Global And Regional Leadership Of Brics Countries

This book presents a systematic collation of the regional and global dimensions of the leadership role of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). It analyses the rising regional and global leadership of BRICS, using specific benchmarks to gauge the nature of this leadership. The elements examined include willingness to lead, the capacity to do as much, and the degree to which the given actor is accepted as a leader both within and beyond its region. The chapters in the book capture the nature of trends in regional and global leadership within the contexts of a changing international order. It is taken for granted that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are now engineering a unique pool of governance that is seeking alternatives to the current order of global economic and political affairs. The fact that these countries have jointly decided to forge ahead with the BRICS constellation of states that is now taking consequential decisions such as the creation of the BRICS’ New Development Bank, is not to be treated lightly. In this book the majority of papers take a step back and systematically analyse the real state of the leadership that is provided by the BRICS on a litany of regionally and globally relevant issues. While no one doubts the fact that these countries have the capacity to provide leadership especially in their various regions on many issues, what remains moot is whether they are willing and capable to do so at the global level. Even in those cases where there is the willingness and capacity, the book argues that the acceptance of such leadership by potential followers is not always a given.

When do rising powers fail to establish legitimate regional leadership and instead face contestation by their regional challengers? This book investigates how and why the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) project leadership in South America, post-Soviet Eurasia, South and Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, respectively, and in what ways their main regional challengers respond. Based on a systematic conceptualization of the types and drivers of leadership and contestation, the authors assess the impact of the rise of regional powers on weaker states’ security, sovereignty, and status, as well as the consequences of contestation for regional economic development and stability and the regional powers’ bid for greater voice in global governance. By illuminating the sources and effects of power politics in five regions that are increasingly pivotal for the emerging world order, the volume offers a global comparative analysis of contemporary regional contested leadership that will interest scholars and students of international affairs, foreign policy, and area studies.

The grouping consisting of Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) was initially meant to be nothing more than clever investment jargon referring to the largest and most attractive emerging economies. However, these countries identified with the BRIC concept, and started to meet annually as a group in 2008. At their fourth summit in 2011, they added South Africa to become the BRICS. By then the BRICS had fully morphed from investment jargon to a name for a new economic and political grouping that had the potential to challenge the unipolar hegemony of the United States and its Western allies. This work analyses the extent to which the concept of coexistence explains the individual foreign policies of the BRICS countries. The editors define coexistence as a strategy that promotes the establishment of a rule-based system for co-managing the global order. It recognizes that different states may legitimately pursue their own political and economic interests, but they have to do so within the bounds of a rule-based international system that ensures the peaceful coexistence of states. The BRICS and Coexistence addresses the political dimension of the emergence and influence of the BRICS in the international system and will be of interest to students and scholars of Politics, Development and International Relations.

We assume that the ideas, interests and strategies of regional powers are highly significant variables, with the power to influence foreign policy. Yet while comparative research projects involving OECD-countries are fairly common, comparative research integrating developing regions is still rare, despite the fact that these countries are among the key actors of the twenty-first century. This collection emphasizes the role of regional powers in intra-regional, interregional and global contexts, analyzing the rise of regional powers from a comparative perspective. In so doing, the book explains how these powers have power to shape regional and global politics.

In the wake of the post-Cold War era, the aftermath of 9/11, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the emergence of the G20 at the leaders level, few commentators expected a reshaping of the global system towards multipolarity, and away from the United States. And yet, the BRICS - encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - has emerged as a challenge to the international status quo. But what is its capacity as a transformative force? And can it provide a significant counter-narrative to the Western dominated global order? In this Very Short Introduction Andrew Cooper explores the emergence of the BRICS as a concept. Drawing on historical precedent, Cooper provides a contemporary analysis of the BRICS' practice and influence as as a forum and a lobby group in advancing a distinctive but amorphous agenda amongst global politics. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

The past few decades have witnessed the development of an increasingly globalised and multipolar world order, in which the demand for multilateralism becomes ever more pronounced. The BRICS group established in 2009, has evolved into a plurilateral summit institution recognized both by sceptics and proponents as a major participant in the international system. Addressing the BRICS’s role in global governance, this book critically examines the club’s birth and evolution, mechanisms of inter-BRICS cooperation, its agenda priorities, BRICS countries’ interests, decisions made by members, their collective and individual compliance with the agreed commitments, and the patterns of BRICS engagement with other international institutions. This volume advances the current state of knowledge on global governance architecture, the BRICS role in this system, and the benefits it has provided and can provide for world order. This book will interest scholars and graduate students who are researching the rise and role of emerging powers, global governance, China and India’s approach to global order and relationship with the United States, Great Power politics, democratization as a foreign policy strategy, realist theory-building and hegemonic transitions, and the (crisis of) liberal world order.

Exploring to what extent the BRICS group is a significant actor challenging the global order, this book focuses on the degree and consequence of their emergence and explores how important cooperation is to individual BRICS members’ foreign policy strategies and potential relevance as leaders in regional and global governance. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have come to play an important role on the global political scene. As a group, and as individual countries, they have taken initiatives to establish new institutions, and have engaged in yearly summits that coordinate their voice and focus on intra-BRICS cooperation. In this sense, the BRICS may be seen as a "balancing coalition", and often the main opposing force to Western powers. Looking at the debate around the role of the BRICS as an actor, expert contributors also explore the international political economy (IPE) of individual BRICS countries as systemically important countries with highly asymmetrical individual power capacities. The comprehensive theoretical and empirical coverage of this timely volume will be especially useful to students, researchers and professionals interested in ongoing academic debates around the IPE of emerging powers, and those researching global governance and globalization.

The transformation of the BRIC acronym from an investment term into a household name of international politics and into a semi-institutionalized political outfit (called BRICS, with a capital ‘S’), is one of the defining developments in international politics in the past decades. While the concept is now commonly used in the general public debate and international media, there has not yet been a comprehensive and scholarly analysis of the history of the BRICS term. The BRICS and the Future of Global Order, Second Edition offers a definitive reference history of the BRICS as a term and as an institution—a chronological narrative and analytical account of the BRICS concept from its inception in 2001 to the political grouping it is today. In addition, it analyzes what the rise of powers like Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa means for the future of global order. Will the BRICS countries seek to establish a parallel system with its own distinctive set of rules, institutions, and currencies of power, rejecting key tenets of liberal internationalism, are will they seek to embrace the rules and norms that define today’s Western-led order?