Colin Bradford is a Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Governance Innovation. A former chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bradford focuses on global economic governance, environmental governance, and international economics and development.

Colin has been a leading figure in mobilizing professional opinion and policy attention on the importance of the G20. In 1998, he had written a paper on “Chronic Instability in the World Economy” in which he noted the need for an enlarged summit grouping. In 2003, he went to Brookings to write a book on moving the G8 to the G20. In 2007, he and Johnannes Linn edited a Brookings conference volume on Global Governance Reform: Breaking the Stalemate. In the mid-1990s, he was a leader in articulating the need for a post-cold war vision for development cooperation by developing the International Development Goals (IDGs) in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and in promoting a consensus around them. In 2003, he played a pivotal role in transforming the IDGs and the Millennium Declaration goals into a single vision which we know today as the Millennium Development Goals. He was an adviser to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Helsinki Process on the MDGs in the 2000s.

In the 1980s, while at Yale, Dr. Bradford played a key role in the international debate regarding the East Asian Miracles, in a multitude of research papers, conference essays, and technical papers, arguing that the conventional wisdom of mainstream economics on trade liberalization and export-led growth was less convincing than a focus on internal dynamism generating growth-led exports in Korea and other “newly industrializing countries.” Dr. Bradford has focused his professional life as an international economist on the relationship of developing countries to the world economy, serving ten years in the U.S. government, eight years in international institutions, and sixteen years in universities, teaching at Yale for ten years, American University for six years, and intermittently at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins SAIS. He was a presidential appointee in the Clinton administration where he was chief economist of USAID, a political appointee in the Carter administration where he was head of the office of multilateral development banks in the U.S. Treasury, and a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles (D-Florida). He held senior economic policy positions in the OECD in Paris, the World Bank and the Inter-American Committee for the Alliance for Progress. He holds a B.A. in Hiistory from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia.

Henry Seggerman is manager of the Korea International Investment Fund (KIIF), the oldest hedge fund invested in South Korea’s stock market. From its launch in 1992 to February, 2010, KIIF has outperformed Korea’s KOSPI index by an unrivalled 374 percent, rising 22 percent per year on average.

Dr. Stephen Noerper is Senior VP at The Korea Society. Prior, he was a professor at New York University, an academy president, corporate vice president and U.S. State Department analyst.

Korea as Convener and Innovation Economy

September 15, 2010

Colin Bradford, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution and the Centre for Global Governance Innovation

Moderator: Stephen Noerper, Senior Vice President, The Korea Society

Thank you for joining us in the Samsung Center for Intercultural Exchange and joining us via Podcast, courtesy of the Tong Yang Group. I am Stephen Noerper, Senior Vice President of The Korea Society. We have launched an exciting season in policy, both business and public, and the arts, and we refer you to our events-filled calendar and to www.koreasociety.org, where you can join as a corporate and individual member and see the latest on our exciting offerings. The Korea Society business programs this year have featured Marc Noland of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Vice Minister Hur Kyung-Wook of Korea’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance, Henry Seggerman of the Korea International Investment Fund, Scott Kalb of the Korea Investment Corporation, and Bank of Korea Governor Kim Chong-Soo, among others. A special thanks to Natalee of our program staff and Daniel and Peter of our media team for their kind facilitation and sterling efforts today.

This executive breakfast is the first in a three-part series highlighting Korea’s attractiveness as a regional hub for economic dialogue, investment, and innovation. The session explores both the mechanics and the attendant opportunities of bringing the world to Korea for the G20 summit. Today we welcome Colin Bradford, the nation’s leading voice on the “new dynamics of summitry” and innovations for the G20 summit and follow-on by Henry Seggerman of the Korea International Investment Fund.

Colin Bradford is a Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Global Governance Innovation. A former chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Colin focuses on global economic governance, environmental governance, and international economics and development.

