Unpacking the G20

Abstract

This book took far longer to complete than I anticipated. Who would have thought that becoming a dad for the second time and taking on university leadership roles would interfere with a research project? Not me, clearly. Then there was the small matter of a global pandemic, three lockdowns and the joys of home-schooling -something we have agreed as a family to never speak of again. This book was originally meant to be published in 2018 and cover the ten years of G20 summitry since its first meeting at the leaders' level in 2008. However, as a result of the above events, ten years turned into fifteen years. To cut a long story short, this book would never have seen the light of day without the infinite patience and generous assistance of the following people.At the University of Sheffield, I would like to thank all my colleagues in the School of East Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Faculty of Social Sciences who helped me in various ways to begin and complete this book. In particular, I'd like to single out everybody involved in the Global Leadership Initiative, which enabled me to attend many of the G20 summits I write about in this book. Matt Bishop, Garrett Brown, Greg Stiles and a small army of outstanding students proved to be the best of colleagues in Hangzhou, Hamburg, Buenos Aires and Osaka. This initiative represents one of the most exciting academic projects I have had the pleasure to be involved with and none of it would have been possible without the support of Eva-Maria Nag, the late David Held, Tom Kirk and everyone at Global Policy. If you haven't looked at the work that our teams of analysts produced, then you really should: https:// www .globalpolicyjournal .com/ global -leadership -initiative/ global -leadership -initiative. I would also like to thank the University of Sheffield's Open Access Fund for its support in making this book freely available.At Edward Elgar, I am deeply grateful to Alex Pettifer, Nina Booth and Imogen Phillips. I am ashamed to say that on more than one occasion I had to email Alex and sheepishly ask for an extension. He must rue the day in 2015 when he met me at the Political Studies Association's conference in Sheffield and took interest in a book on the G20. A less sympathetic editor would have bailed out on me long ago. I am also grateful for the feedback of the anonymous reviewers, which helped me clarify the focus and structure of this book.Beyond Sheffield and Edward Elgar, a number of people have provided both academic advice and personal friendship over the years. So, in no particular order, thanks to