Japan's response to the changing global order: the case of a 'Gaggle of Gs'

Over recent years, media, academic, and policy-makers' attention has focused on changes in the global order from a unipolar to a multipolar world. The emergence of the Group of 20 (G20) since 2008 as the ‘premier forum for international economic cooperation’, which includes a number of developed and developing countries, and its ‘eclipse’ of the Group of 8 (G8) summit are acknowledged as some of the most salient symptoms of this shift. This article takes the intensive period of ‘G’ summitry between 2008 and 2011 as a pertinent case study to begin to explore the concrete responses of key protagonists to this reconfiguration of the architecture of global governance specifically and thereby the recent shift in the global order more broadly. In the specific case of Japan, widely assumed to be a declining power, the article highlights both consistency and change in the responses of and strategies employed by Japanese policy-makers within ‘G’ summitry. Various theoretical positions can account for this to differing degrees which also bring into relief the ultimately contradictory trajectory of Japan's response to the changing global order.