simon zadek

So if reinventing global governance is the game plan, who are the key players.

Are they the gathered assembly at Davos, the obvious cast of characters, or are there folks lurking on the fringes of the elite who might compete for a place at the table, or even redesigning the table or owning all or a piece of it.

The most recent entrant is BASIC = BRICS – Russia (or maybe ‘self-definition without Goldman Sachs’). China-led or at least conceived of, it was of course these folks on whose door Mr Obama knocked on the search for Wen Jiabao. So in the popular game of geopolitical tag, 1:0 to BASIC if the opponent was the US-led G8.

BASIC met just last weekend, thoughtfully before Davos and a week or so in advance of the ‘not so hard and fast’ closing date for countries to register their commitments under the Copenhagen Accord. Reporting in The Hindu, China and India announced their decision not to sign up to the Accord for now. Indian Prime Minister Singh highlighted BASIC’s commitment to the UNFCCC and Kyoto and queried the legitimacy of the Accord beyond a high level political statement emerging from a battle worn Copenhagen.

Early days, and so far BASIC is focused on climate and largely reinforcing an understandably furious but wildly out-of-time G77 position. But could BASIC become a more widely transacted governance currency in times to come.  BASIC might be a refreshing antidote to the G8, but it could in the end be little more than an anti-G8. Such zero-sum politics would not serve us well, least of all the citizens of BASIC nations, since being defined by opposition is little more than being ‘shadow like’. Could BASIC raise its game and conceive of a different politics that grapples with global problems rather than relocating the drivers of disfunction.
Curious>