Group of Seven in the context of "Intergovernmentalism"

Japan is a great power and a member of numerous international organizations, including the United Nations (since 1956), the OECD, and the Group of Seven. Although it has renounced its right to declare war, the country maintains Self-Defense Forces that rank as one of the world's strongest militaries. After World War II, Japan experienced record growth in an economic miracle, becoming the second-largest economy in the world by 1990. As of 2021, the country's economy is the third-largest by nominal GDP and the fourth-largest by PPP.

Japan has close economic and military relations with the United States, with which it maintains a security alliance. The United States is a major market for Japanese exports and a major source of Japanese imports, and is committed to defending the country, with military bases in Japan.

The Quint is an informal decision-making group consisting of the United States and the Big Four of Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom). All the countries forming it are allies and members of NATO, the OECD and the G7/G20.

The United States, France and the United Kingdom are nuclear-weapon states, while Germany and Italy are part of the nuclear weapons sharing program.

The Group of Eight (G8) was an intergovernmental political forum from 1997 to 2014, formed by incorporating Russia into the G7. The G8 became the G7 again after Russia was expelled in 2014 after the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The forum originated with a 1975 summit hosted by France that brought together representatives of six governments: France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, thus leading to the name Group of Six or G6. The summit came to be known as the Group of Seven in 1976 with the addition of Canada. The European Union (or predecessor institutions such as the European Economic Community) was represented at the G8 since the 1980s as a "nonenumerated" participant, but originally could not host or chair summits. Russia was added to the political forum from 1997, which the following year became known as the G8. In 2005, the UK government initiated the practice of inviting five leading emerging markets – Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa – to participate in the G8 meetings that came to be known as G8+5.

The Big Four, also known as the E4 or G4, refers to France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. France and the United Kingdom are official nuclear-weapon states and are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power of veto, which enables any one of them to prevent the adoption of any "substantive" draft Council resolution, regardless of its level of international support. The United Kingdom is the only country of the Big Four which is not a member state of the European Union, having ended its membership in 2020, pursuant to a referendum held in 2016. France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom are considered major European powers and they are the Western European countries individually represented as full members of the G7 and the G20. They have been referred to as the "Big Four of Europe" since the interwar period.

The term G4 was used for the first time when French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a meeting in Paris with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to consider the response to the 2008 financial crisis and the Great Recession. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development describes them as the "Four Big European Countries".