Discussion on the evolution and importance of the BRICS group, highlighting new initiatives like harmonizing AI standards and currency transfers. Gustavo de Carvalho provides insights on the group's objectives and aspirations, while exploring geopolitical dynamics, new members, and future agendas. The podcast also addresses global power shifts, alternate trading systems, and challenges faced by developing nations within the international system.
The BRICS group is evolving and expanding, focusing on small but impactful initiatives in policymaking.
BRICS serves as a platform for global South voices, challenging traditional governance structures and advocating for equitable interactions.
Deep dives
Evolution of Thinking on BRICS
The dialogue explores a shift in perspective on BRICS, emphasizing its evolving nature and complex identity. The podcast characterizes BRICS as a discursive concept institutionalized over time, fostering dialogues and mechanisms beyond mere grievance airing. It highlights the group's consensus-based operations, adapting to differences among members like India and China while pursuing minimum common ground.
Importance of Small Initiatives in BRICS
BRICS' significance lies in minor, yet impactful initiatives that underpin policymaking, contrasting with grand endeavors. The conversation emphasizes the group's focus on harmonizing currencies, technology, and health matters, reflecting a pragmatic approach to policymaking and fostering tangible advancements.
Global South Voices and Structural Grievances
The podcast underscores the BRICS coalition as a platform amplifying global South voices amidst structural exclusions and frustrations within the prevailing international order. It addresses the nuanced grievances beyond anti-western narratives, portraying a quest for challenging structural limits and advocating for alternative governance architectures.
BRICS Evolution and Structural Privileges
BRICS' trajectory navigates the complexities of global governance, hinting at shifts in the global power dynamics and the emergence of parallel architectures challenging traditional structures. The emphasis lies on the need for the US and Europe to acknowledge and address structural privileges that impede equitable global interactions, shaping the narrative around BrICS as a catalyst for reshaping global governance dynamics.
The BRICS group has existed since 2009 and has done little to distinguish itself in 15 years. They created a mid-sized development bank, but other than that, the bloc's accomplishments have been rather modest.
That's now starting to change as the BRICS doubled in size to ten members, with around thirty other countries now on the waiting list.
At the latest BRICS Foreign Ministers gathering in western Russia last week, new initiatives harmonizing AI standards, currency transfers, and developing new business parks were among the issues on the agenda. While these may seem trivial in this era of war and Great Power rivalry, getting lots of small things done is actually a big deal.
Gustavo de Carvalho, a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs, is among the world's foremost scholars on the BRICS and joins Eric & Cobus from Johannesburg to discuss why it's time to start paying closer attention to this group.
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