Social Network Analysis of G20 members

What is G20?

G20 or Group of Twenty is a premier committee or league of members for international economic cooperation and decision making. It consists of 19 countries and European Union. 19 countries include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States. G20 was started in 1999 as a meeting of Financial Ministers and Central Bank Governors after the aftermath of Asian financial crisis. First G20 summit was held in 2008 where they played a key role in responding to global financial crisis by taking decisive and directed actions and thus supporting the first stage of economic recovery. G20 leaders meet annually and they met twice in 2008 and 2009 after the global financial crisis. Financial ministers and CB Governors meet regularly during the year to discuss ways to strengthen the global economy, reform international financial institutions, improve financial regulation and implement the key economic reforms that are needed in each member economy.

Success so far..

Toronto summit, June 2008. G20 deficit economies would at least halve fiscal deficits by 2013 and stabilize or reduce sovereign debt ratios by 2016.
Seoul Summit, November 2008. Address large current account imbalances under the Framework for Strong, Sustainable and Balanced Growth, delivered on International Monetary Fund(IMF) quota and governance reforms and made important progress on international financial safety nets.
Cannes Summit, November 2011. Prepared country-specific Cannes Action Project for Growth and Jobs, ensure European Financial Stability Facility, strengthen International Trade Negotiation.
Los Cabos Summit, June 2012. Pledged to increase IMF by $456 billion, Trade facilitation and streamline accession procedure for least developed countries.
St. Petersburg Summit, September 2013. Reforms on achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth, Accountability Assessment, endorsed OECD-created Action Plan aimed at tax base erosion and profit shifting.
Brisbane Summit, November 2014. Attract private infrastructure investment, reform global financial systems, strengthen tax systems, strengthen energy market resilience, fight corruption.

G20 Turkey Summit, 2015

Inclusiveness which includes both domestic and global dimensions. For this, emphasize on issues related to SMEs, gender equality in employment and address youth unemployment.
Implementation that comprises implementing 1000 commitments that are expected to increase the international GDP by US$ 2 Trillion and create millions of additional jobs by 2018.
Investment to be emphasized as a powerful tool for growth, address investment gaps between member countries by using concrete investment strategies.

How SNA is useful in developing economy

Social networks can influence economic decisions in our everyday life. Same way it can also affect the economy of any country, developed, developing or least developed. Since developing countries need to learn from examples set by developed countries and implement the actions, they must communicate with as many nations and as frequently as possible. Networks undergo rapid changes, with very few remaining the same over a period of time. According to a research, it is easier to study a network in developing nation as compared to developed nation because the former lacks external source of information. In developing countries, economic development is dependent on its social network and vice-versa, it's social network can change according the development it is undergoing. As a matter of fact, word-of-mouth plays a critical role in making networks, i.e. the personal interactions define how and how soon will be develop.For example, your networks can provide you with a job or an opportunity whereas lack of it might prevent you from learnings that can affect economic outcomes.

The idea of SNA and G20 summits

The concept behind G20 summits and Social Network analysis is to check the connection between Financial Ministers and Central Bank Governors of all the member countries and see how frequently do they communicate with each other. The idea is to determine if the meetings between these ministers led to success of the targets of each summit. Since G20 is the premium committee for economic development of the world, all the ministers hold high responsibility in making efforts to reach out to each other and help as much as they can. When it comes to development of world economy, the challenge is to bring out all the member countries together considering their personal conflicts and make them work on the same ground.
It may be common for the Financial Ministers of a country to be country-centered and work towards improving the GDP of their own nation but on the ground of world economy they need to forgo the selfish motives and work towards improving the global economy.

Data Collection and Analysis

For this, we need the communication data of all the Financial Ministers and CB Governors. From there we can link which minister communicated with which other and how frequent was the communication. Communication can include personal visits, talks over telephone or video conference or via electronic mails. Personal visits are easy to know by checking how frequently they visited the other country. Information about other two ways may pose some privacy issues as it may be termed under privacy intrusion. But if the data is being used for analyzing the economic development, it should be the ministers' responsibility to be be open to give the required information. 

Centrality: High centrality of a member would mean more members are approaching him for advice or he is the person being trusted the most with inside information of other nations.

InEigenvector: These members have more members coming in for advice or they are being approached more often than others. They can be assumed as developed nations.

OutEigenvector: These members seek out more for advice from others. They can be assumed as developing or least developed nations.

Cliques: These group of members interact with each other more often as compared to other nations. They can be clubbed together as developed, developing and least developed because they might seek out each other more often because of equal state of development. 

Result of the analysis 

This analysis can be used by officials and presidency of G20 summits to deeper information about its member nations and how often are they interacting apart from the annual or bi-annual meets. This can show that the nations are taking serious and concrete measures in reaching out to each other and helping one an other in the development of global economy. Nation with low out-degree can be spoken to and asked to be more firm in their approach. 

This might not be a full proof plan to know if they are doing their best to help the global economy but it is one the major steps that can be used to G20 presidency if their summits are being taken seriously outside the country and the pledges they take during the summit are being worked on by every member nation.