ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the decision-making process works, at the G8 summit and in the G8 system as a whole, and how it has changed as a result of new demands in the early 21st century. The chapter reviews the summit narratives to draw out the key questions in G8 decision-making since the Birmingham summit of 1998. The new format introduced at Birmingham gave the heads greater freedom to act on their own at the summit itself. Political Reflexes On occasion the political instincts of the heads led them to pick out certain issues and go against what their officials have prepared. The Sherpas Traditionally, summit preparations have been in the hands of the personal representatives or sherpas, who are chosen either for their closeness to the head or their seniority in their parent department. Chirac's ideas for a new food safety organisation, proposed before Cologne, and for suspending agricultural export subsidies, launched before Evian, came to nothing.
