The 2008 financial crisis catalyzed the creation of a (perhaps temporal) political community among the group of 20 countries summoned by the United States to tackle the meltdown, who cooperated with each other in order to stabilize the financial system. Pragmatism, a theoretical approach first developed by John Dewey, will inform my focus on the practices developed to cope with the crisis and the practices of rising powers in the G20.
I argue that the inclusion of rising powers in the debate as equal members changed the traditionally exclusive practice of G-summit diplomacy, an alteration that could have only taken place in a context where the habit of great power politics could provide merely limited answers. Moreover, rising powers that have hosted the G20 summit have been able to emphasize institution building, influence agenda setting, and provide support for initiatives in the Group, furthering the transformations of the G-summit practice.