Colin has been a leading figure in mobilizing professional opinion and policy attention on the importance of the G20. In the mid-1990s, he was a leader in articulating the need for a post-cold war vision for development cooperation by developing the International Development Goals (IDGs) in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and in promoting a consensus around them. In 2003, he played a pivotal role in transforming the IDGs and the Millennium Declaration goals into a single vision which we know today as the Millennium Development Goals. He was an adviser to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Helsinki Process on the MDGs in the 2000s.

In the 1980s, while at Yale, Dr. Bradford played a key role in the international debate regarding the East Asian Miracles. Dr. Bradford has focused his professional life as an international economist on the relationship of developing countries to the world economy, serving ten years in the U.S. government, eight years in international institutions, and sixteen years in universities, including American University, Georgetown and Johns Hopkins SAIS. He was a presidential appointee in the Clinton administration where he was chief economist of USAID, a political appointee in the Carter administration where he was head of the office of multilateral development banks in the U.S. Treasury, and a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator Lawton Chiles (D-Florida). He held senior economic policy positions in the OECD in Paris, the World Bank and the Inter-American Committee for the Alliance for Progress. He holds a B.A. in History from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia.

Thank you, Dr. Bradford, for joining us...

COLIN BRADFORD:
Well, I thought I'd start by just saying a couple of words about the G20 itself so that one can see where Korea fits in this new scheme of things which is really potentially a dramatic transformation, certainly of summitry. And if it all works the way we'd like, it could be a transformation in the international system, as well.

As you probably know, the G8, of course, was the four European nations, plus Canada, the US, Russia and Japan. The G20 is quite different and has a different history all together. The G20, as you probably know, was brought together in the wake of the Asia crisis, and consists of ten emerging market economies plus the G8 plus Australia, importantly. The European Union has a seat there, as well. So there are ten industrial countries and ten emerging market economies.

Of the ten emerging market economies, four are in Asia. They are, of course, China and India, but also Indonesia and Korea. There are three Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico and Argentina; the three biggest ones. There are three other countries that are quite interesting: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

What we have now is an important change from the G8. It's an important change, because it contains a much more diverse group of countries and a much more representative group of countries across the world from different regions and from different cultures. There are essentially now Japan, plus Australia plus the four emerging market Asian countries; so there are six Asian countries in the G10; whereas there was only one, of course, in the G8: Japan.

There are three Muslim countries: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia in the G20, and there were none in the G8, [nor] G8 Plus Five as contemplated either. The thing I like about the representation of the Islamic world is the fact that these are, as far as I can read it...Turkey, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia themselves are very different countries; as a whole very different societies and have different versions, if you like, of Islam.

Cultural diversity is the underlying theme of this group as opposed to the G8 which was, with the exception of Japan, basically North Atlantic regional organizations made up of largely advanced industrial democracies (not really counting Russia, in that case). The point is that the degree of diversity is terrifically much larger.

Now the other thing that's important, I think, and this is where Korea's role comes in, is the fact that this grouping, the G10 grouping, has the large, powerful countries. If you take the European Union together; the United States. Then there's Russia, so you have the three, traditional powers of the past. Japan, of course [and] now China, India and Brazil, who people would say, I think, are the three largest superpowers in the emerging market grouping.

But you have a lot of intermediate powers in this larger grouping, as well. Throughout my professional lifetime, Canada has played an enormously constructive role in the world as being a multilateral, mid-sized power. Australia certainly is doing that as well, now, too. And one would have to say that of all the emerging market economies that are of a middle size, that Korea certainly has stepped up to the plate here, in this year, as they take on hosting the G20 Summit in November. They have stepped up to the plate to assert themselves in a largely multilateralist way.

One of the advantages from the point of view of the United States, from the point of view of the larger countries [is that] these middle sized powers are very successful, strong; both strong economically but also strong intellectually in terms of innovation (which is one of your themes) and strong in terms of their leadership.

Korea, [which] is certainly strong in terms of its organization and discipline and so on, can play in this kind of a setting a very strong role which I think is attractive to the international community as a whole, because they're sort of intermediaries between smaller, poor countries on the one hand and the larger, industrialized countries on the other.

