Cintia Quiliconi

Global and Regional Leadership of BRICS Countries

Chapter 1. Introduction: The BRICS in Regional and Global Governance Stephen Kingah and Cintia Quiliconi.- Chapter 2. Conceptualising Regional Leadership: the Positioning Theory Angle Luk Van Langenhove, Marieke Zwartjes and Giorgios Papanagnou.- Chapter 3. BRICS: Leadership in the Making Cintia Quiliconi, Marcelo Saguier and Diana Tussie.- Chapter 4. Brazils Leadership through Global Channels: Autonomy, Diversification and Acceptance Melisa Deciancio.- Chapter 5. Cooperation for Development, Brazilian Regional Leadership and Global Protagonism Leticia Pinheiro and Gabrieli Gaio.- Chapter 6. Global Security and Economic Leadership of Russia Andrei Korobkov, Stephen Kingah and Jovana Jovic.- Chapter 7. Russias Leadership of Regional Integration in Eurasia Mikhail A. Molchanov.- Chapter 8. India as a Global Power: Capability, Willingness and Acceptance Golam Robbani.- Chapter 9. Indian Aspirations and South Asian Realities: Perceived Hegemon or Emerging Leader? Dhananjay Tripathi.- Chapter 10. Leadership with Chinese Characteristics: What Role for Soft Power? Mark Beeson and Shaomin Xu.- Chapter 11. Complexity of the Relations among Leading States and the Following States: The Case of East Asian Regional Integration Yong Wang.- Chapter 12. Has south Africa the Spine for Global Leadership? Stephen Kingah and Stefano degli Uberti.- Chapter 13. South Africas Quest for Leadership in Africa: Achievements, Constraints and DileIntrommas Mills Soko and Neil Balchin.- Chapter 14. Conclusions: Leadership of the BRICS and Implications for the European Union Cintia Quiliconi and Stephen Kingah.

The US as a Bilateral Player: The Impetus for Asymmetric Free Trade Agreements

The signing of bilateral free trade agreements with Israel and Canada in the 1980s marked the first time that the Unites States (US) had departed from its longstanding commitment to negotiate trade agreements solely within the multilateral arena. This willingness to negotiate bilaterally was then extended with the completion of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the US, Canada, and Mexico in 1992, which also signified the first time that the United States had completed a free trade agreement (FTA) that included a developing country. Since the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced its strategy of competitive liberalization in 2002 (Zoellick, 2001; 2003), similar bilateral FTAs have been negotiated between the US and other countries at varying levels of development. Ostensibly, these bilateral deals are with can-do countries, those that are ready to move forward with further trade and investment liberalization despite the stalemate that has plagued the multilateral Doha Round negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Argentina: In a Logic of Nested Games

In December 2001, after a four-year long recession and a yearlong drain on reserves, Argentina came to grief. President de la Rua was forced to step down by fierce opposition and widespread rioting. One institutional crisis led to another; a default on a US

BRICS: Leadership in the Making

130 billion-plus debt was declared; the fixed exchange which had endured for a decade was wiped out; social unrest and political fragmentation flared; the fall in gross national product was calculated at 11 per cent over the year. Such a momentous collapse in a country heralded as a model of structural reforms in the 1990s begs many questions, whose answers will reverberate throughout the developing world and spill over to issues of systemic management. Trade liberalization was certainly at the core of the reforms, and at the core of social discontent. The difficulties of compliance with international trade commitments which had been taken in times of past plenty and innocence became a central concern of both public opinion and public policy-making. Because all discussions over the rate of exchange had been all but shunned from serious public discussions, disputes became deflected to discrepancies in effective rates of protection. Particularly after the recession began to bite sharply after 1998, trade policy came to be seen as a tool to mitigate macro-economic distress.

Conclusions: Leadership of the BRICS and Implications for the European Union

This chapter first analyses the main topics that emerge in the BRICS agenda and how those topics affect their leadership. Then it explores the intertwined dynamics between power and leadership for these countries. To explore those dynamics the chapter addresses the main challenges that BRICS face first at the domestic level and second at the global level analysing how the BRICS have positioned themselves in the G-20 and the WTO as a proxy of how these countries are playing a common game in the global economic sphere.

Introduction: The BRICS in Global and Regional Governance

The BRICS, composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is still an untested unit of analysis. But it is gaining traction. In focusing on the role of these countries in their respective regions and at the global level the notion of their leadership was explored. This is delimited in terms of the expressed desire or willingness to lead, their ability or capacity to lead and the credibility to be a leader or propensity for followership or acceptance. The framework was used to analyze the actions of the BRICS at the global and regional levels in their respective regions and beyond. For each of the BRICS the presentation of the global and regional ramifications on the EU of their leadership in the context of multi-polarity is now discussed with the goal of teasing certain policy insights as envisaged in the framework of the GR:EEN project. The regional powers share features but there are dangers of homogenization or over simplification of commonalities. The new leaders share some traits like the size and magnitude of their economies, the relatively high growth rates hitherto experienced (even if this is plateauing); frustration with the status quo and willingness to act to counter the frustration. Beyond a zeal and spunk for revisionism the countries studied also share four central elements vital for leadership, to wit, economic size and dynamism; development of global value chains; geography (that is, the reconfiguration of regional geography); and role in regional integration. Naturally, leadership is not necessarily always good or benevolent. The themes used to capture leadership of the BRICS are generally defined to amply cover security and economic dimensions.

China's Surge in Latin American Markets: Policy Challenges and Responses

Leaving aside their differences and the problem to categorize them as a group, there is little question that BRICS are increasingly seen as key actors in the international system (Mansfield 2014), thus there is an important space in the international political economy debate to analyse the meaning of the rise of these countries for their regions and the international system. Systematic studies of the role of the BRICS at the global and regional levels are still scarce, however the debate has been clearly divided in two camps. On one hand, a group considers the rise of BRICS as a challenge to the current US hegemonic driven order; leading to political and economic instability. On the other hand, another group considers that the US hegemonic power is still alive given that BRICS face important domestic challenges, need to build trust in their group and many of their members are reluctant to lead in global affairs (Donno and Rudra 2014). This book addresses some of these debates opening up the role of each of the BRICS countries at the global and regional levels and also exploring the potential for their projection as a group in international and regional organizations in light of the challenges they face.