The G8 and the G20 - Global Governance in the Club of the Chosen.

The building of the present tangled network of mutual dependency and conditioning amongst the subjects operating in the international environment may be roughly dated back to the 1970s. In that time, several major shifts occurred in the functioning of the international system, allowing thus the emerging of a genuinely 'supranational' environment of the global politics. Along with these changes, first efforts of various involved actors emerged to control and coordinate this new, chaotic, and complex environment, or, in other words, to govern on the global level. One of such attempts became the G7/8 - the group of so-called most developed industrial countries of the world of that time. In this text, I will try to show the G7/8 and other similar groups, especially the G20, as a specific means of global governance. I consider these groups an attempt of nation states to answer the fact that the ever growing number of economic transactions, security threats, and political issues passes from the national or international spheres into the so-called transnational sphere, i.e. beyond the borders and authority of the nation states. This paper focuses on evolution and transformation of this type of international governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]