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Rising Regional Powers and

International Institutions: The Foreign
Policy Orientations of India, Brazil and
South Africa
Matthew D. Stephen
Published online: 06 Jul 2012.
To cite this article: Matthew D. Stephen (2012) Rising Regional Powers and International
Institutions: The Foreign Policy Orientations of India, Brazil and South Africa, Global Society, 26:3,
289-309, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2012.682277
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Global Society, Vol. 26, No. 3, July, 2012
Rising Regional Powers and International Institutions:

The Foreign Policy Orientations of India, Brazil and
South Africa
MATTHEW D. STEPHEN
Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 15:49 16 August 2013
How do rising powers relate to international institutions? At the same time as rising
regional powers from the South emerge as key players in international politics, they con-
front a highly institutionalised world order established and maintained by and for the
United States and its allies. Traditional perspectives identify three major patterns of be-
haviour for rising states in international institutions: balancing, spoiling, and being
coopted. This article uses these perspectives to ask how the redistributive aspirations
of three rising regional powers – India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) – impact on
international institutions in the fields of trade, money, and security. The findings indi-
cate that there is strong variation across issue areas. Trade provides support for the spoil-
ing perspective, while the areas of money and security exhibit aspects familiar both to the
balancing and cooptation perspectives. A broader picture emerges of IBSA states’ general
integration into hegemonic norms and being coopted into existing international insti-
tutions, but at the same time as balancing the influence of the established powers and
reforming these institutions to conform to a more South-oriented, sovereigntist image
of world order.
In the 1990s the OECD countries led by the United States were seen as the unques-
tioned centre of the world political and economic systems, while discussions of
global governance could largely ignore developing countries. But recent shifts
in the global political economy have seen the emergence of several newly power-
ful states from the South. Developing countries are now home to about one half of
global economic activity as measured by GDP,1 and Goldman Sachs have influen-
tially predicted that the four BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies
could outweigh the members of the G7 by 2035.2 Other projections based on
∗
I would like to thank, while in no way implicate, Melanie Hanif, Philip Nel, Autumn Lockwood
Payton, Michael Zürn, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this
article, as well as acknowledge the useful feedback of participants at a Berlin Graduate School for Trans-
national Studies PhD Colloquium in Berlin, 23 May 2011, and at a panel of the International Studies
Association Asia-Pacific Regional Section Conference in Brisbane, 30 September 2011.
1. OECD, Perspectives on Global Development 2010: Shifting Wealth (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2010).
2. Goldman Sachs Global Economics Group, “BRICs and Beyond” (Goldman Sachs, 2007), available:
,www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/brics. (accessed 5 May 2012).
ISSN 1360-0826 print/ISSN 1469-798X online/12/030289– 21 # 2012 University of Kent

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13600826.2012.682277
290 Matthew D. Stephen
different models all expect a radical and fundamental shift in the centre of gravity
of the global economy from North to South.3
Mirroring these changes has been a sharp and swift change in tone by scholars
of world politics. To (unfairly) single out one author: In 2001 John Ikenberry was
simply repeating common knowledge when he wrote that, “American power in
the 1990s is without historical precedent. No state in the modern era has ever
enjoyed such a dominant global position”.4 Yet seven years later, the same
author made this observation:
Today, a group of fast-growing developing countries – led by China and

India – are rising up and in the next several decades will have economies
that will rival the United States and Europe. For the first time in the
modern era, economic growth is bringing non-Western developing
countries into the top ranks of the world system.5
While economic expansion has underpinned the emergence of these regional

powers, attention is quickly turning to the political implications of their rise. In
the eyes of established states, emerging markets have become emerging powers.
Prominent in this group are the IBSA states (India, Brazil and South Africa),
which share a regional preponderance and certain characteristics and sensibilities
in their vision for the emerging world order. The rise of the IBSA states and other
powers from outside the Western heartland goes hand in hand with a new
Southern multilateralism of the emerging regional powers, such as the diplomatic
realisation of a BRICS multilateral forum of emerging economies (Brazil, Russia,
India, China, and since 2010, South Africa), and the formation in 2003 of the
IBSA Trilateral Forum of India, Brazil, and South Africa, signalling these countries’
intentions to “contribute to the construction of a new international architecture, to
bring their voice together on global issues and to deepen their ties in various
areas”.6 Clearly, the redistribution of economic weight on a global scale is begin-
ning to manifest implications for global governance.
The process of global redistribution alters the relative position of major states, but
coexists with changes in the nature of the world order in which this redistribution
takes place. A ‘Westphalian’ order may have always been more of an ideological
rather than historical phenomenon,7 but it has constituted the traditional way in
which to conceptualise world politics in practice and in theory. In contrast, rising
regional powers today face a world order that is characterised by the increasing impor-
tance of international institutions. One indicator of this is their simple quantitative
increase, accompanied by an increase in the governing capacities of international
3. Deutsche Bank Research Globale Wachstumszentrum 2020, “Formal-G für 34 Volkswirtschaften”,

Aktuelle Themen, No. 313 (Frankfurt: Deutsche Bank, 2005); Uri Dadush and Bennett Stancil, The World
Order in 2050 (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010); John Hawksworth
and Gordon Cookson, The World in 2050 (London: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 2008).
4. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After
Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 270.
5. G. John Ikenberry and Thomas Wright, Rising Powers and Global Institutions: A Century Foundation
Report (New York: The Century Foundation, 2008), p. 3.
6. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration of the IBSA Trilateral Forum”, June 2003, available:
, http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=27.
(accessed 30 May 2011).
7. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).
Rising Regional Powers and International Institutions 291
institutions.8 Meanwhile, global trends such as societal and economic denationalisation

and the prominence of transnational non-state actors and processes have prompted the
question of whether Westphalia is still an adequate basis on which to understand world
politics, if indeed it ever was. This indicates a complex relationship between a shifting
global distribution of power and the changing nature of international politics. The
image of a world order in transformation, or an “emerging world order”, can be juxta-
posed to the image of emerging powers or “emerging societies”.9
Where authority has been reallocated within global governance, the importance
of this authority for the relations between major and regional powers has also
grown apace. The noticeable aggregation of political authority away from the tra-
ditional national context can be expected to give rise to legitimation problems and
resistance.10 Increasing attention has been turned to the role of new powers and
major developing states in challenging aspects of political globalisation and
posing new challenges to supranational institutions.11 The claim particularly

that developing countries are more guarded when it comes to sovereignty
would lend a North-South dimension to this dialectic of governance/resistance.
As an integral part of the ongoing globalisation of political authority, global gov-
ernance institutions are also the site of a dynamic process of negotiation between
North and South over the constitution of regimes, norms and institutions. It is a
widely held view of scholars from many theoretical perspectives, and a frequent
political statement by leaders of emerging states, that rising regional powers are
portents of change in the world order. But what is the precise nature of this
change? Are we heading into a more chaotic period characterised by the emer-
gence of competing regional blocs and the decline in effectiveness and legitimacy
of international institutions, or will these tendencies be contained by an expanded
system of global management based on existing principles of multilateralism?
After a brief note explaining the rationale for selecting India, Brazil and South
Africa (the IBSA states) as regionally-based emerging powers, this article formulates
three ideal-typical perspectives through which to understand the orientations of
rising regional powers, and applies these perspectives to the IBSA states in three
8. Michael Zürn and Matthew Stephen, “The View of Old and New Powers on the Legitimacy of
International Institutions”, Politics, Vol. 30, No. S1 (2010), pp. 91–101.
9. Jan Nederveen Pieterse and Boike Rehbein, Globalization and Emerging Societies (Houndmills: Pal-
grave, 2009).
10. Michael Zürn, “Global Governance and Legitimacy Problems”, Government and Opposition, Vol.
39, No. 2 (2004), pp. 260– 287; Michael Zürn and Mathias Ecker-Ehrhardt (eds.), Gesellschaftliche Politi-
sierung und Internationale Institutionen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2011).
11. Alan Alexandroff and Andrew Cooper (eds.), Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global
Governance (Waterloo: Center for International Governance Innovation and Brookings Institution Press,
2010); Ikenberry and Wright, op. cit.; Andrew Hurrell, “Some Reflections on the Role of Intermediate
Powers in International Institutions”, in Paths to Power: Foreign Policy Strategies of Intermediate States,
Working Paper, No. 244 (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center, 2000), pp. 1– 10;
Andrew Hurrell and Amrita Narlikar, “A New Politics of Confrontation? Brazil and India in Multilat-
eral Trade Negotiations”, Global Society, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2006), pp. 415–433; Andrew Cooper and Agata
Antkiewicz (eds.), Emerging Powers in Global Governance: Lessons from the Heiligendamm Process (Canada:
Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008); Andrew Cooper, Agata Antkiewicz and Timothy Shaw,
“Lessons from/for BRICSAM about South– North Relations at the Start of the 21st Century: Economic
Size Trumps All Else?”, International Studies Review, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2007), pp. 673 –689; Timothy Shaw,
Andrew Cooper and Agata Antkiewicz, “Global and/or Regional Development at the Start of the
21st Century? China, India and (South) Africa”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 7 (2007),
pp. 1255– 1270.
institutional areas of global governance. The goal is not to test rival models but to
develop conceptual frames through which to interpret the redistributive aspirations
of the IBSA states in the three issue areas of trade, money, and security. Empirical
material is derived from analysing the countries’ public diplomacy and from second-
ary literature. The final section summarises the findings and implications for global
governance. A broader picture emerges of IBSA states’ general integration into hege-
monic norms and being coopted into existing international organisations, but at the
same time as balancing the influence of the established powers while reforming these
institutions to conform to a more South-oriented, sovereigntist image of world order.
The findings reinforce the need for analyses of rising powers to take account of issue-
area variation and to go beyond the standard ‘power-transition’ or ‘balancing’
rubrics for understanding their foreign policy orientations.
India, Brazil and South Africa as Rising Regional Powers

