Informally governing international development: G7 coordination and orchestration in aid

Informal groupings like the G7 aim to address global development challenges but lack the administrative and budgetary capacity to drive change directly. Instead, the G7 seeks to catalyze international action that reflects its priorities. For example, the G7 attempts to set the international development agenda by publishing annual communiqués with actionable commitments designed to influence the behavior of G7 donor countries, non-G7 donor countries, and international organizations. But questions about the G7’s ultimate impact persist, as critics contend the informal G7 can do little more than pay lip service to development challenges. We provide empirical evidence that the G7 shapes international development in two ways. First, when the G7 emphasizes a policy area in its annual communiqués, donors allocate more aid to that policy area. Second, when the G7 highlights a policy area in its annual communiqués, donors establish more trust funds in that policy area. This suggests the G7 serves simultaneous coordination and orchestration roles in international development: it coordinates its member states’ aid and orchestrates non-G7 bilateral and multilateral aid. The study’s theory, approach, and findings can inform further research on whether and how informal organizations ultimately affect states, formal international organizations, international cooperation, and global governance.