But also for the superpowers, too, because I think of their mid-size. I think Australia, Korea and Canada have framed their foreign policies in a way that is much more inclusive of the interests of other countries than say larger countries who don't have to do that, for one thing; and don't normally do it because they feel that their national interests are so crucial to their own security and their own society.

I think that's the point of departure. The G20 is a big change. I think the other thing I would emphasize is that the G20 is certainly not a G8 Plus Twelve. The advantage of the fact that the G20 was chosen to do this is the fact that it has a separate history from the G8.

It's not enlargement. And so, one of the tensions that's going on now, of course, is will the G20 replace the G8? That question is made more palpable and easier to even ask because it isn't an enlargement process. The G20 does sit on its own foundation, so to speak. Those are the big advantages.

The other way to think about Korea's role in this, is to realize that at the crux of the economic crisis, some commentators would suggest—and I certainly myself believe—is it's [in part] a crisis of the Anglo-Saxon model; of sort of too much hands-off capitalism, especially in relation to the financial sector.

In the best of worlds, what's happening in the G20 Summit is a dialogue among finance ministers [and] central bank presidents which has been going on for a while, for more than ten years now, [as well as] a dialogue of leaders. Even larger than that [has been] a dialogue among societies where people are getting glimpses of how other countries are organized differently than their own.

What you see, if you participate in international institutions as I've done in my career, is that in the World Bank and the OCD and places like that, a large part of what goes on in those settings (we're usually out of the public eye) is officials gathering around tables trying to figure out what to do about a common problem, and part of what goes on is an exchange of experience and best practice. There is some selective borrowing that is going on where officials say, Oh my God, Mexico is doing something in this fashion that's really quite unique on this set of issues. Maybe there are pieces of that, that we can pull into our own system to shore it up. I mean it could be transportation. It could be any number of policy problems.

Moving that to the larger issue of the crisis is if that's the kind of thing that goes on in international settings like this, or could go on in the G20, is that the fact that there are different economic models, essentially, represented at the table by China, by India, and countries that are quite different from each other. By Korea, which is different from those two. By Australia which is certainly different than those three; and so on, around the table; nobody is really the same, if you really look at it.

My hope is that some of the countries like Korea that have had stronger and more interactive relationships between government regulatory bodies and the financial system are going to provide opportunities for other countries like the United States, for example, to learn and selectively pick strengthening measures from the Korean experience, the Chinese experience, the German experience, probably the Brazilian experience, as well; that can help the US make reforms in its financial oversight, supervision and regulatory frameworks so that "it won't happen again" in the way that it did in recent years in terms of the financial system.

This has been a pattern, quite frankly, that has been occurring ever since we went off the fixed exchange rate system. I wrote a paper back in 1998 called Chronic Global Instability which basically argued that the seventies was the oil shock; the eighties was the interest rate shock; the nineties was the capital flow shock, the Asia crisis and now we have in the naughties, to use the British term, we have a financial crisis where in each of these cases, the financial system and the real economy have gotten out of whack.

And more often than not, it's been the financial system, the price of money, for example; or capital flows; or in this case, bank and financial institution and financial market aberrations that have inflicted on the real economy of growth and jobs and incomes, shocks.

This is really the core of the crisis, and I think the G20, because of this diversity of countries that are in it can provide, at the very least, a range of ways in which countries that need to strengthen their financial regulatory systems can see how others have done it.

Now the other thing that's happened in this period, if I can just go quickly to that. I know we want to move to questions here. Maybe five minutes, Stephen? Is that right?

STEPHEN NOERPER:
Sure, that sounds good. Sure, please.

COLIN BRADFORD:
Shall I do one more segment on institutional innovations and summitry?

STEPHEN NOERPER:
Sure, absolutely. Please.

COLIN BRADFORD:
The problem was the G8 basically in a way, in this polarized world of the 21st century … And that's not just 9/11. Now we have polarized politics about everything, it seems; not only here in the United States, but around the world.