The IBSA states occupy a pivotal position in the unfolding power shift that makes
them particularly interesting cases to examine. The most obvious of these is the
increased share of global economic resources that the IBSA states, along with
other rising states, have captured during the latest phase of globalisation.12
More important however, is the positioning of these states at the centre of non-
western multilateralism amongst rising powers, and the self-presentation of
India, Brazil and South Africa as being key players in the North-South axis of
international politics, which is further boosted by their portrayal as leaders of par-
ticular regions of the developing world fostering regional integration projects.13
The IBSA states therefore appear as states crossing a threshold to be able to
actively shape the institutional structures of world politics. For these reasons,
the emerging Southern IBSA states in particular have attracted scholarly attention
for their perceived importance to the future of global governance.14
Nonetheless there remains significant confusion as to whether the IBSA states
are best analysed as regional, rising, or middle powers in world politics.
Indeed, while the middle power category has gained favour with some,15 the
12. As outlined by Philip Nel, Dirk Nabers and Melanie Hanif, this issue.
13. Philip Nel and Matthew Stephen, “The Foreign Economic Policies of Regional Powers in the
Developing World: Toward a Framework of Analysis”, in Daniel Flemes (ed.), Regional Leadership in
the Global System: Ideas, Interests and Strategies of Regional Powers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 71–90.
14. Chris Alden and Marco Vieira, “The New Diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and
Trilateralism”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 7 (2005), pp. 1077–1095; Beri Ruchita, “IBSA Dialogue
Forum: An Assessment”, Strategic Analysis, Vol. 32, No. 5 (2008), pp. 809–831; Daniel Flemes, “India-
Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) in the New Global Order: Interests, Strategies and Values of the Emerging
Coalition”, International Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4 (2009), pp. 401– 421; Philip Nel, “Redistribution and Rec-
ognition: What Emerging Regional Powers Want”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. 4 (2010),
pp. 951– 974; Nel and Stephen, op. cit.; Ian Taylor, “‘The South will Rise Again’? New Alliances and
Global Governance: The India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum”, Politikon, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2009),
pp. 45– 58.
15. For example, Daniel Flemes, “India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) in the New Global Order: Inter-
ests, Strategies and Values of the Emerging Coalition”, International Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4 (2009),
pp. 401– 421; while Ozkan refers to ‘pivotal middle powers’, Mehmet Ozkan, “A New Approach to
Global Security: Pivotal Middle Powers and Global Politics”, Perceptions: Journal of International
Affairs, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2006), pp. 77–95. See also Detlef Nolte, “How to Compare Regional Powers:
Analytical Concepts and Research Topics”, Review of International Studies, Vol. 36, No. S1, (2010),
pp. 881– 901.
concepts and perceived behavioural traits associated with the ‘middle power’ cat-
egory in international relations seem a less useful rubric for an understanding of
the IBSA states.16 Unlike the classical or traditional middle powers,17 none of the
newly emerging Southern powers are allies of the United States, and each has at
some point advocated for a different kind of international order.18 Furthermore,
the growth rates and regional autonomy of the new rising regional powers dis-
tinguishes them from the traditional middle power category associated with
countries such as Canada, Australia, or the Scandinavian countries.19
Rather, the IBSA states are better characterised as occupying a dual role as
regional and rising powers. India and Brazil can plausibly aspire to the status
of global powers (Indian officials already refer to the coming ‘tripolar’ order),
while South Africa has relied on its status as a fast-growing regional power
with a global diplomacy to underpin its influence. In a further contrast to tra-
ditional middle powers, rather than donning a bridge-building or compromise

approach associated with “middlepowermanship”,20 the IBSA states have
adopted orientations more consistent with their status as rising powers, and
become major antagonists to the established states in several institutional con-
texts. The IBSA states “have donned the mantle of spokesmen for the interests
of developing countries in general”,21 taken on a self-appointed role as leaders
in various Southern alliances such as the G77 at the UN and the G20 at the
WTO, and built cooperation with other rising powers through initiatives such
as the IBSA Trilateral Forum, the BASIC group in climate negotiations, and the
now annual BRICS summits. Unlike traditional middle powers, the rising regional
powers are seen as challenging the legitimacy of the existing world order and
favouring a more multi-polar and pluralist system.22 But to what extent is this
image justified, and how can this be understood through the traditional concepts
associated with rising powers?
Regional Rising Powers and International Institutions: Three Perspectives

