Historically, they were expressions of power and influence, usually by the most important country of the time. (treehugger.com)
In that role, he worked to establish an international system of peer review to promote and assess the implementation of new financial standards across the 24 most financially important countries in the world. (rotman.utoronto.ca)
But, he added, a victory was achieved already in the targets set by a host of important countries in the run - up to the meeting. (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com)