The Brics

"Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China is often considered to be an alternative, antagonistic force to Western imperialism - yet in reporting from fronts as diverse as financial regulation, climate negotiations, minerals extraction or even World Cup soccer, leading political economists in this book show how the BRICS are accommodating and even amplifying the worst features of global capitalism"--

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?

This book examines the direction of the BRICS association. Beginning with historical analyses of the broader Global South and the fundamental composition of the BRICS countries and then moving on to present trends, The BRICS Order evaluates the variables that will influence the association’s future. While the BRICS as a forum emerged as a result of the visible fragmentation of the post-1945 world order, it itself remains dogged by issues emanating from internal divergences among member states and from external factors. The contributors interrogate the extent to which this formation of “emerging economies” is indicative of a challenge to the West, or in fact a complimentary relation. Integral to these studies – which encompass examinations of such diverse areas as governance systems, issues in bilateral relations, security threats, multilateral institution building, the transnational creation and dissemination of knowledge, and technological innovation – are patterns of convergence and divergence which render the countries not a formal alliance, but as signifiers of a multilateral future in which the West is itself to become more heterogeneous and thus become occasionally complemented depending on the vacillating consensus within the BRICS association and on the interests of the BRICS countries at different points in time.

The world is in an era of great transformations. Globalization, transnational capitalism, September 11, the 2008 global financial crises, and the emergence of the ’second world’ in general and the BRICS in particular are characterized by a diffusion of power away from the traditional North Western powers and towards the global South. Such great transformations have reshaped the terrain and parameters of social, economic and political relations both at the national and the global levels and have exerted pressure on the exiting international order in terms of both opportunities and constraints. This new era also urges the need for re-conceptualizing the changing world order especially with regard to one of the core conceptual categories and analytical apparatus in the studies of IR and IPE - hegemony. The world will witness a new era of interdependent hegemony, in which both the existing ’First World’ and the emerging ’Second World’ are intertwined in a constant process of shaping and reshaping the international order in the nexus of national interest, regional orientation, common economic and political agenda, political alliance and potential conflicts. This collection juxtaposes, from different perspectives and approaches, the discussion on the political economy of the emerging world order with a focus on the rising powers.

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.

In the past ten to twenty years the global political economy picture has dramatically changed with the emergence of the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and, notably, China (BRICs) as big players and competitors of the advanced economies in the West and Eastern Asia. The book comparatively analyses institutional change in the BRICs. This book examines the BRICs by analysing their institutional development, their main continuities and changes, and their differences. It provides a comparative analysis of the political economies of the BRICs, but also considers South Africa and Turkey. The contributors provide a systematic comparison of the state-economy and the capital-labour relationships and explore whether they liberalized or followed a specific trajectory. The book also addresses debates on the varieties of capitalism and explores whether the emerging economies fit into the dichotomous construction of liberal and coordinated capitalism or whether they require a more differentiated typological approach. Moving away from rigid conceptions and the static classification of political economies as either liberal or coordinated and presenting a more open approach, The BRICs and Emerging Economies in Comparative Perspective will be vital reading for students and scholars of comparative political economy, international relations, capitalism, the BRICs, emerging markets and the role of the state in the economy.

This book stems from the CyberBRICS project, which is the first major attempt to produce a comparative analysis of Internet regulations in the BRICS countries – namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The project has three main objectives: 1) to map existing regulations; 2) to identify best practices; and 3) to develop policy recommendations in the various areas that compose cybersecurity governance, with a particular focus on the strategies adopted by the BRICS countries to date. Each study covers five essential dimensions of cybersecurity: data protection, consumer protection, cybercrime, the preservation of public order, and cyberdefense. The BRICS countries were selected not only for their size and growing economic and geopolitical relevance but also because, over the next decade, projected Internet growth is expected to occur predominantly in these countries. Consequently, the technology, policy and governance arrangements defined by the BRICS countries are likely to impact not only the 3.2 billion people living in them, but also the individuals and businesses that choose to utilize increasingly popular applications and services developed in BRICS countries according to BRICS standards. Researchers, regulators, start-up innovators and other Internet stakeholders will find this book a valuable guide to the inner workings of key cyber policies in this rapidly growing region.

Annotation Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa represent almost 18% of the world economy, with their contribution to world growth having already exceeded 50%. But what does the emergence of the BRICS mean for global politics? Andrew Cooper discusses the BRICS as a concept and its practice in global politics.