Rising Powers Balancing the Core through International Institutions
The balancing perspective on rising powers states that as rising powers, such as
the IBSA states, gain in power and influence, they will seek to ‘balance’ the
16. The difficulties inherent in the ‘middle power’ concept are outlined by Andrew Hurrell in his
“Some Reflections on the Role of Intermediate Powers”, op. cit., p. 1; and Eduard Jordaan, “The
Concept of a Middle Power in International Relations: Distinguishing between Emerging and Tra-
ditional Middle Powers”, Politikon, Vol. 30, No. 2 (2003), pp. 165–181.
17. Jordaan, op. cit. makes the compelling argument for distinguishing ‘emerging’ from ‘traditional’
middle powers.
18. Andrew Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order: What Space for Would-be Great
Powers?”, International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 1 (2006), p. 3.
19. Alden and Vieira, op. cit., p. 1079; Andrew Cooper, Richard Higgott and Kim Nossal, Relocating
Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order (Vancouver: University of British Colum-
bia Press, 1993). A locus classicus of this issue is George Glazebrook, “The Middle Powers in the United
Nations System”, International Organization, Vol. 1, No. 2 (1947), pp. 307– 315.
20. Robert W. Cox, “Middlepowermanship, Japan, and Future World Order”, International Journal,
Vol. 44, No. 4 (1989), pp. 823– 862.
21. Nel, op. cit., p. 955.
22. Andrew Hart and Bruce Jones, “How Do Rising Powers Rise?”, Survival, Vol. 52, No. 6 (2010),
p. 66.
power and influence of the established powers. This fundamental dynamic of the
international system will then be played out within international institutions. The
traditional notion of balancing entails a deliberate attempt at inter-state redistribu-
tion both in absolute and in relative terms, but the central mechanism is that this
emerges from the need to secure the relative elevation of the rising regional
powers compared with their established rivals.
The balancing perspective emerges from a tradition of international thought,
which emphasises the fundamentally different organising principles of domestic
and international political orders. India, Brazil, South Africa and other regional
powers will be assumed by the logic of inter-state competition to engage in a com-
petition for economic and military resources to maximise their own security.
The balancing perspective emerges most clearly in the domain of security,
where it is often assumed that security is the most fundamental goal of regional
powers and that their power capabilities will determine their foreign policy
options.23 In particular, because rising regional powers such as the IBSA states
are still in a precarious developmental position in relation to the developed
world, they will be expected to come together against the established powers to
secure greater political and economic autonomy: “Secondary states, if they are
free to choose, flock to the weaker side; for it is the stronger side that threatens
them”.24 The balancing perspective leads us to expect that India, Brazil and
South Africa will be part of a broader international move to balance the unstable
concentration of power in the United States.25
The balancing perspective extends into the realm of international institutions,
leading to a form of “soft” or “institutional” balancing.26 The concept of soft bal-
ancing argues that the depth of US military power makes balancing in the military
sphere unrealistic, and diverts the balancing mechanism to “soft” means such as
foreign economic policy and international institutions, which can increase the
costs and the difficulty of the hegemon using its extraordinary power, and
encourages gradual multipolarisation.27 Soft balancing can also rely on “territorial
denial, entangling diplomacy, economic strengthening, and signalling of resolve
to participate in a balancing coalition”.28 This is compatible with Andrew
23. Robert Gilpin, “A Realist Perspective on International Governance,” in David Held and Anthony
McGrew (eds.), Governing Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 237–248;
Stephen Krasner, Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1985).
24. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p. 127.
25. Kenneth Waltz, “Evaluating Theories”, American Political Science Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (1997), 913–
917; Kenneth Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War”, International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2000),
pp. 5– 41; Kenneth Waltz, “Thoughts About Assaying Theories”, in Colin Elman and Miriam Elman
(eds.), Progress in International Relations Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), pp. vii–xii.
26. Robert Pape, “Soft Balancing Against the United States”, International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1
(2005), pp. 7 –45; T.V. Paul, “Soft Balancing in the Age of US Primacy”, International Security, Vol. 30,
No. 1 (2005), pp. 46– 71; but compare Stephen Brooks, “Dueling Realisms”, International Organization
Vol. 51, No. 3 (1997), pp. 445 –477; Stephen Brooks and William Wohlforth, “Hard Times for Soft Balan-
cing”, International Security, Vol. 30, No. 1 (2005), pp. 72– 108; William Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Uni-
polar World”, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 1 (1999), pp. 5 –41; Randall Schweller, “Bandwagoning
for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In”, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1994), pp. 72– 107;
Randall Schweller, “Unanswered Threats: A Neoclassical Realist Theory of Underbalancing”, Inter-
national Security, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2004), pp. 159– 201.
27. Pape, op. cit., p. 17.
28. Ibid., p. 36.
Hurrell’s observation that in the current order, the problem of unbalanced power
lies primarily in allowing the powerful state to “skew the terms of cooperation in
its own favour, to impose its own values and ways of doing things, and to under-
mine the procedural rules on which stable and legitimate cooperation must inevi-
tably depend”.29
A complement to soft balancing is ‘institutional balancing’, conceived as “initi-
ating, utilizing, and dominating multilateral institutions, as an overlooked realist
strategy for states to pursue security under anarchy”.30 Institutional balancing can
seek to bind a target state into international institutions in which they can con-
strain their behaviour (“inclusive institutional balancing”), or it can consolidate
unity against a target state by excluding it from international institutions (“exclu-
sive institutional balancing”).31 The soft balancing perspective on rising regional
powers therefore directs our attention to the possibility of IBSA states seeking rela-
tive gains in relational and institutional power. IBSA behaviour has indeed been
interpreted as conforming to the logic of “soft balancing”.32
Rising Powers Spoiling International Institutions

At variance to the expectations of the balancing perspective, the spoiler perspec-
tive derives from theories of hegemonic stability and power transitions. It states
that the arrival of new powers of systemic importance leads, inevitably, to the
decline of international institutions.33 According to this view, as regional
powers grow in economic strength they will act as spoilers in the functioning of
effective international institutions.
The spoiler hypothesis emerges from hegemonic stability theory. This proposes
a correlation between hegemonic dominance of a system and the provision of
public goods and functioning international institutions. A liberal international
economy characterised by openness and non-discrimination provides the greatest
potential for mutual advancement for states, but “a hegemon is necessary to the
existence of a liberal international economy”.34 This encompasses an open
trading order, a stable international monetary regime, stable flows of capital, a
degree of counter-cyclical domestic macroeconomic management, and possibly
even international ‘security’.35
Following this classic formulation of hegemonic stability theory, the spoiler per-
spective states that the ability of a country (e.g., the United States) or a concert of
countries (e.g., the G7) to act as custodians for the global capitalist economy
29. Andrew Hurrell, “Rising Powers and the Question of Status in International Society”, Unpub-
lished draft paper, (November 2009), pp. 7– 8.
30. Kai He, “Institutional Balancing and International Relations Theory: Economic Interdependence
and Balance of Power Strategies in Southeast Asia”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 14,
No. 3 (2008), p. 492.
31. Ibid., p. 493.
32. Flemes, op. cit., pp. 401–421.
33. A.F.K. Organski, World Politics (New York: Knopf, 1968); Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of
International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
34. Gilpin, Political Economy of International Relations, op. cit., p. 88.
35. Robert Jervis, “Security Regimes”, International Organization, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1982), pp. 357– 378;
Charles Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy: Exploitation,
Public Goods, and Free Rides”, International Studies Quarterly, Vol., 25, No. 2 (1981), pp. 242–254.
depends on their relative economic size and consequent ability to assume many of
the costs of providing the public good of economic stability, while at the same time
internalising many of the benefits for their own economic growth. The opposite
effect attends the behaviour of small states: they behave as ‘free riders’ due to
their lack of economic influence.36 The most destabilising impact, however,
emerges from economic rising and middle powers, which are systemically impor-
tant for the maintenance of the world economy but not big enough to stabilise it:37
“Since they tend to act as if they were small free riders, middle-sized countries are
extremely destabilizing and are the ‘spoilers’ of the system”.38
This can be joined to the balancing hypothesis by the argument that new
powers’ attempts at redistribution in relational and institutional terms further
undermine the hegemonic consensus.39 The hegemonic state can no longer
dictate terms to secondary states, and this undermines the strength of inter-
national institutions that depend on the power balance that gave birth to them.
This inevitable conflict between rising and declining powers can only be miti-
gated through the emergence of a new order “that reflects the changed array of
national interests and the distribution of military and political power”.40 Inter-
national governance is most likely to emerge in the sphere of economic exchanges,
but will remain subordinate to competing state interests. The spoiler perspective
enjoins us to examine whether the IBSA states’ redistributive aspirations really do
undermine existing institutions and the provision of global public goods. It may
be possible for cooperation to continue “after hegemony”, “provided that the
interests and social purposes of the major economic powers are congruent”.41
This admits of the possibility for continued ‘cooperation’, but hangs crucially
on the foreign policy outlooks of rising powers.
Rising Powers Coopted into Liberal International Institutions

A stark contrast to the balancing and spoiler perspectives is the perspective of
rising regional power cooptation: that is, that as regional powers grow in global
influence, the institutional structure of the current world order will integrate
and coopt them into existing international institutions. The cooptation perspective
states that the redistributive aspirations of the IBSA states may imply changes for
some limited procedural structures of international institutions, in line with their
newly developed capacities, but that the basic liberal principles underlying them
will remain intact. There is therefore no contradiction between the supranationa-
lisation of political authority and the rise of new powers.
There are two distinct logics of international order underpinning the cooptation
perspective. The first emerges from a functionalist theory of international
36. Kindleberger, op. cit., p. 249.
37. Ibid., p. 250.
38. David Lake, “International Economic Structures and American Foreign Economic Policy, 1887-
1934”, World Politics, Vol. 35, No. 4 (1983), p. 519.
39. Gilpin, “A Realist Perspective”, op. cit., p. 239.
40. Gilpin, Political Economy of International Relations, op. cit., p. 91.
41. Ibid., citing John G. Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions and Change: Embedded Liber-
alism in the Postwar Economic Order”, International Organization, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1982), p. 384; compare
of course Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
institutions, which understands them as expanding the room for ‘cooperation’

between major powers by reducing the uncertainty inherent in making inter-
national agreements. They lower transaction costs, provide information, and
furnish mechanisms of enforcement. Order between states arises from the
ability to reap joint gains arising from deliberately coordinated action, and inter-
national institutions empower states to reach their own egoistic ends.42 This sits
well with authors for whom ‘world order’ is increasingly maintained not by a
balance of power or a hegemonic state but by international institutions, or “the
rules that govern elements of world politics and the organizations that help
implement those rules”.43 These regimes and institutions are not the product of
power, but devices to solve common problems and increase the delivery of gov-
ernance goods. The mutual interests that rising powers share with established
powers therefore expand the scope for cooperation and integration.
The second logic underpinning the cooptation perspective emphasises the

