Introduction: Summitry and governance in comparative perspective
Résumé
The rise of summitry is one of the most important changes in modern diplomacy of the last 40 years. Presidents and prime ministers everywhere have found it essential to hold face-to-face meetings to exchange views on subjects of immediate concern or to resolve urgent problems. At the global level, the numerous G7, G8, andG20 summits clearly testify to this trend, but it is also manifest both at the regional and sub-regional levels. In short, summitry has become an indispensable and ubiquitous component of contemporary world affairs. Although summits all have their own idiosyncratic properties, it is certainly useful to look at them as the expression of a generic, institutionalized form of international behavior...