Read the following text and in your own words summarise it in up to 200 words.

Summit meetings can have their drawbacks. The assumption that personal acquaintances between the leaders of states will forestall future conflicts has often been gainsaid by history. Summits that peacefully negotiated the settlement of conflicts seldom produced outcomes with long-term consequences. During the Cold War debate as to their value abounded. Some of the arguments fielded then still provide ammunition for critics today. How can the head of a democratic country deal successfully with the leader of a totalitarian system or dictatorship? With the main actors rooted in different cultures it is suggested that such encounters can but lead to shallow understandings. In the long term, they could actually deepen the divide. Heads of state are not experts in the highly complex matters that clutter summit agendas. They lack the diplomatic skills of professional diplomats and are often ill-prepared for these debates. Under pressure of time and the weight of expectations from the public at home, politicians are often tempted to compromise with false solutions. Since summit agreements are mostly not legally binding, statesmen do not even feel politically obliged to deliver. Critics also complain that calling summit meetings compels politicians and bureaucrats to set spurious priorities with respect to time, political resources, and energy. Nevertheless, most of these arguments can be countered. They have nothing to do with summits as such, but rather with the way these meetings are prepared and conducted as instruments of modern diplomacy.

The advantages of multilateral summitry cannot be easily measured in short-term tangible results. In the long haul, however, they certainly can render more than just an improved atmosphere for international political negotiation, although that is a value in itself if handled properly and used with the right political nous.

Summit meetings have acquired new roles and special functions. From this standpoint, I want to argue that summits are an important element of international political negotiation and yield the following benefits.

Personal contact between heads of state and government adds new factors to the equation of power. Military and economic might certainly count still, but the personality of a leader, the way he performs in debate, and the thrust of his intellect will be factored into the discussions at a summit meeting. This affords a chance to redress imbalances and to obtain results universally accepted as legitimate. After all, summitry is a democratic invention and not much to the liking of dictators.

Summit meetings have eminently practical effects. To prepare for a summit and avert failure, bureaucrats are constrained to set goals and time-frames for solutions that might otherwise have been stalled or shelved.

Summits have a legitimizing function, nationally as well as internationally. Commitments undertaken by a political leader during a summit meeting can open up new avenues in domestic political debate or provide fresh opportunities to break deadlocks. On the other hand, an agreement or even a mere understanding on the interpretation of facts reached by several heads of state also has norm-setting qualities for the international community. Such guidelines not only bind the participating nations together in implementing their policies, but also set standards for others.

To retain its useful role, however, the summit must evolve and be constantly subject to review. One expedient reform would address the problem of how to stem or reverse the current trend toward ever larger, more elaborate summits. These meetings can and should be reduced in size, the numbers of aides and fellow participants slashed and more strenuous efforts made to muffle the media spectacle surrounding the event itself.

It has become fashionable to demand greater participation by NGOs in the summit process. This is tantamount to insinuating that heads of state are out of tune with the public and not liable to democratic domestic control. The rights and duties of such organizations should be carefully defined, though. Certainly, it might help if state and non-state actors work more closely together in the future than they have to date.

Finally, it sometimes makes sense to have the broadest political participation by all states. But opening up each summit can also exact a price, impairing States' capacity to act. Likewise, if outcomes merely reflect the least common denominator, they will prove hollow. Legitimacy is not just a question of numbers.

If these considerations are heeded, summits have a bright future. In today's world, "summitry belongs to the dramaturgy of globalism which in turn pertains to the future of world politics."