Since the late 1990s an increasingly critical global movement has come into existence, mobilising against the G8 and its agenda. It questions and challenges the role of this self-formed club, the basis of its governance, the authority it tends to assume and its hegemonic power. The G8 leaders are held responsible by their critics for being, inter alia, decisive actors in creating a global architecture based on a neoliberal paradigm. But often the analysis of the context and its consequences is secondary to political activism.
The collection of interventions presented here is part of a bigger volume published in German on occasion of the G8 Summit in June 2007. It deals with topical issues for debate beyond the meeting in the German coastal town of Heiligendamm at the Baltic Sea.