ABSTRACT
The formation of the Group of Twenty(G20) world leaders is likely to be the most lasting institutional consequence of the global financial meltdown of 2008. The G20 has evolved into the closest thing to a board of directors for the world economy. The first summit of the reformulated G20 focused on emergency global crisis management efforts. National leaders seized upon the G20 forum and elevated its status from a finance ministers' forum to provide a hastily arranged venue for leaders to debate and address a still unfolding financial crisis emanating out of the US. The American called to act at the first G20 'firefighting summit' was an unlikely reluctant facilitator for what would prove to be the beginning of a paradigm shift. In meeting together in haste, as a crisis management exercise, to tackle the global financial and economic crisis, leaders and states began to make the paradigm shift.
