Institutions vs. Regimes in Great Power Relationships. Andrey Kortunov at the Tenth Beijing Forum

... declarations mean little unless they are built on a solid foundation of expert analysis and proposals. There needs to be continuous and very practical dialogue between the experts in every single area of cooperation. It would be no exaggeration to say that international regimes only become successful when the experts and specialists representing the member states start to speak the same language. Of course, most of ‘mature’ international institutions have their own expert component – like the so called T8 and T20 (T standing for think tanks), but T8 and T20 have never played a central role in shaping the G8 and G20 agendas respectfully. The role of the expert community ...