Reimagining The G7

A lot has changed in the world since the G7 first began in 1973 as an informal gathering in the White House Library among the finance ministers of the US, Britain, France, and Germany. Today, the Group of Seven political and economic forum—made up of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—is viewed as a crucial institution for global governance. But for the forum to stay relevant and effective, according to eminent international relations scholar Victor Cha, a major issue needs to be addressed: the fact that its members represent a diminishing representation of global GDP and population.

In 1992, G7 members represented almost 70 percent of the global economy, but today that figure has shriveled to 43 percent, according to Cha, who is senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a distinguished professor of government at Georgetown University. In addition, G7 members today represent less than 10 percent of the global population.

“The G7 of today is not really equipped to do the job that it wants to do,” Cha said in a recent presentation at the East-West Center in Honolulu. “It is certainly playing a very important role, but it needs to be reimagined.”

‘Backed by the data’

Cha, a former director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council who currently serves on the federal Defense Policy Board, shared an overview of findings from a recent CSIS project he led to identify data-based recommendations for reforming the G7. “There are a million think tanks in DC that can give you two million policy recommendations,” Cha said. “But what we really tried to do was bring policy recommendations that were backed by the data.”

First, Cha and his team dove into a text analysis of statements made by G7 leaders between 2018 and 2023 to pinpoint which issues emerged as the most important. The list of the most frequently discussed topics included the future of the Indo-Pacific region; economic resilience and economic security; food security; digital competitiveness; climate change; war in Ukraine; global economy, finance and sustainable development; disarmament and nonproliferation; and labor.

Next the team assembled a dataset of 300 publicly available metrics to compile rankings of how well different countries have performed in handling each of those priority areas. What they discovered was that two non-G7 members, Australia and South Korea, consistently were listed in the top 10 rankings on the priority issues and were performing highly overall, “if not better than some G7 members,” Cha said.

On economic resilience and economic security, Australia’s performance was ranked higher than all G7 members except the US, the UK, and Germany, he said. And on digital competitiveness, South Korea is currently performing better than every G7 member except the US and the UK.

Adding perspectives

This research led to the project’s first recommendation: the G7 should consider expanding its membership to increase the body’s capabilities and effectiveness. In addition, including countries like Australia and South Korea would offer an increased Indo-Pacific perspective. Down the road, Spain and the Netherlands might be future candidates to add to the table as well, Cha said.

Based on conversations with diplomats, Cha’s team found that the main resistance to the idea of expanding the G7 centers on fears of losing the forum’s informality. But Cha argued that adding just two more members won’t ruin the current dynamic. He noted that from 1997 to 2014, the forum became the Group of Eight, when Russia was first included and then later expelled after its invasion of Crimea. 

Cha said the international order is already under significant stress due to ongoing wars, economic coercion, and what he described as the inefficacy of traditional institutions. Established institutions such as the UN Security Council, G20, and the World Trade Organization are struggling to effectively address global challenges, he said, partly due to their size and conflicting interests among members. That underscores the need to seriously consider making these updates to the G7, he argued.

Agenda reforms

Other reforms to consider, according to Cha, include creating “formal consultation mechanisms” with other global constituencies such as the African Union, ASEAN, China, the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, and the G20, “at a minimum.” He also suggested revising the G7’s agenda-setting process to ensure continuity and address long-term global challenges more effectively. Currently, he said, each year’s host country gets to set the agenda for the year, and the conversations can be dominated by topics that don’t tie in directly to the group’s main goals.

“The rationale was that when you host, you have to pay for everything… it’s like, if they’re paying for the dinner, they should be able to have some say over what’s going on,” said Cha. “And that sounds very nice and very civilized, but it can also lead to inefficiencies.”

Cha said it would take at least a handful of countries to advocate making these changes to see them realized, although the G7 is very informal and might not need to take an official vote to make such changes. But in the name of maintaining global economic security, he said, such a makeover is crucial. “We do not have time to create new institutions,” Cha concluded, “so we need to bend existing ones to meet the challenge.”