benefits for regional powers of the distinctly liberal principles underpinning the
post-war institutions created by the West. This emphasises a more historical analy-
sis and explanation of the distinctly liberal characteristic of the order created by
the United States after its victory over alternative modes of international politics
in the Second World War.44 In this view, and in contrast to the functionalist
logic of the first element of the cooptation hypothesis, international institutions
precisely do constrain rather than enable state power and “lock states into patterns
of cooperation that acquire their own imperatives”.45
In contrast to the spoiler hypothesis, whereby the liberal world order and exist-
ing institutions are liable to decline with the rise of new regional powers, struc-
tural liberalism’s cooptation perspective indicates that although the ruling club
may expand to include non-Western powers and perhaps demote a few estab-
lished states, the basic pattern of the existing institutional order will remain
untouched.46
In this view, although the rise of developing countries will increasingly translate
into change in the distribution of rewards from the world institutions for which
the US and the West have been the “creators, owners, managers, and chief bene-
ficiaries”,47 the relatively well entrenched and distinctly ‘liberal’ nature of today’s
institutions makes the existing order “easier to join and harder to overturn”.48
Existing institutions are relatively non-exclusionary and open to newcomers,
with “a wide array of channels and mechanisms that allow the new rising states
to join and to be integrated into the governance arrangements of the old order”.49
42. Keohane, After Hegemony, op. cit., p. 13.

43. Robert O. Keohane, Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (London: Routledge, 2002),
p. 27.
44. G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After
Major Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Order and Imper-
ial Ambition: Essays on American Power and World Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006).
45. Anthony McGrew, “Liberal Internationalism: Between Realism and Cosmopolitanism,” in David
Held and Anthony McGrew (eds.), Governing Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002), p. 275.
46. Ikenberry and Wright, op. cit.
47. Ibid., p. 3.
48. Ibid., p. 5.
49. Ibid.
In a further contrast to the balancing perspective, the cooptation hypothesis can

draw on the thesis of a “democratic peace” which indicates that because liberal
states are viewed as particularly peace-minded, “Instead of being seen as threa-
tening and prompting balancing responses, concentrations of liberal power will
create a liberal version of bandwagoning”.50 In contrast to China and Russia,
the IBSA states seem to represent the best hopes for liberal cooptation based on
common democratic polities and shared values. This implies that any obstacles
to the cooptation of rising powers into existing institutions would likely come
not from inherent conflict between rising and established powers but from ‘block-
ing coalitions’ of vested interests at a domestic level, who have something to lose
from continued liberalisation or the adaptation to Western liberal ideas and ideol-
ogies.51 In this view, “In more benign and consensual hegemonic orders, where
restraints on hegemonic power are sufficiently developed. . . the expected value
of balancing is lowered, and the incentives to pursue it are reduced”.52 Due to

these unique properties, the international institutions created by the US and its
allies after the Second World War provide them with an unprecedented degree
of stability. They therefore have a remarkable ability to contain and overcome dis-
turbances that might arise as a result of a shifting distribution of power, the emer-
gence of new major powers, and even “changes in the goals and purposes of
states”.53 This perspective therefore concludes that the incentives facing rising
regional powers give rise to peaceful cooptation due to their stakes in the existing
system.
The IBSA States’ Redistributive Aspirations: Spoiling, Balancing, or being

Coopted in International Institutions?
The phenomenon of rising regional powers can therefore be conceptualised
through three diverging perspectives on their impact on global governance: balan-
cing, spoiling, and cooptation. How well do the three perspectives reflect the
redistributive programme of the IBSA states? The assumption of the argument
developed here is that analysing the foreign policy orientations of rising regional
powers needs to pay careful attention to variation across issue areas. Although
rising states may pursue a ‘grand strategy’ in relation to their rivals, it is more
likely that the interaction of rising and declining states gives rise to a complex con-
figuration of competition and cooperation that is issue-specific, reflecting different
class structures, societal interests, and domestic and international institutional
structures.54 This section therefore outlines to what extent the redistributive
50. Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order”, op. cit., p. 6.
51. Ibid., pp. 7–8.
52. Ikenberry, After Victory, op. cit., p. 28.
53. Ibid., p. 45.
54. For Baldwin, “the notion of a single overall international power structure unrelated to any par-
ticular issue-area is based on a concept of power that is virtually meaningless”. David Baldwin, “Power
Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies”, World Politics, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1979),
p. 193. The issue-specific nature of foreign policy formation is also a strong emphasis of liberal inter-
national relations theory. See Andrew Moravcsik, “Taking Preferences Seriously: A Liberal Theory of
International Politics”, International Organization, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1997), pp. 513–553; Volker Rittberger,
“Approaches to the Study of Foreign Policy Derived from International Relations Theories”, Tübinger
Arbeitspapiere zur Internationalen Politik und Friedensforschung, Working Paper No. 46 (Tübingen, 2004).
achievements and further aspirations of the IBSA states are adequately conceptu-
alised by the three perspectives in the domains of trade, money and security.
Trade
Transboundary flows of goods, services and knowledge are governed by an
increasingly institutionalised and constitutionalised network of agreements that
cohere in a global regime complex for trade.55 As rising powers such as IBSA inte-
grate into world flows of trade, they can be expected to take an increasing interest
not only in the distributional issues of their shares of world trade and with whom,
but in shaping the institutional regime complex that governs these flows.
Given that trade is regarded as a classical positive-sum interaction, in which the
best option for all states is liberalisation and mutually agreeing to forgo imposing
tariffs through an international agreement, it is somewhat surprising, at least

