Do G8 Summits Make a Real Difference?

For the past 37 years, the annual G8 summits have generated a wide breadth of declarations and communiqués binding the leaders to hard commitments across a diverse range of global policy issues. The extent to which the G8 members comply with their annual commitments has, in recent years, become a hotly contested topic, pitting academics, politicians, policy wonks and newsmakers against each other in an effort to understand whether commitments by the G8 do, in fact, matter. Given this era of ongoing domestic political constraints and conflicting global demands, does the G8 have the ability and, indeed, the capacity not only to make, but also to keep the commitments its members collectively generate at their annual summits?