The Creation of Clubs: The BRIC

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In a previous post, I distinguished three bases for grouping countries. In this blog, I discuss the BRIC and its possible expansion to BRICSAM in that context.

The Creation of Clubs

States form international institutions self-consciously to achieve some objective(s). The institutions can be organized along areal or functional lines. They can be universal and include all members of some specified set or they can be clubs of subsets. Creating any institution then requires some agreement on purpose, membership, and procedure.

Most groupings emerge from the vision of political leaders and their political needs. The BRIC case was somewhat different.

Origins of the term in objective analysis

The term BRIC was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, head of global economic research at Goldman Sachs. It was a Continue reading →

Objective, Subjective, and Socially Constructed Groupings in International Politics

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BRICSAM is being proffered as a new grouping of states. Alan has written a set of excellent blogs asking whether the BRICSAM states have comparable wealth and power positions and whether all the countries fit in the same category or class. What began as a Goldman Sachs grouping of BRICs was expanded by CIGI with the addition of SAM (South Africa, Mexico and somewhat more problematically ASEAN (in some form)).

The exercise raises the question of how groupings of states emerge and how categories of states develop in international politics.

Objective Grouping

Some groupings emerge from some objective criterion. States can be assigned as elements to a set by some observable attribute: the set of nuclear powers, the set of oil producers, the set of democracies, the set of Latin America states, the Continue reading →

“BRIC by BRIC” Part I

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Whether we look at the UNSC-P5 or the industrialized G7/8, or other global governance institutions, the refrain is the same – the organization cannot get the work done given current membership. The organization neither has the economic heft, in some cases, or the diplomatic leadership, in other cases, or both, to make decisions. But constructing the path to new global governance architecture – devising membership reform – is not simple. Indeed the redistribution of power in the international system and accommodating new leadership is the key dilemma in reform. Exploring the development of G7/8 enlargement is the purpose of a paper by Timothy Shaw (his appointments span the world but currently he is at the University of the West Indies and CIGI Senior Fellow) , Agata Antkiewicz (Senior Researcher at CIGI) and Andrew Cooper (Associate Director and CIGI Distinguished Fellow) (Shaw et al.) for the economic diplomacy Project at CIGI. The paper Continue reading →

Africa’s Champion?

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South Africa is a central player in the O5. But is it a BRIC or the extension – B(R)ICSAM/BRICSAM? This a more difficult question. In CIGI Distinguished Fellow Andy Cooper’s Heiligendamm Process Project, we have been fortunate to have Brendan Vickers join us and prepare a chapter on South Africa (SA) entitled, “South Africa: Global Reformism, Global Apartheid and the Heiligendamm Process.” Brendan, by the way, is currently a senior researcher in the multilateral programme at the Institute for Global Dialogue in South Africa (IDG). Before his appointment to IDG, Brendan was Deputy Director responsible for International and Trade in the Office of the President of South Africa.

On economic leverage, it would appear that SA is simply too small to be part of BRICSAM. Currently, SA has a GDP (PPP) of only USD$467 billion which places it as the 25th largest economy in the world. As Brendan suggest, “… there is little objective economic rationale for the country’s inclusion into the O5, let alone an expanded G13.” Brendan characterizes SA as a middle-income developing country with many of the development problems that this brings. Indeed, as he points Continue reading →

A First Meeting at Yekaterinburg

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For me Yekaterinburg evokes Russian history and the events of the Russian Revolution. But it now calls forth a different, and much more contemporary event. On May 16th, the 4 Foreign Ministers of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and Mexico) met together formally for the first time. As we have pointed out in these blog posts, the time would seem to raise critical questions on the evolution and integration of the BRICs and B(R)ICSAM into new or reformed organizations and institutions of global and regional governance. In recent blog posts we’ve begun to report on Distinguished CIGI Fellow, Andy Cooper’s economic diplomacy Project examining the path of interaction and possible enlargement of the G7/8 with the structured dialogue of the Heiligendamm Process (HP). Discussions abound over the possible creation of any of the following: the G9 or 10 or G13 or an earlier enlargement the L20. These are exciting global governance possibilities Continue reading →

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Declinism

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The conversation about BRICSAM takes place against the backdrop of assessments about the international system. And the problem is that there is an ever-present cottage industry extrapolating from short terms dynamics to make sweeping generalizations about the course of the history, and it is typically wrong. Put differently, we are experiencing yet another wave of declinism.

