Institutionalising International Forums: The Increasing Role of G7 and G20 Engagement Groups

Intergovernmental forums are playing an ever-increasing role in shaping global politics. While recent scholarship focuses primarily on the individual executive governments’ positions affecting the resulting joint and leaders’ declarations, the impact of the increasingly prominent and institutionalised role of societal actors through increasingly diverse engagement groups is not yet well understood. This study investigates the evolution and positions made by growing networks of societal actors in engagement groups that shadow the yearly G7 and G20 summits. Through comparative textual analysis of respective engagement group statements and the final political summit resolutions, this paper sheds light on the growing impact of engagement groups—and therefore societal actors—on the final summit’s result and global politics.