ABSTRACT

The objective of this chapter is to analyse the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) phenomenon from a critical perspective. This chapter is an invitation to open the debate about common understanding in mainstream International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) to understand the current transition period marked by movements of plate tectonics in the unequal and unstable social structures of the periphery countries’ development trajectory.

The leading problem of the chapter is to explore how the mainstream IR and IPE interpret the emergence of BRICS as an “economic and political formation” of the international system. In other words, we intend to question the contemporary debate of the mainstream international relations currents of thought that pose the questions: to which extent do the BRICS challenge the liberal Western order? And, how does this change affect the development and global insertion of periphery countries?

On that ground, this matter methodologically introduces us, in the first place, to the theoretical debate on “emergence” within IR and, in the second place, to analyse the relevance of the BRICS in the “emergence” process. In this respect, the BRICS phenomenon is important in the sense that its institutional evolution, founded on the collective financial statecraft, supports a set of demands regarding institutional reforms of the liberal Western order. Besides, it promotes a new normative order led by the People’s Republic of China, based on regulatory principles and South–South Cooperation (SSC), which challenge neoliberal grounds.

Our hypothesis is that this process of the BRICS’ institutional strengthening and its potential to expand as BRICS Plus is not an isolated process. Hence, it cannot be studied without taking into consideration China’s leading role in the establishment of a set of mini-lateral institutions and a multilateral one, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). These institutions paradoxically contribute to the BRICS’ subsumption into a myriad of parallel institutions created and stimulated by China.