Search

The trade policies of Brazil, India and South Africa have significant historical similarities: these countries are original WTO members; they adopted import-substitution industrialization; promoted neoliberal reforms; have been playing important roles in their regional contexts; and, more recently, they have also formed alliances and coalitions (IBSA, G20) in order to increase their capacity to influence the trade regime. At the same time, they are intensifying bilateral and regional ties which are different in scope and degrees of institutionalization. The result is that, despite of having similar roles which are derived from their status as middle powers, these three countries have developed different strategies concerning their trade policy. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze comparatively the trade policies of Brazil, India and South Africa in the multilateral and regional environments. Our contention is that there are significant differences in their conduct on those two levels, in such a way that it is not possible to establish a fixed pattern of trade policy amongst middle powers, at least not amongst these three. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper claims that the forging of a common identity among India, Brasil and South Africa based on their role as leaders in their respective regions is a relevant yet neglected aspect of their partnership that will ultimately determine the success of IBSA. The argument is that the foundational south identity of the IBSA initiative retains ideological elements drawn from the heyday of the confrontational politics of Non-Alignment which do not adequately (or at least do not fully) represent the contemporary political and economic context of its members. Linked to this is the fact that, while acknowledged as powers by dint of their preponderance of economic and material means, this has not translated into wide-spread recognition within their respective regions. For all these reasons, IBSA relies primarily on an elite defined form of south activism as a key source of legitimacy for its endeavors. The construction of a strong regional identity for IBSA based on its members' strategic positions in South Asia, South America and Southern Africa is, in our viewpoint, a more convincing common ground to legitimize a sustainable diplomatic partnership between the IBSA states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a theory of emerging powers and apply it to the case of IBSA, a forum of cooperation established in 2004 by India, Brazil and South Africa. We contend that emerging power is a strategic identity that derives from the inability of a hegemon or of a group of core powers to effectively impose their preferred order to the world. That inability creates a strategic position that a small number of countries can fulfill. Fulfillment of that position depends on their ability to contribute significantly to the establishment of a “minimum governance coalition.” The significance of that contribution, in turn, depends on the legitimacy they bring to global governance, the veto power they hold in the functioning of formal or informal governance mechanisms, and the regional balancing power that they bring to the resource mix on which global governance relies.We show that IBSA is a coalition of emerging powers trying to monopolize developing countries access to global governance; and 2) that their internal differences matter less to their alliance than the contribution that they make to each others’ claim to membership in the global governance club. The article is divided in two sections. The first one presents the model. The second proposes an explanation of IBSA’s emergence and of its relative success in terms of that model. This application is not a test but an illustration of the mechanics of emerging power emergence and participation in global governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a paper that examines the rise and declaration of the cooperative strategy known as trilateralism by regional leaders within the South. It gives an overview of the theoretical approaches to middle powerdom and the South, reconsiders the domestic, regional, and international factors that have conditioned the foreign policies of Brazil, South Africa and India, investigates the formation and execution of trilateralism, and concludes with an analysis of the initiative's outlooks for success in the present environment.

This paper seeks to examine the tensions between trilateralism and multilateralism in the IBSA partnership. While one of the stated goals of the partnership is multilateralism and the reform of the United Nations (IBSA Communique, 2005), the trilateral partnership that IBSA embodies appears antithetical to the representation of broader interests in each member’s region. This issue came to a head in the months preceding the debates on UN reform in September 2005, when India, Brazil and South Africa each voiced their interest in permanent representation on the UN Security Council, but failed to win the support of their regional neighbours. More recently, it is evident in the prominence of India and Brazil in exclusive trade talks with the EU and US to save the Doha Development Round. The paper draws on the middle power literature, which sees middle powers as committed to multilateralism, but problematises this commitment by considering the growing economic and strategic significance of these states. Trilateralism is not pursued to the exclusion of North-South links, as evidenced in Brazil’s and India’s increasing closeness to the US. It is thus not an alternative to robust North-South relations, as older forms of South-South solidarity (NAM and G-77) were portrayed. The paper concludes thus that the IBSA partnership is not a successor of older forms of South-South solidarity premised on multilateralism, but rather a vehicle for the development and increased levels of participation in international affairs of its three members. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American hegemony has passed its peak. The twenty-first century will see a more multi-polar international system. Yet Western European countries may not be the United States' main foils in decades to come. Four new poles of the international system are now widely known in the business and financial press as the "BRICs economies" (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Does the concept of "the BRICs" have meaning within a rigorous political science framing? From the perspective of an economic liberal employing neoclassical assumptions to understand the world economy, the category's justification is surprisingly weak. In contrast, a political or economic realist's framing instructs us to focus on states that are increasing their relative material capabilities—as each of the four is. Finally, within a liberal institutionalist's mental model, the BRICs countries are a compelling set, yet one with a deep cleavage between two sub-groups: large emerging powers likely to remain authoritarian or revert to that state, and those that are securely democratic. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international coalition formation process has played a central role in the dynamics of multilateral and regional trade negotiations, particularly as concerns the outlook for the re-balance of central-peripheral forces of the international system. The reopening of a new round of multilateral negotiations, focusing precisely on new thematic challenges regarding international trade and routes to development, reintroduces the centrality of the role of South-South alliances.In practice, cooperative efforts of this nature are already making themselves felt with the formation of a series of coalitions, whereas emphasis must be placed on G-20 and G-3 (IBSA). The essential aspect to be retained is that, taking into consideration the dimension of the convergence of international business interests strictly speaking, the partnership between India and Brazil, at the starting point of efforts to build international coalitions, is clearly counterintuitive.With a basis on the Compared Foreign Policy Analysis, the objective of this paper is to contribute towards a more comprehensive understanding of the bases (domestic and international) of the formation of international coalitions, of the South-South type in the new context of the multilateral agenda. A comparative matrix will be built as an analytical instrument. Based on databased with variables, the compared analysis of these variables will permit the itemization of vectors of convergence and divergence among the countries capable of indicating the stability and effectiveness of the coalition. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to address the difficulties of understanding between countries on courses of action regarding the regime of Climate Change, focusing the position of Japan and Germany on one hand and Brazil and India on the other, in the process that has ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In face of today’s increasingly fragmented, fast-changing and complex international order, key governments in the South are seeking to coordinate multilateral action by establishing smaller coalitions of like-minded states and narrower goals â€"a clear depa ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]