initially, that the area in which the spoiler perspective is most clearly applicable
to rising regional powers is in the area of trade. Here the new assertiveness of
developing country representatives from the IBSA states, later joined by China,
has contributed to deadlock in WTO negotiations during the Doha Round.56 At
the same time, the balancing perspective could help to account for the IBSA
states’ attempts to offset the institutional and structural dominance of the devel-
oped countries in overseeing selective liberalisation of world trade through regio-
nalised preferential trade agreements and increasing emphasis on traditional
South-South linkages through technical cooperation and trade facilitation.
The WTO constitutes the central multilateral institution of global trade govern-
ance, and a considerable literature now exists on IBSA as a negotiating coalition at
the WTO and an aspiring preferential trade area outside the remit of the WTO
(PTA).57 Trade has been one of the most prominent areas in which the
55. Kal Raustiala and David G. Victor, “The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources”, Inter-
national Organization, Vol. 58, No. 2 (2004), pp. 277– 309; Christina L. Davis, “Overlapping Institutions
in Trade Policy”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009), pp. 25– 31; Stephen Gill, Power and Resist-
ance in the New World Order (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 131– 135.
56. See especially Andrew Hurrell and Amrita Narlikar, “A New Politics of Confrontation? Brazil
and India in Multilateral Trade Negotiations,” Global Society, Vol. 20, No. 4 (2006), pp. 415– 433;
Amrita Narlikar, “New Powers in the Club: the Challenges of Global Trade Governance”, International
Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 3 (2010), pp. 717– 728; Amrita Narlikar and Diana Tussie, “The G20 at the Cancun
Ministerial: Developing Countries and their Evolving Coalitions in the WTO”, The World Economy, Vol.
27, No. 7 (2004), pp. 947–966; Amrita Narlikar and Rorden Wilkinson, “Collapse at the WTO: A Cancun
Post-Mortem”, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2004), pp. 447–460.
57. Debashis Chakraborty and Dipankar Sengupta, “IBSAC (India, Brazil, South Africa, China): A
Potential Developing Country Coalition in WTO Negotiations”, CSH Occasional Paper No. 18 (New
Delhi: Centre de Sciences Humaines, 2006); Sanjay Kapoor, “Run IBSA, Run”, Hard News, available:
,http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2010/05/3537., (accessed 30 May 2011); Francis A. Kornegay,
“IBSA: Toward a ‘Gondwanan’ Strategic Vision”, Synopsis, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2006), pp. 11 –14; Nagesh
Kumar, Trinity of the South: Potential of India-Brazil-South Africa Partnership (New Delhi: Academic Foun-
dation, and Research and Information for Developing Countries, 2008); Ray Marcelo, “India, Brazil and
South Africa Sign Pact to Boost Trade”, Financial Times (6 March 2004); Amancio de Oliveira, Janini
Onuki, and Emmanuel De Oliveira, “Emerging Powers and Global Governance: The Case of IBSA”,
Paper presented at the International Studies Association 49th Annual Conference, San Francisco,
2008; Lakshmi Puri, IBSA: An Emerging Trinity in the New Geography of International Trade (New York:
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2007); Paulo Sotero (ed.), Emerging Powers:
India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) and the future of South-South Cooperation (Washington, DC:
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2009).
redistributive aspirations of the IBSA states have been targeted, with already sig-
nificant results. The IBSA states have invested a great deal of diplomatic resources
and political capital in developing greater developing country coordination in the
negotiations of the Doha Development Round, in opposition to a Northern agenda
focused on further extending ‘behind the border’ agreements concerning invest-
ment, competition policy, government procurement and technical issues of
trade facilitation (the ‘Singapore Issues’), while maintaining extensive barriers
to trade in agriculture. This conflict between developed and developing countries,
has been invigorated by the increased bargaining power and diplomatic weight of
the rising powers, and came to a head in Cancún in 2003, when the ‘G20’ group of
22 developing countries in favour of agricultural liberalisation put up a coordi-
nated stand, signalling a new politics of “confrontation” in trade negotiations.58
Since this turning point most global powers seem to have focused their efforts
outside the global multilateral system and have focused instead on regional and
bilateral agreements, where great power interests are less bound by WTO pro-
cedures and allowing greater room for “mercantilist power plays”.59
The first dimension of the impact of IBSA’s redistributive aspirations in global
trade governance concerns negotiations at the WTO. The IBSA states played a
pivotal role in providing diplomatic leadership in prompting the formation of
the G20 group of developing countries at the WTO, and boosted their own pos-
itions as the major developing country antagonists to the developed triad in nego-
tiations. The creation of the G20 was particularly significant in this regard, which
one Brazilian negotiator described as a “political statement” to the developed
countries, while a representative of the Brazilian private sector said it “challenged
not only the agricultural policies of the developed countries, but the legitimacy of
the model adopted by those countries to negotiate multilateral fora, presenting
their agreed position as a fait accompli to developing countries”.60 For the then
foreign minister of Brazil, Celso Amorim, “I can state with conviction that the
G-20 would not exist without IBSA”.61 Furthermore, underpinning the negotiation
position of the IBSA countries, as well as China, is the fact that they are emerging
as decisive drivers of global economic growth, equating to a stronger bargaining
position at the WTO.62 The spoiling capacity of the IBSA countries in tandem with
other rising powers indicates that the redistributive aspirations of the rising
regional powers are unlikely to be subsumed by hegemonic imposition.
The balancing dynamic of the IBSA approach to trade lies in countering the ‘hub
and spokes’ model of international economic and political relations as fostered by
the United States. This imperial strategy was formalised firstly under the Clintonite
courting of the ‘emerging markets’ (which included all of the BRICS),63 while the
58. Hurrell and Narlikar, op. cit.

59. Robert Hunter Wade, “Feature Review: The Globalizers, by Ngaire Woods”, New Political
Economy, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2007), p. 127.
60. Quoted in Pedro da Motta Viega, “Brazil and the G20 Group of Developing Countries”, in Paul
Gallagher, Patrick Low and Andrew Stoler (eds.), Managing the Challenges of WTO Participation: 45 Case
Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 115.
61. Celso Amorim, “The India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum and World Trade”, in The India-
Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum, (Brasilia: Ministry of External Relations, Republic of Brazil, 2006),
p. 6.
62. Chakraborty and Sengupta, op. cit., p. 74.
63. Alden and Vieira, op. cit., p. 1082; Robert Chase, Emily Hill and Paul Kennedy (eds.), The Pivotal
States: A New Framework for U.S. Policy in the Developing World (New York: Norton, 1999).
EU has engaged in building ‘strategic partnerships’ with all of the BRICS except
Russia. In contrast, the IBSA Trilateral Forum and associated Trilateral Commission
have focused on expanding trade between the IBSA states, by increasing elite
business and government connections, sectoral cooperation and exchanges of
expertise through a series of trilateral working groups, and introducing new trans-
port linkages between the three countries.64 This has been supplemented by the
active pursuit of free trade agreements between Mercosur and India, Mercosur
and SACU, and SACU and India, which are intended to lead to a future tri-conti-
nental free trade agreement between India, Mercosur and SACU, which would
form the largest trade agreement in the developing world with potentially far-
reaching implications for the emerging geography of world trade.65
The notion of ‘soft balancing’ through regional and South-South trade liberali-
sation may be an appropriate mode for understanding this response to Northern
protectionism and trade regionalisation. Indeed, the expansion of an elaborate

patchwork of regional trade agreements involving the emerging countries indi-
cates the increasing importance of a global ‘non-WTO’ regime of trade agreements
as the WTO remains deadlocked.66 Likewise, Taylor identifies that the pursuit of
an intra-IBSA free trade deal is part of the regional powers’ attempts to foster a
new trade geography, which reduces their trade dependence on the members of
the G7, and “provide[s] alternative trading axes to the hitherto dominant
North-South directions in trade”.67 While the limitations of the prospective
gains from an intra-IBSA trade deal have been emphasised,68 the traditional
view that South-South trade agreements are a waste of time due to limited com-
plementarities and small economic size is changing due to the economic rise of
the BRICS and the differentiating global division of labour.69 As trade between
non-OECD countries constitutes an increasing share of global trade, political
pressures to manage these flows through agreements can be expected to
increase.70 A recent UNCTAD report therefore concluded that comprehensive
tariff reductions amongst the IBSA states could double their annual mutual
trade levels, based on a common market of 1.2 billion people, US $1.8 trillion of
GDP and trade of nearly US $600 billion. “This would make the IBSA partnership
of immense strategic value not only in terms of multilateral trade negotiations, but
also in terms of shaping the respective roles of IBSA member countries in global
economic governance.”71
64. Flemes, op. cit., p. 413–415.
65. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Ministerial Communiqué, September 1, 2009”, available: ,
http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53&Itemid=27.
(accessed 30 May 2011), p. 4. The Southern Common Market (Mercosur) includes Argentina, Brazil,
Paraguay and Uruguay, while the South African Customs Union (SACU) includes Botswana,
Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland.
66. Agata Antkiewicz and John Whalley, “BRICSAM and the non-WTO”, Review of International
Organizations, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2006), pp. 237–261.
67. Taylor, op. cit., p. 51.
68. Ibid., p. 54; Lyal White, “IBSA Six Years On: Co-operation in a New Global Order”, Policy Briefing,
No. 8 (Johannesberg: South Africa Institute of International Affairs, 2009).
69. Scott McDonald and Dirk Willenbockel, “India, Brazil, South Africa and China: Is the South Big
Enough?”, Paper Presented at 11th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis, Helsinki, 2008.
70. Antkiewicz and Whalley, op. cit.
71. Lakshmi Puri, “IBSA: An Emerging Trinity in the New Geography of International Trade”,
UNCTAD Policy Issues in International Trade and Commodities, Study Series No. 35 (New York:
UNCTAD, 2007), p. vii.
Rising regional powers have therefore embraced the logic of increasing South-
South economic cooperation, i.e. a concerted attempt to overcome the fractured
nature of South-South economic relations which are still structured around pat-
terns of comparative advantage engendered by the historical legacy of the
(imposed) colonial division of labour. There is remarkably little trade between
Africa and the Americas, with both orienting themselves towards the Asian econ-
omic boom (trade between Africa and the Americas amounts to only one per cent
of total South-South trade). Increased multilateral ties amongst developing
regional powers therefore provide a response to the fact that the major part of
South-South trade occurs among countries of the same region, with little inter-
regional integration.72 If current trends were left to continue, South Africa and
Brazil would increasingly orient their economies towards trade with Asia while
connections between their two continental regions languish. The concerted trilat-
eral initiative to boost tricontinental trade between India, Brazil and South Africa
can be accounted for precisely as a political intervention to prevent the further
uneven distribution of global trade flows. As the South African trade minister
recently put it, “Our membership of BRICS gives us huge opportunities to
develop different patterns of trade relationships. We’ll seek to building relation-
ships among ourselves”.73 The corollary, however, is the stagnation of the Doha
Round and declining relevance of the WTO.
In addition to these redistributive demands in terms of changing the global dis-
tribution of trade, the IBSA states have also called for the reform of the insti-
tutional structure of the WTO. This consists primarily in expanding developing
country participation in the decisive ‘Green Room’ phases of trade negotiations.
The IBSA Brasilia Declaration also called for ‘improved’ rules in the multilateral
trade system.74 This has already been partly successful, as seen in the shift from
the old ‘Quad’ group of the US, EU, Canada and Japan, to the G4 group of the
US, EU, India and Brazil. Nonetheless in June 2007 the Indian and Brazilian
foreign ministers declared the G4 ‘dead’ after repeated demands from the EU
and US for liberalisation in services and industry. Indian Trade Minister Kamal
Nath then referred negotiations back “for the full WTO membership”.75 Despite
these critiques, IBSA state representatives have made clear their attachment to
the existing basic principles and norms of the world trading order, while
seeking to reform some of its more egregious selectivity, include developing
countries more fully in its informal negotiation procedures, and perhaps to shift
the global trade regime closer to one in which “development really mattered”.76
As a recent IBSA declaration noted:
72. Miho Shirotori and Ana Cristina Molina, “South-South Trade: The Reality Check”, UNCTAD
Issues in New Geography of International Trade (Geneva: UNCTAD, 2009), p. 4.
73. Rob Davies to reporters in Cape Town, 30 May 2011, as quoted in Robert Brand, “South Africa Won’t
Back Scaled-Down Doha Round, Davies Says”, Bloomberg (30 May 2011), available: , http://www.
businessweek.com/news/2011-05-30/south-africa-won-t-back-scaled-down-doha-round-davies-says.
html. (accessed 9 June 2011).
74. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration of the IBSA Trilateral Forum”, June 2003, avail-
able: , http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=
27. (accessed 30 May 2011).
75. “Brazil, India declare G4 Dead”, ABC News, available: ,http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/
2007/06/23/1959728.htm . , (accessed 30 May 2011).
76. Dani Rodrik, “The Global Governance of Trade as if Development Really Mattered”, Report Sub-
mitted to the UNDP (New York: UNDP, 2001).
A development oriented, balanced and successful conclusion of the

