BRICS: Evolving into a Vehicle for Inclusive Multilateralism?
Summary
- BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is a group of major emerging economies that seeks to reform global governance and foster alternatives to established financial institutions.
- First convened in 2009, BRICS has gradually expanded its cooperation areas beyond economics to include various new sectors, such as security, energy, infrastructure, science, technology, digital economy, healthcare, and green development.
- BRICS operates as a flexible intergovernmental organization without a permanent secretariat or founding charter, and functions through consensus-based decision-making, guided by implicit, semi-codified internal rules.
- While the five original members share common goals, diverging ambitions exist for the direction and role for BRICS as an organization.
- In 2023, BRICS invited six new members – Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates – further growing its share of global GDP, international markets, and natural resources. - By opting for horizontal expansion, BRICS has partly eschewed deeper vertical integration, signaling a different growth and cohesion strategy compared to the G7.
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