In the late 1950s, the fear was that US was being overtaken by the Soviet Union. Sputnik signaled the inadequacy of American science and high Soviet growth rates (contrasted with anemic US growth and three Eisenhower recessions) would eventually mean that Soviet GNP would exceed that of the US.

Beginning in 1970 with Herman Kahn’s The emerging Japanese superstate, Americans were subjected to two decades Continue reading →

Brazil In or Out Part II

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Just before I get to Brazil, I want to let readers know that through some technological blogging magic, we are able here at Rising BRICSAM to allow guest contributors to add blog posts. Look for my colleague Art Stein, Professor of Political Science, UCLA to guest contribute very shortly. Hopefully others will follow where appropriate. And now back to Brazil.

In an earlier blog post I examined the economic leverage that Brazil brings to the table. Looking principally at Denise Gregory and Paulo Roberto de Almeida’s Brazil chapter – “Brazil and the G8 Heiligendamm Process,” (I apologize to Paulo. In an earlier blog post I identified him with CEBRI where his co-author Denise is the Executive Director but he is formally, Diplomat and Professor at Uniceub, Brasilia) a research chapter in Andy Cooper’s CIGI Project on Economic Diplomacy and specifically on the Heligendamm Process and the O5. In addition, I took note as well of the Brazil Chapter from the Continue reading →

Definitions and Scope of International Organizations and Institutions

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Global governance is a major question surrounding the Rising BRICSAM at least as we see it at the BRICSAM Community Portal. It’s necessary to understand the organizational and institutional history of global organizations and institutions to appreciate fully the possible roles of BRICSAM. A useful article to aid such understanding comes from my old friend (and I do mean old since the friendship goes back to the world of Cornell undergraduate in the ‘Age of Revolution.’) Arthur A. Stein at UCLA. In his “Neoliberal Institutionalism” appearing in the forthcoming (in fact Amazon is telling me that it will be out in September) Oxford Handbook on International Relations (full cite below) undertakes an intellectual history of international organizations. Early on Art makes clear the evolution and path of the subfield of international organization. As he argues, “The original post-1945 focus was on international organizations, concrete entities with a physical presence – names, addresses, etc. …This rather narrow conceptualization was broadened with a focus on regimes, defined Continue reading →

The US Element in the Global Governance Equation

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A number of us were fortunate enough to join host Steve Paikin in his public affairs program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin discussing the ‘heady’ topic of international order. Steve by-the-way, for any of you conversant with the world of public intellectual inquiry is Canada’s answer to Charlie Rose (And I might add, just as cute). Anyway, with producer Daniel Kitts leading the charge, three of the chapter authors from Can the World be Governed? Possibilities for Effective Multilateralism joined Steve for an hour of discussion and debate on this topic. The group included Dick Rosecrance, Harvard University, Dan Drezner, The Fletcher School, Tufts University, Patricia Goff from CIGI and Wilfrid Continue reading →

Brazil: In or Out – Part I

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It’s a persistent question – is this new large emerging economy a member of the group – Rising BRICSAM – and if so, how? Brazil is frequently subjected to this inquiry. Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Amijo undertook exactly that inquiry in the formerly mentioned Asian Perspective on the BRICS. The article by Paulo Sotero and Leslie Elliott Armijo, “Brazil: To be or not to be a BRIC?” pp. 43-70. An equally insightful analysis on Brazil has been prepared recently for Continue reading →