Round at an early date would bolster the credibility of the multilateral
trading system in the face of increased protectionist pressures. In this
respect, they expressed their concern over the excessive demands made
on some developing countries without any indication of adequate
additional concessions in favour of developing countries.77
Thus while the substance of the global trading regime is criticised, the WTO has
avoided calls for fundamental revision, most likely because the consensus prin-
ciple makes it subject to a status quo deadlock, underlining the IBSA states’ pre-
ferences for no deal over a perceived illegitimate deal, while the Dispute
Settlement Mechanism allows for an element of rights protection for developing
countries. Thus while the IBSA states may have taken on a ‘spoiler’ role in
trade, this is likely explained less by the logic of collective action and more by
the selectivity and unbalanced structure of the world trade regime. Further,
their pursuit of South-South cooperation and a preferential trade agreement
between their respective regional trading blocs could be accommodated into a
soft balancing perspective.
Money
IBSA states’ redistributive programme has implications for the international
organisation of credit and exchange in fields including official development aid,
currency policy, and the Bretton Woods institutions.
First, IBSA states have lent their voices to the call for developed countries to
stick to their commitments for contributing 0.7 per cent of their gross national pro-
ducts as official development aid, as well as calling for unconditional debt relief
for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries,78 thus contributing to pressure for rela-
tive redistribution at the inter-state level from North to South.
But these material ‘relative gains’ are subordinated to the discursive relative
gains in prestige by their status as ‘rising powers’ catching-up on the first
world, with democratic credentials to boot. While the IBSA states lend support
to the least developed countries in advocating for more first world aid, they reaf-
firm their own positions as emerging economic successes stories with no need for
developmental aid themselves.79 A related concern for being treated with
“respect”80 attends the IBSA states’ statement that South-South cooperation
should not be seen as aid, characterised by donors and recipients, but as “a
77. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Fourth Summit of Heads of State/Government Brasilia Declaration”,
April 2010, available: ,www.ibsa-trilateral.org. , (accessed 30 May 2011), p. 4.
78. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration of the IBSA Trilateral Forum”, June 2003, available:
, http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=27.
(accessed 30 May 2011).
79. For example, in several high-profile natural disasters India has rejected aid as unnecessary, while
examining the prospect of phasing out development aid in the longer-term. This is despite the Govern-
ment of India’s own estimation that 37 per cent of its population lives in poverty. See, Somini Sengupta,
“Pride and Politics: India Rejects aid”, New York Times (19 October 2005); Government of India Planning
Commission, Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty (New Delhi:
Government of India Planning Commission, 2009), p. 17.
80. Nel, op. cit.
common endeavour of peoples and countries of the South, a partnership among

