A recent news report

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/03/g20-fails-agree-free-trade-endorsement-170318143522663.html

about the finance ministers' G20 summit that took place in Germany in mid-March implied that the communique's failure "to endorse free trade" and reject "protectionism" was attributable to "US opposition," specifically to Trump's "anti-globalization agenda."1

This interpretation of the communique raises two design questions:

1) is it reasonable to draw inferences from what is not said (or, in this case, from there being only a "token reference" about "the need to strengthen the contribution of trade to the economy"), as opposed to what is said; and

2) since that meeting was the only meeting since Trump was inaugurated, how reasonable is it to draw an inference from an N of 1? To answer these questions, put forward a hypothesis (be sure you specify a mechanism) about how groups of states, operating by consensus, deal with a strong disagreement by one of their members: do the states ignore the disagreement, gloss over it, acknowledge it, or do something else? Then assess that hypothesis for both G20 and another group (see below).

For G20, assume that the US started to dissent on trade only after Trump was inaugurated as president. Then look at the G20 finance ministers' communiques from the first meeting in December 1999 to the present (look only at the finance ministers' communiques, not the deputies' meetings or other statements), coding each communique in NVivo as to the way it discusses free trade and/or protectionism. You can find the communiques here: http://www.g20.utoronto.ca/ministerials.html; be sure you justify your coding in terms of your hypothesis.

For a second group, look at how the G7/G8 states dealt with Russian dissent over Syria policy from 2011 until the present (keep in mind that Russia was expelled from the group prior to the 2014 summit). Look at the communiques -- http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/summit/index.htm -- from the leaders' summits, focusing on the paragraph or paragraphs dealing with Syria, and code those paragraphs in NVivo as to whether, and if so, how explicitly, they condemn the Syrian government. Again, be sure you justify your coding.

Evaluate the hypothesis, then (at least provisionally) show how it helps, or doesn't help, to answer the two questions above. In your response, be sure to discuss the appropriate unit of analysis in which the mechanism should be observable and the corresponding issue of sampling for both questions, then, at the end of the paper, propose one or more other sampling strategies, for the two groups of countries, that might (also) help answer each of the two questions (there could be one sampling strategy for question 1 and another for question 2).

Papers must be double spaced, in Times New Roman 12-point font, with 2 cm margins all around; be sure to number your pages and include your names. Papers, along with .nvp or .nvpx files,

See also this Financial Times piece:

https://www.ft.com/content/241cdf2a-0be9-11e7-a88c-50ba212dce4d and this Op-Ed piece by Stuart

Eizenstat:

https://origin-nyi.thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/finance/324674-g20-sees-role-reversal-of-us-euro-leaders-on-protectionist