What Is the G8?

Today, the world turns to Toyako, Japan, site of this year's G8 summit. On the Group of Eight's agenda: aid to Africa, food prices, climate change, and more. On our agenda: a look at what the G8 is and where it came from.

Basically, the Group of Eight is an ultra-exclusive club that every leader in the world would like to join. The club has no regular staff, no headquarters, and no budget. But membership does have its privileges: namely, a seat at the table where eight of the world's richest and most powerful nations address international economic and political issues.

G6, G7, G8 . . . G9?

There weren't always eight members. At the club's first official meeting, in 1975, there were only six: the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, Germany, and France. French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing revved up the "G6" by inviting the leaders of the other five countries to a meeting outside Paris that focused on economic issues.

Why the economic focus? In many ways, the new G6 was a souped-up version of the "Library Group," an informal committee of senior financial officials that had been meeting since 1973 to grapple with issues in international capitalism. The Library Group started running as the G6 when heads of state started crashing the finance ministers' parties.

The G6 turned G7 when Canada got invited in 1976. The following year, the European Union became an official observer. The G7 grew to G8 when Russia joined in 1998, after a six-year courtship. Other leaders often get invitations to the party, but none has a seat at the members-only table, not even the ones with big economies and more than a billion people (sorry, India and China).

G-Force

As with any gathering of high-ranking executives, someone else has to do most of the actual work. In the case of the G8 (as in the case of K2), the heavy lifting falls mainly to "sherpas." Named for the Nepalese guides who show Western climbers how to summit Himalayan peaks, G8 sherpas (one per nation) meet four or five times a year, hammering out agendas and overseeing agreements.

Heads of state frequently show up for the annual G8 summit with full entourages. But only sherpas (and translators) are allowed at the closed-door meetings that count most. Since no video or audio recordings of the meetings are made, the sherpas' notes provide the only record of what gets said.

If leaders need pertinent information during the meeting, they can slip notes to their sherpas, who can answer by slipping notes back. If a sherpa doesn't have an answer, he or she can quietly slip out and pass the question on to a "sous-sherpa" (two per nation) waiting patiently outside.

G-Money

Experts disagree about the G8's importance. According to John Kirton, head of the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto, "the G8 summit and supporting system have developed into the center of global governance, operating effectively, if largely invisibly, every day of the year." Others disagree, dismissing the G8 as a "ginger group," incapable of dealing with the world's real issues.

Either way, G8 membership is an enviable distinction. According to the World Bank, the G8 nations had a combined GDP of some $30 trillion in 2007. That means the G8 countries account for nearly half of the world's economic output.

Here's how the World Bank ranked the world's top 15 economies for 2007, as measured by GDP in U.S. dollars, adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). The G8 countries are in italics. (Basically, a nation's GDP is the value of all the goods and services it produces in a year. Economists adjust GDP for purchasing power parity to account for the fact that a dollar buys more in some places than it does in others.)

GDP (PPP), in trillions of U.S. dollars

United States: 13.81
China: 7.06
Japan: 4.28
India: 3.09
Germany: 2.75
Russia: 2.09
United Kingdom: 2.08
France: 2.05
Brazil: 1.83
Italy: 1.78
Spain: 1.37
Mexico: 1.35
South Korea: 1.20
Canada: 1.18
Turkey: 0.90