equals, and must be guided by the principles of respect for national sovereignty,
national ownership and independence, equality, non-conditionality, non-interfer-
ence in domestic affairs and mutual benefit”.81 The emphasis on non-conditional-
ity means that rising regional powers are coming to be seen as obstacles to
conditionality-driven Western attempts at spreading their own ideas of “good
governance”, and therefore challenging key Western developmental norms.
Second, the IBSA regional powers have also demonstrated a preference for a
relative redistribution in global wealth through a change in the structure of the
international monetary system. In Sanya in April 2011, the IBSA states joined
with China and Russia at the BRICS summit in moving from using US dollars
to their own currencies in intra-BRICS credit and grant transactions. At the
same time, the head of the China Development Bank would begin loaning in
yuan to the other BRICS countries as part of the overall effort to reduce the use
US dollars in bilateral trade and investment.82 Crucially, the rising powers
declared their support for “the reform and improvement of the international mon-
etary system, with a broad-based international reserve currency system providing
stability and certainty. We welcome the current discussion about the role of the
SDR in the existing international monetary system including the composition of
SDR’s basket of currencies”.83 This coincides with calls from the IMF for greater
use of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) instead of US dollars as reserve assets,
while re-examining the basket of currencies of which SDRs are made up (currently
limited to US dollars, euros, yen and British pounds). SDRs would need to be
greatly expanded for them to become a viable reserve asset,84 but given that the
rising powers are expected to dominate the world economy within the next
decades, a gradual shift away from US dollars as a store of value would reduce
the US advantage of seigniorage and undermine US structural monetary
power.85 This has been accompanied by calls for better and deeper regulation of
transnational capital flows, to subordinate them to developmental needs.86
81. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Fourth Summit of Heads of State/Government Brasilia Declaration”,
April 2010, avaiable: ,www.ibsa-trilateral.org., (accessed 30 May 2011), p. 5.
82. “BRICS Give Credit to Local Currencies”, South Africa Info, available: ,http://www.
southafrica.info/global/brics/brics-140411b.htm. (accessed 30 May 2011).
83. BRICS, “Sanya Declaration, 3rd BRICS Summit in Hainan, China”, available: ,http://netindian.
in/news/2011/04/14/00012494/sanya-declaration-brics-leaders. (accessed 30 May 2011).
84. International Monetary Fund, Enhancing International Monetary Stability: A Role for the SDR?
(Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 2011), p.1.
85. See Eric Helleiner, “Structural Power in International Monetary Relations”, EUI Working Papers,
No. 10 (Florence: European University Institute, 2005). Although the economic benefits of minting the
world’s reserve asset are debated, see Richard N. Cooper, “Prolegomena to the Choice of an Inter-
national Monetary System”, International Organization, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1975), pp. 69–73, the overall pol-
itical and economic benefits cannot be dismissed, Jonathan Kirshner, “Dollar Primacy and American
Power: What’s at Stake?”, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2008), pp. 418– 438;
and Kathleen McNamara, “A Rivalry in the Making? The Euro and International Monetary Power”,
Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2008), pp. 441– 443).
86. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration, June 6, 2003”, available: ,http://www.ibsa-
trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=27. (accessed 30 May
2011); IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Delhi Agenda for Cooperation, March 5, 2004”, available: ,http://
www.ibsa-trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=154&Itemid=86.,
(accessed 30 May 2011); IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Delhi Summit Declaration, October 15, 2008”, avail-
able: ,http://www.itamaraty.gov.br/temas-mais-informacoes/temas-mais-informacoes/saiba-mais-
ibas/documentos-emitidos-pelos-chefes-de-estado-e-de/3rd-ibsa-summit-declaration/view.
Third, at the institutional level, the Bretton Woods institutions have become a
subject of rising regional powers’ redistributive aspirations. The Bretton Woods
institutions face challenges both from new powers and from broader changes
that undermine their legitimacy even in their own narrow technocratic terms.
For many in the developing world, these institutions have become identified
with principles associated with market-driven poverty and even state break-
down.87 What were once seen as technocratic interventions by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) to restore economic fundamentals based on impartial
expertise are now widely seen as having aggravated economic difficulties and
implemented policies favourable to Washington. Most rising powers have
sought as much autonomy as possible from the IMF by setting up regional equiva-
lents or simply stockpiling foreign reserves.88 The rapid accumulation of foreign
reserves was enabled by the broader absolute redistribution of economic resources
to the emerging powers, but this also allows them to avoid the prospect of condi-
tionality and the damage this would do to their prestige.
The participatory or input legitimacy of the Bretton Woods institutions in the
eyes of developing countries has always been tempered by their plutocratic
voting systems, which also serves to enforce a de facto US veto because of the
requirement of an 85 per cent majority.89 In fact the relative increase in tranche
votes at the IMF has seen the voting rights of the developing world as a whole
actually decrease since its creation, although the increased financial clout of the
IBSA states and other emerging powers has also been translated into relative
gains at the World Bank and IMF for them. Meeting in South Korea in November
2010, finance ministers and central bank governors of the G20 resolved to redistri-
bute the voting powers of the IMF as well as the International Bank for Recon-
struction and Development (IBRD) in favour of major emerging countries. This
resulted in a further shift in voting shares for developing countries of 4.59 per
cent, and was described by the IMF managing director as the most significant
change to the governance of the IMF since its creation.90
One month earlier at the World Bank, China and India increased their voting
rights at the IBRD branch of the World Bank, while those of the developing
world as a whole have reached nearly a half at 47.19 per cent, which the Bank’s
President Robert Zoellick said better reflected a multipolar global economy.91 At
the same time, changes have occurred to the distribution of executive positions.
For the first time in its history, both the World Bank Chief Economist and the
three Managing Directors all came from developing countries, and a third seat
(accessed 30 May 2011); IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Fourth Summit of Heads of State/Government Brasilia
Declaration, April 2010”, available: ,http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/index.php?option=com_
content&view=article&id=154&Itemid=86. (accessed 30 May 2011).
87. Peter Vale, “Engaging the World’s Marginalized and Promoting Global Change: Challenges for
the United Nations at Fifty”, Harvard International Law Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2 (1995), pp. 283–294.
88. Ikenberry and Wright, op. cit., p. 19.
89. John Glenn, “Global Governance and the Democratic Deficit: Stifling the Voice of the South”,
Third World Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2 (2008), pp. 217–238.
90. IMF Survey Online, “G-20 Ministers Agree ‘Historic’ Reforms in IMF Governance”, available:
,www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2010/NEW102310A.htm. (accessed 30 May 2011).
91. World Bank Group, “Election of Third Sub-Saharan African Chair for World Bank Group Board”,
Press Release No. 2011/126/EXT, available: ,http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/
NEWS/0,contentMDK:22730003~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html. (accessed
30 May 2011).
for Sub-Saharan African countries was added to the World Bank Group’s Board of
Executive Directors, which resulted in developing countries holding the majority
of seats at the Executive Directors’ table. For Robert Zoellick, “The voices of devel-
oping countries are vital to delivering effective development and to reflecting the
realities of today’s world”.92 Nonetheless, not all moves by the rising powers have
been successful, with the IBSA states and China and Russia being notably unsuc-
cessful in ending the European prerogative over the leadership of the IMF in 2011,
despite their stated preferences for doing so.
In contrast to the issue-area of trade, the IBSA states approaches to international
institutions in the domain of money and finance are clearly at odds with a spoiling
approach. Rather, these powers call for greater intergovernmental cooperation
and regulation in order to limit development-unfriendly instability in global
finance.93 At the same time, cooptation is reflected in calls for reform of the
global financial architecture that are interpreted so as to conform to the basic insti-
tutional architecture and their neoliberal norms, while seeking a redistribution of
voting rights and leadership positions in the Bretton Woods institutions in their
own favour. Calls to boost the role of alternative currencies to US dollars and rede-
nominate SDRs amount to a balancing of the structural privilege attendant on the
status of the dollar as the de facto world reserve currency. The cooptation orien-
tation is complemented by balancing behaviour.
Security
In the area of the international institutions governing world security we see again
that the three perspectives on rising powers’ orientation to international insti-
tutions are not competitive, but rather complementary. State representatives of
the IBSA states have of course invested enormous political capital into the goal
of reforming the UN Security Council with themselves as leading contenders as
‘representatives’ of their respective regions, although South Africa cannot do so
explicitly due to commitments within the African Union. Rather than shunning
and therefore ‘spoiling’ this institution, the IBSA states want to be integrated
and coopted into it, which would inevitably balance the influence of the estab-
lished group of permanent members. The IBSA states have made no secret of
their aspirations in this regard, declaring at every IBSA Trilateral Forum the
goal of making the Security Council more “democratic, legitimate, representative
and responsive” by including more developing countries from Africa, Asia, and
Latin America as permanent members.94 To this end, India and Brazil have also
joined forces with Germany and Japan as part of the G4 in endorsing each
other’s bids for permanent membership. At the third BRICS summit in Sanya,
the IBSA states even secured some support from China and Russia, with them
92. World Bank Group, “Election of Third Sub-Saharan African Chair for World Bank Group Board”,
Press Release No. 2011/126/EXT, available: ,http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/
NEWS/0,contentMDK:22730003~pagePK:64257043~piPK:437376~theSitePK:4607,00.html. (accessed
30 May 2011).
93. BRICS, “Sanya Declaration”, op. cit.; IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration” (2003), op. cit.;
IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Delhi Agenda for Cooperation”, op. cit.; IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Delhi Summit
Declaration”, op. cit.; IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration” (2010), op. cit.
94. IBSA Trilateral Forum, “Brasilia Declaration” (2003), op. cit., p. 1; “Delhi Summit Declaration”,
op. cit., pp.1–2; “Brasilia Declaration”, (2010), p. 1.
formally recognising the need to reform the UN and the Security Council, in order
to make it more “representative and effective”. The BRICS declaration signalled
(vague) support for the IBSA states as having an important ‘status’ in international
affairs, declaring that they “understand and support their aspiration to play a
greater role in the UN”, but falling short of endorsing permanent Security
Council membership.95
This is consistent with the regional rising powers’ insistence on an inter-govern-
mental, UN-based vision for the future world order. The rising regional powers
often articulate a desire to strengthen aspects of international institutions with
an egalitarian redistribution of political decision-making authority, while at the
same time championing their own case for special representation. Rising
powers tend to equate a more equitable multilateralism with their own relative
elevation.96 Most rising powers see the UN General Assembly and its related insti-
tutions as more legitimate and representative because they adhere to a one state,
one vote procedure, and therefore restrict the ability of Western countries to dom-
inate the agenda or to get their way in the endgame.
This stands in contrast to the selective humanitarianism of established powers.
The United States has been the power most likely to favour intrusive intervention-
ism by the UN Security Council, while the European Union has been the most con-
sistent champion of new norms, which emphasise the legitimacy of international
institutions in defending human rights and favouring conditional ideas of states
sovereignty. US-led interventions with or without a UN mandate have meant
that international institutions have been associated with selective rather than
impartial application of the rules. The identification of international institutions
with the interests of Western states undermines their legitimacy and reinforces
the scepticism of the IBSA states and others to the authority of international insti-
tutions and new norms of liberal interventionism and majoritarian decision-
making. In contrast to the European Union, new powers tend to favour national
sovereignty as the primary norm of international society.
Russia and China are identified as the major representatives of the traditional
Westphalian view, but what is more interesting is the role played by major demo-
cratic powers such as the IBSA states. As a European Council on Foreign Relations
policy paper noted recently, while the IBSA states should be “natural partners for
Europe”, the conflict over the basic norms of the UN and the security system
means that they end up clashing with the EU. “They do not feel they are accorded
the respect and organisational status they deserve, and thus prefer to stand with
the G77 or regional groups as a way to increase their leverage.”97 While not ident-
ified completely with the “axis of sovereignty”, India and South Africa are two of
the most consistent critics of selective interventionism and defenders of third
world sovereignty.98 Far from representing a case of cooptation into the values
95. BRICS, “Sanya Declaration”, op. cit.
96. Nel and Stephen, op. cit.; Stefan Schirm, “Leaders in Need of Followers: Emerging Powers in
Global Governance”, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2009), pp. 197– 221.
97. Richard Gowan and Franziska Brantner, A Global Force for Human Rights? An Audit of European
Power at the UN (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, 2008), p. 16.
98. Leaked American diplomatic cables refer to India, Brazil, and South Africa (along with Egypt and
Pakistan) as countries which “routinely oppose the United States in multilateral debates [at the UN]
despite strong bilateral ties to the U.S.”. See Wikileaks Cable 66945, “Pak-US Ties Not Reflected in
Multi-Lateral Fora”, The Hindu, available: , www.thehindu.com/news/the-india-cables/the-cables/
article2042826.ece. (accessed 5 May 2012).
of the dominant powers, rising regional powers tend to side with each other. In the
UN General Assembly, the positions of China and Russia on human rights issues
typically attract more votes than the EU or US.99
At one and the same time, the IBSA states’ desire for integration into the UN
Security Council through permanent representation seems to reflect the coopta-
tion hypothesis, but this is a far cry from integration into the transnational
liberal “security community”,100 which would signify the idealised form of coop-
tation. As the regional powers become more influential in this forum, they are
likely to pull it back from the selective interventionism and consistent double stan-
dards adopted by powers such as the US. Where IBSA states are successful at
redistributing seats in the UN Security Council in their favour, this is likely to
exacerbate the tension between the increasing political authority of international
institutions and the principle of non-intervention.101
Conclusion
How do these findings relate to the broader question of the impact of the IBSA
states’ general aspirations for international institutions? There is strong variation
across issue areas. The impact in trade has contributed towards deadlock at the
WTO and therefore conforms to the spoiler perspective, while greater South-
South cooperation and the pursuit of trade agreements with other Southern and
rising powers reflects a balancing logic. The rising powers are committed to the
rules-based system of the multilateral trade regime, but resist further liberalisation
in the absence of greater concessions from developed countries. Changes in distri-
butional outcomes in the organisation of credit and money, as well as procedural
reforms in international financial institutions, reflect a reformist project that is,
however, restricted to the bounds of existing institutions, substantiating a coopta-
tion process. Meanwhile, IBSA states have oriented themselves towards gaining
permanent Security Council seats, an aspiration traditionally associated with
cooptation, while siding against the established powers over the regulative
norms of the global security governance. This reflects both the aspirations for
enhanced global prestige associated with this “ultimate prestige prize in inter-
national politics”,102 as well as active resistance to ham-fisted attempts of the
United States to pioneer new norms of pre-emptive war and selective interven-
tionism, or more subtle European attempts to foster notions of conditional sover-
eignty.103 This no doubt also relates to the desire of post-colonial states for respect
as full members of the society of states with sovereign equality.104
While the increasing authority of international institutions has become an object
of concern for the IBSA states in the area of security, the opposite has been the case
in the economic domains of trade and money, where stronger regulation and
99. Gowan and Brantner, op. cit.
100. Karl Deutsch, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1957); Thomas Risse, “US Power in a Liberal Security Community”, in G. John Ikenberry (ed.),
America Unrivalled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002),
pp. 260– 283.
101. Zürn and Stephen, op. cit., p. 97.
102. Philip Nel, Dirk Nabers and Melanie Hanif, this issue.
103. Hurrell, “Hegemony, Liberalism and Global Order”, op. cit., p. 6; Flemes, op cit., p. 409.
104. Nel, op. cit.
institutions are preferred and which are seen as requiring greater developing
country involvement. Overall, a complex image emerges where the IBSA
powers are integrating into existing institutions while attempting to utilise their
new-found influence to pursue an institutionally reformist (or limited revisionist)
agenda, and even-out some of the power imbalances favouring the developed
North within these institutions.105 The approaches of contemporary rising
regional powers are therefore difficult to comprehensively encapsulate through
any of the traditional conceptual perspectives, whose foreign policy orientations
are highly differentiated across institutional sub-systems, and sometimes
embody competing logics of behaviour.
Accounting for this behaviour will therefore have to move beyond the tra-
ditional approaches to rising powers. Consistently, the commitment of rising
states to international regimes has been analysed as if participation is an indicator
of acquiescence. Studies in this vein see ‘separation’ or efforts to ‘overturn’ inter-

