EMERGING POWERS AND INCLUSIVE MULTILATERALISM: RETHINKING GLOBAL GOVERNANCE IN THE 21ST CENTUR

Abstract

This article investigates whether and how emerging powers influence the reconfiguration of global governance, taking the G20 as a privileged arena of observation. Drawing on global governance and polycentricity scholarship, and through qualitative documentary analysis of G20 leaders' declarations between 2008 and 2024, it examines three dimensions: the forum's representativeness and composition; the development agenda and North-South asymmetries; and the reform of the international financial architecture. The findings indicate that the influence of emerging powers is real but incremental: it has materialized in the elevation of the G20 to the premier forum for international economic cooperation, in the admission of the African Union, and in the inscription of development and progressive taxation agendas, yet it remains constrained by the stagnation of quota and governance reforms in the Bretton Woods institutions. This decreasing pattern of influence is explained by the differential cost each dimension imposes on established powers: enlarging the table and inscribing agendas preserves incumbents' decision-making power, whereas redistributing quotas and votes does not. Inclusive multilateralism is therefore proposed as a gradual, multidimensional variable, and the article concludes that its construction depends on converting agenda victories into binding institutional change.