Interpreting civil society engagement with the G20: the qualified inclusion of the 2014 Civil 20 process

The G20 (Group of Twenty) has emerged as an important site of policy coordination of its member governments and has engaged various social sectors via the development of G20 outreach groups, including the Civil 20. The key issue is whether the Civil 20 outreach process has enabled the inclusion of civil society perspectives into the G20 process. In order to analyse whether the Civil 20 process is significant, this article considers how this outreach process operated during Australia's presidency of the G20 in 2014. It does so by utilizing an interpretivist approach to identify the prominent narratives involved in the G20 by focusing upon the key policy statements from the outreach groups and interviews with participants of the Civil 20 process. This article argues that the Civil 20 process in 2014 included civil society perspectives more actively than in the past but was a qualified form of civil society inclusion.