https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2195-4367
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ABSTRACT
The challenge of ‘emerging’ countries in the 21st century has been conducted in a much more peaceful manner than in past eras when power transitions were most commonly accompanied by war. The hallmark of this peaceful transition has been the elevation of the G20, a forum in which established and emerging powers jointly deal with global economic issues and which – despite or precisely because of its informal character – has become the prime forum for global economic governance. Significantly, however, this new openness and flexibility of the international system and its increasing informalism have not only provided an avenue for emerging powers to be integrated into the inner circle of global economic governance, but have also allowed them to set up alternative institutions. By forming their own exclusive BRICS group in parallel to their membership in the G20, emerging powers have pursued a dualistic strategy that allows them to be simultaneously institutional ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. The article focuses on this seemingly ambiguous international behaviour and explains why the BRICS have opted for this dualistic approach. Far from being socialised into the established system, the oppositional psychology of the past has not disappeared completely.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on Contributors
Andrew F. Cooper is Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and the Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo, Canada. From 2003 to 2010 he was the Associate Director and Distinguished Fellow of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Holding a D.Phil. from Oxford University, he has been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, The Australian National University, SAIS Johns Hopkins University and Stellenbosch University. He was a Fulbright Research Chair at USC in 2009 and the Léger Fellow, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada in 1993–1994. He is the author of 8 books, including most recently BRICS VSI (OUP, 2016); Diplomatic Afterlives (Polity, 2014); Internet Gambling Offshore: Caribbean Struggles over Casino Capitalism (Palgrave, 2011); and Celebrity Diplomacy (Paradigm, 2007); He is also the editor/co-editor of 22 collections most recently the Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 2013), and Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance (Brookings, 2010). His scholarly publications have appeared in a number of prestigious journals such as International Organisation, International Affairs, World Development, and International Studies Review. His work has been profiled via ABC Good Morning America, The Independent, The Guardian, Times of India, China Daily, and the Washington Diplomat.
Christina Stolte is Assistant Professor at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany. Before gaining her position at the FAU, Christina worked as a research fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg, Germany from 2009 to 2014 and as a guest researcher at the Brazilian Centre for International Relations (CEBRI) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 2013–2014. She also worked as a desk officer at the Latin America Division of the German Federal Foreign Office from 2010–2011. Christina holds a doctorate in political science from the University of Hamburg/GIGA. Her research focus has been on South-South cooperation and rising powers of the Global South, especially Brazil. She has published a book on Brazilian international status-seeking through South-South cooperation (Brazil’s Africa Strategy, Palgrave 2015) and a number of articles and policy papers on Brazil’s Africa engagement and the BRICS grouping, including a paper at Harvard International Review on Brazilian status-seeking in Africa (HIR, 34(4) 2013).
Notes
1 The invited countries were: Algeria, Brazil, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Saudi-Arabia, Senegal, South Africa and Switzerland.
2 Russia was member of the Group of Eight (G8) between 1997 and 2014, when it got suspended from the group for the annexation of Crimea. For the time of its membership in the group, Russia had a special status, as it was added to this ‘grouping of major industrialized countries’ not for its economic power but for its geopolitical importance.
3 China, with the exception of the UN Security Council where it has held a permanent seat with veto power since 1971, was not integrated into the powerful decision-making circles in the formal and informal institutions of global governance.
4 The G20 Finance was the institutional predecessor of the G20. Founded in 1999 as a an international forum for the central bank governors and finance ministers of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union (plus Spain as a permanent guest member, invited following a vote by the community), it was elevated to the state leader’s level (G20) in 2008 against the backdrop of the GFC.
5 Based on the Social Identity Theory (SIT), which is broadly recognized as a social-psychological explanation of inter-state competition for status, there are three different, ideal-type status-seeking strategies, which are: social mobility, social creativity and social competition (Mercer Citation1995, Wohlforth Citation2009; for a critical account see: Ward Citation2017).
