Brics Or Bust

Once among the fastest developing economies, growth has slowed or stalled in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. What policies can governments enact to jump-start the rise of these middle-income countries? Hartmut Elsenhans and Salvatore Babones argue that economic catch-up requires investment in the productivity of ordinary citizens. Diverging from the popular narrative of increased liberalization, this book argues specifically for direct government investment in human infrastructure; policies that increase wages and the bargaining power of labor; and the strategic use of exchange rates to encourage export-led growth. These measures raise up the majority and finance future productivity by driving broader consumption and fostering investment within national borders. Though strategies like full employment, mass education, and progressive taxation are not especially controversial, none of the BRICS have truly embraced them. Examining barriers to implementation, Elsenhans and Babones find that the main obstacle to such reforms is an absence of political will, stemming from closely guarded elite privilege under the current laws. BRICS or Bust? is a short, incisive read that underscores the need for demand-driven growth and why it has yet to be achieved.

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?

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Vai Io Lo and Mary Hiscock, together with scholars and researchers from around the world, investigate the rise of the BRICS and assess the extent of their further development and influence from the perspectives of

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.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - General and Comparisons, grade: 1,3, Ruhr-University of Bochum (Fakultat fur Sozialwissenschaften), course: Emerging Powers in International Affairs, language: English, abstract: About ten years ago, Jim O'Neil at the well-known investment bank Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRIC for four emerging countries that were regarded to have a common potential of shaping global markets in the not-too-distant future: Brazil, Russia, India and China. In 2003, Goldman Sachs published a report named "Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050." Its key message was that the economies of these four countries together, which at that time made up only 15% of the global economy, could by 2050 be larger than those of the (former) G6. They claimed that, given that their predictions come true, the list of the world's major economies could look very different from today's in less than 40 years - a perspective which must naturally have an influence on investing behavior around the globe (see Wilson, Purushotaman 2003). The reasons for these expectations were the BRICs economic growth rates, which topped those of the industrialized nations by far, as well as their huge share of global population which promised emerging masses of consumers. In 2010, Goldman Sachs could proudly announce the fulfillment of their 2001 predictions (Wilson et al.). The past decade had indeed seen a rise in political and economic power of these emerging countries, so, according to Goldman Sachs, there were no reasons to doubt that the BRICs future growth would as well be satisfying their forecasts (ibid. 2). Another report from December 2009, which concentrated on the BRICs' survival of the global financial crisis had even confirmed that these countries (with the sole exception of Russia) were emerging healthier from it than the industrialized world - a development which gave reason to expect yet better long-term performance than they ha

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.

As the Eurozone faces an uncertain future and Obama struggles to demonstrate that America still has a superpower status, this book challenges the widespread perception that Brazil, Russia, India and China are becoming global economic and political powers, instead forecasting a decline rooted in excessive inequality and insufficient innovation.

This handbook presents a comprehensive and multi-faceted analysis of the BRICS countries and other emerging economies, exploring their economic, social, environmental, and governance dimensions and challenges.

In the early 21st century, five rising powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) formed an exclusive international club, the BRICS. Although not extreme revisionists, the BRICS recognize an ongoing global power shift and contest the West's pretensions to permanent stewardship of the existing economic order. Together they exercise collective financial and monetary statecraft to achieve larger foreign policy goals. The BRICS share common resentments-of U.S. dominance of the global financial system, of playing junior roles in economic governance, and of serving as frequent targets of financial sanctions. They also share common objectives, such as obtaining greater financial autonomy and influence within the Bretton Woods institutions. Their financial statecraft ranges from pressure for the internal reform of international organizations and markets to operating outside the system through the creation of both new multilateral institutions and opportunity structures in international financial markets. To the surprise of many observers, the joint actions of the BRICS have been largely successful. The BRICS' future depends not only on their bargaining power and ability to successfully adjust to market shifts, but also on their ability to overcome domestic impediments to sustainable economic growth, which is the ultimate basis for their international influence.

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.