In the midst of all that, it's a globalized world, so everybody knows about everybody else. And the G8, the globalization became identified with Americanization or Westernization. If you think about it that way, the G8 was an embodiment of the West against the rest rather than an embodiment of a group of representative countries trying to do the world's business.

So one of the reasons—certainly not the only reason—why the G8 was kind of on the skids before this transformation to the G20 happened was because of this political problem. Now everybody in the G20, fortunately, is smart enough—and certainly the Koreans jumped on this right away—[to realize] that we have somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the world's population and the world's GDP represented in the G20. We [only] had something like 12 percent of the world's population and maybe 50 percent of the world's GDP in the G8.

Despite that huge leap in representativeness by moving from G8 to G20, there still remains a problem of the relationship of the G20 to the G173; that is to say between the G20 and the rest. Between the powerful, large, successful economies and the rest.

The Koreans, very astutely I think, grabbed this issue and said, "Look. We need to focus on the substantive agenda of the G20, but we also need to figure out how is it, in our period of hosting this, can we put in place measures which would somehow incorporate and involve and include the rest of the world in G20 Summit deliberations, but without expanding the size of the table?"

The hitch was there always seems to be this trade-off between effectiveness on the one hand, in which smaller like-minded groups are better, and legitimacy on the other in which case larger, more diverse groups of countries are [?? 00:14:28]. In a certain sense what the Koreans were asking was, how can we make the table larger without putting more seats at it, which of course doesn't solve [the problem].

We've been working with the Koreans since the turn of the year, actually. We held a conference here in April at Brookings. We're holding another big conference the week of September 27, a big public conference in Seoul with the Korean Development Institute. We've got some Canadian collaboration, too, from the Center of International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, which is a new Canadian think tank that has been on this G20 issue from the beginning and has assembled a wonderful network of people to try to advance it.

We've been working all together to come up with innovations; innovations which would combine increasing representativeness and legitimacy on the one hand, but preserve effectiveness. I can run through some of these, if you wish, and elaborate on this, but since it's already, according to my watch, twenty minutes or so into what was meant to be a conversation [because of] my monologue, let me, Stephen, if that's all right, stop and see if some of you want to get in on the discussion.

STEPHEN NOERPER:
Let me see if any of the people here at the table want to join in at this point. We’ll ask our participants to identify themselves and their institutions. Okay, go ahead, please.

PARTICIPANT:
I'm running sustainable development media website...

COLIN BRADFORD:
Excellent. Congratulations. I like the project.

PARTICIPANT:
Yesterday officially was the opening of the UN General Assembly. The new head of the Assembly, a Swiss gentleman, held a press conference in which he mentioned three points that will be his major issues that he intends to pursue.

Now among those three points, one of the points was to create a link between what he called the G192 and the G20. He made the point that you just said; that he, as the head of the General Assembly, must make sure that all his member states participate and they're not led by the G20, where they have no input.

Now let me also point out to you this discrepancy in numbers. You said 173 plus twenty which ends up with 192. Now here we created the problem, I guess, of the position of the European Union, is that becomes like an additional state.

Now the question is really if the G20 when you count, includes the EU as one of the twenty; that means that you have nineteen plus EU or you have twenty plus EU.

COLIN BRADFORD:
Well, no it's nineteen plus EU. Good for you. You're onto the right question.

PARTICIPANT:
By the way, he also mentions the question of the request by the EU of a special status at the UN. I'm just following up on this. That could open a can of worms because what about the AU? What about the Islamic organization? What about all kind of other groups like that? And where do we go with this?

COLIN BRADFORD:
Well, it's an excellent question, and it's not easy to answer. Let me assure you.

The dilemma, just to pick up on this smaller point about do you seat the EU or not? The advantage of doing that, of course, is that if we could get the Europeans, for example, to accept not just adding the EU to say the UN or especially to the IMF boards and World Bank boards …

If the Europeans would be willing, and can get themselves to realize that it's actually, perhaps, to their advantage to have one seat in the World Bank and the IMF in which all of Europe is represented, it would do two things. It would consolidate the European position; but importantly, for the rest of the world, it would open up seats for other countries around the table which would be an important thing to do.