national institutions as counter-posed to the strategy of involvement,106 wherein a
state’s satisfaction with the rules of a world order can be measured simply by its
participation in international organisations.107 Instead, this study of the IBSA
states indicates an alternative orientation: integration in order to change inter-
national institutions. In this orientation, the IBSA states chart the middle course
between the Charybdis of liberal cooptation and the Scylla of counter-hegemonic
spoiling of existing institutions.
The findings of this and the other contributions to this special issue therefore
confirm that the rise of Southern regional powers will occasion a shift in the pro-
cedures and outcomes of global governance favouring redistribution between the
states of the North and South.108 In contrast to previous rising powers, the IBSA
states are multilateral activists strongly involved in international institutions,
which they try to reform from the inside in their own favour. Their further inte-
gration into the institutions of global governance can be expected to perpetuate
a process of restructuring which will be forced, even on a limited functional
logic, to increasingly consider the needs of emerging developing countries. In
this respect even Goldman Sachs can endorse the integration of new powers
into the fold of global economic governance.109 This gives ample reason to con-
clude that an understanding of the outlooks and preferences of rising regional
powers will be increasingly important as they shape the contours of the emerging
world order.
105. Nel and Stephen, op.cit.; Taylor, op. cit.; Zürn and Stephen, op. cit. See also similar conclusions
regarding China in Gregory Chin, “China’s Rising Institutional Influence”, in A.S. Alexandroff and
A.F. Cooper (eds.), Rising States, Rising Institutions (Waterloo: Center for International Governance
Innovation and Brookings Institution Press, 2010), pp. 83–104.
106. Alastair Iain Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?”, International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4
(2003), pp. 5 –56, p. 11; Jeffrey W. Legro, “What China Will Want: The Future Intentions of a Rising
Power”, Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 5, No. 3 (2007), pp. 515– 534, p. 517.
107. Steve Chan, “Can’t Get No Satisfaction? The Recognition of Revisionist States”, International
Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2004), pp. 207– 238.
108. See also Leslie Elliott Armijo, “The BRICs Countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) as Analyti-
cal Category: Mirage or Insight?”, Asian Perspective, Vol. 31, No. 4 (2007), pp. 7 –42.
109. Goldman Sachs, op. cit., p. 5.

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Rising Regional Powers and International Institutions:

ISSN 1360-0826 print/ISSN 1469-798X online/12/030289– 21 # 2012 University of Kent

Today, a group of fast-growing developing countries – led by China and

countries into the top ranks of the world system.5

While economic expansion has underpinned the emergence of these regional

3. Deutsche Bank Research Globale Wachstumszentrum 2020, “Formal-G für 34 Volkswirtschaften”,

institutions.8 Meanwhile, global trends such as societal and economic denationalisation

posing new challenges to supranational institutions.11 The claim particularly

India, Brazil and South Africa as Rising Regional Powers

ditional middle powers, rather than donning a bridge-building or compromise

Regional Rising Powers and International Institutions: Three Perspectives

Rising Powers Spoiling International Institutions

Rising Powers Coopted into Liberal International Institutions

institutions, which understands them as expanding the room for ‘cooperation’

The second logic underpinning the cooptation perspective emphasises the

42. Keohane, After Hegemony, op. cit., p. 13.

In a further contrast to the balancing perspective, the cooptation hypothesis can

of balancing is lowered, and the incentives to pursue it are reduced”.52 Due to

The IBSA States’ Redistributive Aspirations: Spoiling, Balancing, or being

tariffs through an international agreement, it is somewhat surprising, at least

58. Hurrell and Narlikar, op. cit.

protectionism and trade regionalisation. Indeed, the expansion of an elaborate

A development oriented, balanced and successful conclusion of the

common endeavour of peoples and countries of the South, a partnership among

of acquiescence. Studies in this vein see ‘separation’ or efforts to ‘overturn’ inter-

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