G20, explained.
Members of the media watch South African President and G20 host Cyril Ramaphosaa on screen during the summit proceedings last month (G20 SA/Flickr)
Rather than a sharp and agile forum, the G20 has blown out more to matter less.
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Is G20 becoming what it sought to replace?Is G20 becoming what it sought to replace?
When the G20 was elevated to the leaders’ level in 2008, it was hailed as the world’s most promising experiment in minilateralism. Unlike the cumbersome United Nations or the Western-dominated Bretton Woods institutions, the G20 was supposed to be small enough to act, big enough to matter, and flexible enough to solve global financial problems.
However, almost two decades later, the G20 has begun to resemble the very institutions it was created to circumvent. Its meetings have become more symbolic than substantive, its communiques diluted by tensions among major powers, and its agenda expanded to include everything and anything under the sun.
A forum designed for agility is turning into a sprawling talk shop.
Minilaterals rest on a simple principle: fewer actors, informal channels of diplomacy, and quicker decisions. The G20 was conceived in that spirit. By bringing together major economies representing around 80% of global GDP, it bypassed the UN’s universalistic model and the G7’s exclusivity. Its roots lay in the series of financial crises across Mexico, Asia, and Russia in the late 1990s. It was realised that the scope of existing forums was either too wide (like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) or too narrow (like the G8). Thus, it aimed to act as the “premier forum for international economic cooperation”.
Each presidency should focus on two or three issue areas where coordination among major economies is genuinely necessary rather than expanding into an all-purpose platform.
Yet the G20 today looks less like a focused steering committee and more like a miniature UN system with dozens of working groups, sherpa tracks, engagement groups, and side events. It has grown its own ecosystem of bureaucratic processes, producing lengthy communiques that resemble those of larger multilateral bodies. These joint declarations are usually verbose and devoid of concrete commitments.
The Russia–Ukraine war, US–China tensions, Middle East conflicts and sharply divergent development priorities mean that consensus in the G20 has become harder than ever. The recent controversy between the United States and South Africa over the handover of the G20 presidency demonstrates how vulnerable the forum is to leaders’ whims and domestic political posturing. As a result, joint statements have to be negotiated with extreme caution, yielding lowest-common-denominator outcomes.
The G20’s agenda, too, has become too big to manage. In its early years, it had one clear mandate: global macroeconomic coordination. That mandate has since ballooned into an amorphous catalogue that includes climate finance, digital governance, health security, artificial intelligence, women’s empowerment, tourism, culture, and more. Each presidency adds its own priorities. What was meant to be sharp and functional is now broad and diffuse.
What was meant to be sharp and functional is now broad and diffuse (G20 Sa/Flickr)
This expansion reflects the forum’s desire to appear more inclusive. But here lies the counterintuitive point: the G20’s recent embrace of inclusivity which saw four consecutive summits hosted in the Global South risks turning the forum into a stage for tokenism. Bringing the African Union into the room, celebrating Global South agency, and allowing emerging economies to shape the agenda appear morally and politically overdue.
But minilaterals were never meant to be representative bodies. Their effectiveness lies in their exclusivity and in the idea that a magic number of closely aligned actors can make decisions on a specific issue. The more members added, the more interests diverge, and the farther the forum drifts from its original design. By expanding in the name of inclusivity, the G20 risks weakening the very logic that justified its existence.
If the G20 continues down its current trajectory, it will gradually lose the agile functionality that distinguishes it from the UN and Bretton Woods institutions. It will become just another forum where global challenges are discussed endlessly but addressed rarely, which was ironically the very problem it was established to solve.
The G20 can only serve that purpose if it stays true to its design: selective, focused, and functional. A simple first step would be to shift from annual to biennial summits. World leaders already navigate a crowded diplomatic calendar, and holding the G20 summit every year creates pressure for host governments to manufacture expansive agendas simply to justify the spotlight. A biennial cycle would reduce that performative impulse and give working groups more time to follow through on commitments.
Just as importantly, the G20 must sharpen its agenda and resist the temptation to broaden its mandate for the sake of political signalling. Each presidency should focus on two or three issue areas where coordination among major economies is genuinely necessary, such as global macroeconomic stability, debt restructuring, and climate finance, rather than expanding into an all-purpose platform.
Moreover, while the Troika system (a coordination mechanism linking the previous, current, and incoming G20 presidencies) does provide political continuity, it lacks the institutional backbone needed to ensure follow-through. A small implementation unit – not a full-fledged secretariat, but a light technical team to track commitments and maintain institutional memory – would complement the Troika and prevent the G20 from reinventing the wheel every year.
A G20 that meets less often but delivers more would restore the clarity and agility that justified its creation and help it avoid becoming what it was meant to replace.
About the author
Abhinandan Kumar
Abhinandan Kumar is a PhD Candidate at the Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University.
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