I read, the other day, an article about the G7, found
here, which includes the following:
"This centrality rests in part on the fact that membership in the G7 has been fixed since 1977. The original six which launched the group at Rambouillet in November 1975 (France, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan and Italy) were joined by Canada in 1976 and the European Community in 1977.
Since then the G7 has consistently rejected a steady succession of candidates whose capability-based claims have, in retrospect, not stood the test of time. The candidates have included Belgium and the Netherlands in the early years, Australia in the late 1970's and the early 1980's, the major developing countries invited by Francois Mitterrand to dine with the G7 before the Paris summit of 1989 (and since institutionalized as the G-15),
and more recently Spain in 1992 and Indonesia in 1993." (my emphasis added)
My question is: Why have developed countries which did not get admitted into the G7, like Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia, and Spain (or at least the first three), or for that matter, also Sweden, Austria, etc., never simply banded together to either be admitted to the G7 or, failing that, to form an alternative group of developed countries that would meet kind of in the matter of the G7? In other words, why was such a group never formed the way that there has been a group of countries (Japan, India, Brazil, and Germany) organizing themselves to lobby to become permanent members of the UN Security Council? Is it because the G7 is a much less formal organization than the UN Security Council?
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