ABSTRACT

This chapter surveys the principles and norms that the G7/8 has collectively articulated since its 1975 establishment in the key areas of trade, the environment, and social cohesion, to identify the priority it has assigned to each, the intersections it has identified among these realms. The new ideology and processes, it is charged, '[tend] to atomise human communities and the integrity of the ecological structures that support all life', thereby generating a 'crisis of social reproduction on a world scale, a crisis that is ecological as well as social'. The communique from the 1998 Summit opened with the trilogy of safeguarding the environment, trade liberalisation, and 'combating social exclusion' (G8). The causal consequence of institutional imbalance is evident within the G7/8's own institutional structure as well. The model of democratic institutionalism has long argued that the presence of strong institutions in the G7/8 system and in the broader multilateral community generates compliance among G7/8 members with their collective G7 commitments.