THOMAS G. WEISS| ECOSOC IS DEAD and bottles, but perhaps a better metaphor is George Bernard Shaw’s description of a second marriage—the triumph of hope over experience. We need to get more from ECOSOC and the system through centralization and consolidation rather than hoping for the best from ad hoc serendipity and fortuitous personal chemistry. If donor countries would back their rhetoric with cash, then consolidation and centralization rather than endless chatter would result. The mobilization of “coherence funds” for use by UNDP resident coordinators for the eight country experiments with “Delivering as One” appear to have been crucial carrots to foster more centralization and seem to have worked. But donors normally are inconsistent; their contrariness in the various corridors of UN organizations is legendary. The very countries that bemoan the world organization’s incoherence also field delegations to different UN entities, which acquiesce in widening mandates and untrammeled decentralization of responsibilities to an increasingly chaotic and competitive field network. 4. Emphasizing Comparative Advantage Not Defensiveness Rather than being defensive and feeling uneasy about the maturation of the G-20, ECOSOC needs to think hard about its own comparative edge. Rather than viewing the new powerhouse as a threat, the UN in general and ECOSOC in particular should think of the relationship as symbiotic and not competitive. More generally, it is crucial to augment different country configurations for different problems and to stop insisting on fixed memberships, and especially universal participation, for every agenda item. Minilateral forums will not replace universal ones, but the former can galvanize progress in the latter. To date, reactions in ECOSOC and elsewhere in UN circles have been to look for ways to ensure that the United Nations and the 172 states that are non-G-20 members are included at the“high table.” Predictably, several non-G-20 states formed the Global Governance Group(3G); cries of illegitimacy and exclusion were omnipresent. Mention of a possible secretariat for the G-20(rather than the ad hoc organizational measures of changing host countries) sends shivers down the UN’s institutional spine. Many if not all global challenges require global norms, policies, institutions, and compliance. As such the universality of the United Nations and the resulting legitimacy of its decisions remain enduring political strengths. The most pressing question for ECOSOC is, how can G-20 deliberations help it and the UN perform better and reform faster? In the midst of the 2008–09 financial and economic meltdown, the G-20 shifted away from being a photo­op for finance ministers and became a serious institutional actor. Decisions in spring 2009 not only resulted in the infusion of substantial funds into the International Monetary Fund but also gave life there and at the World Bank to long-sought governance reforms that provide more representation for developing countries. These results benefited all 192 UN member states. Complaints about the G-20 process are hollow if the outcome is a more stable global economic order in which all countries and even ECOSOC can pursue other objectives. Indeed, the one­state-one-vote interpretation of Charter Article 2 is merely one way to frame the sovereign equality of states and desirable routes to enhanced global governance. With 80 percent of the world’s population and 90 percent of the world’s GDP, the argument that the G-20 lacks legitimacy is far-fetched. The G-7 lacked legitimacy; the G-20 does not. If the G-20 were to develop a stance on institutional reform, no international organization could easily resist. Multilateral agreements within the United Nations will increasingly be based on“minilateral” consensus reached first among a subset of key states. A unified G­20 stance on climate change or pandemics, for example, could jump start subsequent negotiations and help garner wider consensus quickly. For years the global South along with Germany and Japan have sung in unison that the Security Council and other intergovernmental organizations represent the past and not the present. With the urgency of the Great Recession receding, the November 2010 session in Seoul reverted to the former photo-op mode. However, the G-20 and other groups could help infuse ECOSOC and the UN more broadly with political dynamics that are representative of contemporary global power to the benefit of all. 4