ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a selective analytical history of the summits, in their wider context, up to the time of writing in 1999. It cover the summits from 1975 to 1988 and examines the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as the organisation which best embodied the spirit and practice of economic interdependence while the Cold War lasted. The book gives a narrative of the fourth summit series, which embraced the end of the Cold War. It examines the impact of the end of the Cold War on the international economic system. The book looks in detail at the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and explains how the summit came to renew itself. It relates to the institutional review conducted by the fifth summit series and examines how the G7 governments make use of international institutions.
