Global Governance and Development's Future

Global economic governance affecting development outcomes operates through a layered set of state-led and non-state institutions. The Group of Seven (G7) — the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Canada, plus the European Union — emerged from an informal 1975 gathering at Rambouillet, France, of six major industrial democracies (Canada joined in 1976), and has functioned since as a forum for coordinating policy among the wealthiest democracies, though critics note it represents a shrinking share of global output as emerging economies have grown. The Group of Twenty (G20), created in 1999 initially as a finance-ministers forum after the Asian financial crisis and elevated to a leaders' summit in 2008 amid the global financial crisis, brings together 19 countries plus the EU and, since 2023, the African Union, representing roughly 85 percent of global GDP, giving major emerging economies a seat absent from the G7. Alongside these state-led bodies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become indispensable development actors in their own right: large international NGOs such as Oxfam, founded in Oxford in 1942, BRAC, founded in Bangladesh in 1972, and Médecins Sans Frontières, founded in 1971, deliver services, conduct advocacy, and hold governments and international institutions publicly accountable, though they have also faced scrutiny over local accountability and, in some documented scandals, abuses of power by aid staff.