There's a dilemma here. I realize you're opening a can of worms, as you said, by if you seat the EU, you've got to seat the AU, and so on. Well, we've thought about this, too, in summitry. If the EU is there, why not the AU, and then that would at least bring Africa to the table more than South Africa does; although the South African government tries to represent Africa in the G20; but most Africans don't feel that it works.

I think it's a conflicted situation about that particular question. Myself, I think I'd err on the side of including these regional representations as a stepping stone towards finally then, in some context like the G20 and like the boards of international institutions, forcing consolidation around those regional heads rather than having them take up other seats, if you see what I mean, so that still more countries can be represented. That's just a minor part of it.

It's interesting that the Swiss head of the General Assembly made this remark. The only phrase that I objected to is that somebody has to lead this world. We need an effective summit grouping. Everybody cannot be at this table, as we all learned in Copenhagen, unfortunately; but it was clear before Copenhagen. We can't have 192 countries trying to decide all the major things like financial regulatory reform and global macroeconomic policy and so on. We can't have everybody there physically. Everybody has to figure out ways to fit their ideas into channels which lead to decisions; not just debate and discussion.

One of the things I have really pushed very hard on, and made myself unpopular in some circles, even in Brookings, is that the table should not get larger; that twenty is enough. Twenty, in fact, some would argue is too much. I don't think it is. But I do think that twenty-two, three, four, five is too much; so when The Netherlands and Spain show up, it's a problem. When the Nordics petition for a Nordic seat, it's a problem. I tried to dissuade them from it, but didn't succeed, I don't think. If they aren't pursuing it, it's not because of what I wrote them.

If you see what I'm getting at, there is a problem. There's some people who feel we should go back to a G8; maybe not the G8 that we had, but a G8 which I think would be too small. I mean, this whole advantage that I tried to outline for you about the advantage to the world and to the bigger countries and to the smaller countries of having mid-sized powers there and having a greater diversity in what's represented around that table is important. I think we're lucky that the G20 composition is as good as it is.

That leads to the question of what sorts of things can you do [in this institutional innovation area] to bring the 173 into the process that surrounds the twenty. The G20 isn't everything. I mean, there are lots of other things going on where decisions get made. But it now is an important leadership forum, and the stronger it is, and the more representative and effective it is, the better for everybody, I think.

Just to give you a couple of quick, easy examples. There are regional summits every year. One thought we've had is that you, in thinking about the French summit next year, is you pick an issue: the reform of the international monetary system is one of the things that's on Sarkozy's mind. Well, that's a perfect issue because it's a long run issue. It's not going to get decided in France in 2011, but it's certainly going to get discussed there, and it would be important to know what the rest of the world thinks about this by region, because sometimes there are currency arrangements in regions.

You could say to the regional summits that are planned between now and the summit next fall somewhere in France that the regional summits should reserve some of their time, in the next year, to prepare and discuss regional positions on the international monetary system.

As they prepare those positions, they should try to form regional positions in the first instance, which isn't probably all that easy, but do it; and then write it up and have the regional UN agencies or some of the think tanks in major countries that participate in the regional—or the governments themselves—write a paper and push it into the [?? 00:24:46] and finance ministry stream of the G20. And then the G20 has to have a process which reserves time and space and so on, in their agenda and their process to read, reflect and incorporate perspectives and ideas that are coming from these regional summits that they prepare for the French.

And the agenda in the French G20 Summit itself is a very simple thing which I already suggested to the Koreans, which is you just say, "Okay. We're going to have three hours discussion among the leaders on the international monetary system. We're going to take one hour of that and we're going to explicitly expose the leaders to these regional viewpoints that have come from the regional summits." You haven't changed the number of people.

Then this is tied to the issue of having a secretariat for the G20. If you formed a secretariat, I could go into the details of how you would and wouldn't do that. [Our idea is that it] would be made up of officials from the troika that would be moved to capitals. It would move from Seoul to France to Mexico, essentially, over the next three years. You've got officials there from the three troika countries. One of their priorities would be to process different perspectives coming from the rest of the world, including from regional summits.

