Summits |  Meetings |  Publications |  Research |  Search |  Home |  About the G7 Research Group Follow @g7_rg

Assessment of the
Performance of the 2008 G8 Host

John Kirton, Director, G8 Research Group
john.kirton@utoronto.ca
9 July 2008

As the G8 chair, Japan’s Fukuda proved to be a genuinely global leader, putting in a performance worthy of a full A grade of 85%. Much like Prime Minister Mori in 2000, the last time Japan hosted, Fukuda arrived late as prime minister, had little experience in international affairs, no experience at all at a G8 summit and inherited a design for a leaders-driven summit constructed by someone else. On the road to Toyako, he also suffered from losing control of his legislature’s upper house and from plunging popularity at home. But he proceeded with a high-risk summit, held hostage on its central climate issue as to whether China and Korea — hardly Japan’s most trusted partners historically — would come through for Fukuda on the summit’s final day.

They did, making Fukuda’s great gamble pay off, as it had for Canada’s Jean Chrétien on Africa in 2002. Fukuda thus showed himself to be a leader in moving the world forward on this genuinely global issue. He expanded his leadership in Asia by having China, Korea, Indonesia, Australia and more distant Asia follow the path he paved. He extended his leadership in Africa through TICAD-iv, then the African outreach on the summit’s opening day and finally by delivering much for Africa on health, food security, compliance monitoring and the breaking crisis in Zimbabwe here democracy and human life were critically at stake.

—	This Information System is provided by the University of Toronto Libraries and the G7 Research Group at the University of Toronto.
	Please send comments to: g7@utoronto.ca This page was last updated August 15, 2024.

All contents copyright © 2024. University of Toronto unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved.