ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the origins of the summit and then gives a brief account of all the summits held from 1975 to 1997, grouped in five series of unequal length. The G7 summit was born out of a cumulative economic crisis. The political impulses that had driven economic cooperation since the 1940s were weakening. In macro-economic policy, all the participating economies had shown loss of growth and rising unemployment, as a result of the quadrupling of oil prices. The stance of macro-economic policy had shifted in 1976, as many countries feared a resurgence of inflation. The G7, for the first time, explicitly recognised the advance of globalisation that had been stimulated by the end of the Cold War. The summits were successful in overcoming the policy deadlock of the early 1970s and in restoring growth to the G7 and other Economic Cooperation and Development economies after the setbacks of the first oil crisis.
