteer service and the need to marshal their efforts to help countries meet their SDG targets by 2030. Since the Seoul forum, efforts are underway across the Asia-Pacific region to step-up specific volunteerism initiatives, provide technology that will further empower young volunteers, and document the results of ongoing environmental service projects such as the restoration of the Bagmati River in Nepal and counterpart efforts in Bangkok, Mongolia, and the Philippines.  

The growth of such multi-stakeholder volunteering alliances, coupled with KOICA’s experience in forging volunteerism-based community outcomes measurably addressing poverty, hold great promise in marshaling requisite human capital and innovation to help achieve the next generation development goals.