You could set this up so that you haven't changed the number of countries at the table. The G20 Summit goes on with twenty, but the twenty have been penetrated by the views coming from regions about this very critical issue. Of course, it's not going to get decided in France, so there's plenty of other times and there are other channels that governments can use to push their views forward. Just the fact that you're not at the table doesn't mean that you can't get your view there.

[I don't think it really matters] if somebody has a good idea about the international monetary system and they happen to be Belgian or from Belize or from Burundi. People are looking for a good idea. It doesn't have to come from China or the US or Europe. Powerful ideas don't just come from powerful people or powerful countries. They come from [anybody] and anywhere that's organized enough to generate good ideas, and Korea is certainly one of those places.

It took too long to explain that, but I think you can see that that's just one of a bunch of good ideas we've had, but it's a fairly clear one where I think you can meet the head of the General Assembly's idea without thinking about, Geez, we've got to get the United Nations conclave of 192 countries to look at the international monetary system.

I shudder to think about what the hell that would be like. I mean, I just can't imagine every country having a different view and trying to process that and listen to it and then list it into some sort of conclusive policy recommendations. It seems like this idea of going region by region could work.

STEPHEN NOERPER:
We're going to have to conclude and go to Hong Kong in just a moment, but I did just want to give you the opportunity to conclude with any notes you might have in terms of how you see this by way of Korea's economic and political role in the region. I know you've made very lucid comments about the rise of middle level diplomatic powers and their contribution which is of tremendous interest here at the Korea Society. Any concluding thoughts toward that area? We thank you for your time and your really superb, superb presentation this morning.

COLIN BRADFORD:
In my studying of Korea in the eighties, you couldn't help but be impressed by the dynamism. And the dynamism didn't just come from markets. It came from leadership: Leadership in the private sector; leadership in the banking sector; leadership in policy circles and intellectual leadership, for sure.

This is a vibrant society. It's been a pleasure to go back, to be there in November of last year and May of this year. I'll go again, of course, for our meeting in September but again for the summit in November. We will produce a book, a KDI/Brookings book. If you're really interested in these things, the KDI version will be available by the time of the summit. The Brookings version will be available next year.

I think the point is that the Koreans, after all, do have the Secretary Generalship of the United Nations. The Koreans are out there and working hard. I'm just impressed.

I went to a breakfast at seven o'clock in the morning with some former leaders, including Prime Minister Lee and a former foreign minister. It was only about twelve of us [holding] a discussion like we're having right now. It was supposed to go from seven to nine. Went from seven to nine thirty.

It wasn't like this. We were all in the same room, but we had a very strong conversation. They're into it. Their leaders are very aware of this opportunity for Korea to increase its global reach, not just through trade and economics, but through ideas and through leadership and through interaction, which is what summitry, basically, is all about.

The Koreans will form a think tank on global—I'm not sure how they're going to call it—but it's basically to keep them involved in the G20 conversation. I think it's going to be a think tank a lot like CG up in Canada, myself. I don't know, for sure. People haven't told me, but they've interviewed a bunch of us to try to get input on how to do this. And their Ministry of Foreign Affairs, their Ministries of Finance, their leadership in the private sector; all these are fully aware of the global economy, the global age that we live in.

I think Korea is eager to play a leadership role; [to] punch, at least, at its weight if not above its weight in a variety of private sector and even artistic circles and so on. I think we can expect to hear from Korea just as we've heard from other mid-sized countries on a variety of issues over time.

I think it's the kind of country that takes its responsibilities to itself seriously, but also sees that it can be more effective in pursuing its own interests, much as Canada and Australia have done over the years by framing their interests in a larger conceptual way which is inclusive of the interests of other countries and the world as a whole.

I'm very upbeat about Korea, I must say. I always have been impressed, but going back now and seeing what they're doing, how they're handling this and seeing just the vibrancy of Seoul itself; it's an amazingly powerful, dynamic place. I think the future looks good.