BRICS Information Centre

Home > Bibliography

The Evolving BRICS

John Kirton, director, BRICS Research Group

Presentation to the European Parliament's informal working group of the Greens/EFA parliamentary group convened by Reinhard Butikofer, MEP, July 5, 2023. Version of July 9, 2023.

Introduction

The BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa was created in 2009 (first as BRIC, without South Africa) as a plurilateral summit institution of global relevance and reach. It joined the similar G7 for major democratic powers from 1975 and the G20 for systemically significant states from 2008.

The BRICS was born with three distinctive missions:

1. Serving the "common interests of emerging market economies and developing countries,"
2. Strengthening "collaboration within the BRICS," and
3. Supporting "the central role played by the G20 summit in dealing with the financial crisis."

Since then, the BRICS summit has become a comprehensive, cooperative success, on behalf of all emerging countries.

Institutionally, it has grown in membership, agenda and depth.

Its performance has risen to a substantial level across most dimensions of global governance.

It recently survived two unprecedented shocks: the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's full-scale invasion of a democratic Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

As it prepares for its next summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, in August, it faces three new challenges: 1) the participation of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who faces arrest if he sets foot in South Africa, which is a member of the International Criminal Court; 2) a Chinese-Russian initiative for a massive expansion of its membership; and 3) the escalating, existential threat of climate change.

It will cope with the first two challenges, but not the last, until the European Union and its G7 partners find an effective way to cooperate with the BRICS's leading polluters of China and Russia to control climate change.

Institutionalization

BRICS institutionalization has been rapid and deep.

Membership has remained the same since 2011, when South Africa was added to the BRIC. This was done at Chinese initiative, to represent Africa, to complete the BRICS coverage of the major terrestrial regions where emerging and developing countries dominated. In contrast, the G7 had physically added Canada at its second summit in 1976 and the European Community at its third in 1977.

Outreach participation beyond the host's own region began when China hosted in 2017. It invited to its summit the "BRICS Plus" leaders of Egypt, Kenya, Tajikistan, Mexico and Thailand. Only Mexico qualified as a major emerging economy, representing a missing terrestrial region dominated by developing countries – Central America. The BRICS Plus initiative then died. The G7 summit had begun its own outreach in 1996 and resumed almost every year since 2021 (except in Brussels in 2014),

An annual, regular BRICS summit has been held every year since 2009, unlike the G7, which US president Donald Trump as host cancelled in 2020.

A second annual sideline BRICS summit was added in 2011, held on the margins of the G20 one. The G7 has never had one at G20 summits.

No additional summits, of a stand-alone, comprehensive or subject-specific sort, have been added. In contrast, the G7 and G20 often had more. The BRICS is not a flexible, leaders-driven, crisis-response forum.

Hosting takes place in five-year cycles, with Russia, Brazil, China, India and South Africa hosting in turn. Some scheduled hosts have delayed their turn, while the G7 and G20 members rarely have.

Ministerial meetings were added rapidly. Foreign and finance ministers met before their leaders started to. Quickly added in 2010 were agriculture and trade, in 2010 health, in 2013 education, in 2014 science, and in 2015 environment, energy and culture. The G7 environment ministers had started meeting in 1992 and the G20 ones in 2019. Now the BRICS, G7 and G20 have over a dozen different ministers meetings every year.

Institutional creation began with the BRICS New Development Bank in 2014. The G7 created no such institutions (beyond members' ambassadorial contact groups in Russia and now Ukraine). The G20 created the Financial Stability Board in 2009 and the Global Infrastructure Hub in 2014.

Engagement groups soon arose and rapidly expanded, to represent stakeholders beyond its member governments' executive branch. Of particular interest is the BRICS Parliamentary Forum, which first met in Moscow in June 2015. It held some of its subsequent meetings in non-BRICS countries, on the margins of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. It has focused on issues that the BRICS summit has neglected, notably gender equality and women parliamentarians, and on BRICS priorities such as health.

Performance

The BRICS's steadily increasing institutionalization has been accompanied by steadily increasing performance, but this slowed in 2016 and stalled in 2022 (see Appendix A).

Perfect attendance by BRICS leaders continued, as it has in the G7 but not the G20. When President Putin did not attend the G20 Bali Summit last November, the BRICS meeting went on without him.

The BRICS agenda has expanded steadily, to cover many economic, ecological, social and security subjects.

Its summit communiqués have grown in length from just under 2,000 words in 2009 to a peak of 22,000 in 2014, then declined to 8,400 in 2018.

Subjects in 2009 focused heavily on economics, with macroeconomic policy taking 56% of the communiqués, the global financial crisis 22% and reform of international financial institutions 13% (see Appendix B). Development had 35%, health 8% and terrorism 7%. Climate change had 20%.

By 2013, climate change grew from 369 to 3,527 words, to still take 19%.

Affirmations of the BRICS's distinctive mission grew and shifted. In 2009 common development dominated. But starting in 2014, intra-BRICS cooperation did. The BRICS had become an inward-looking club.

Decision making also proliferated, from producing 16 precise, future-oriented, politically binding commitments in 2009 to 130 in Russia in 2015 but then declined to 45 in Russia in 2020 before reviving to 73 in India in 2021 (see Appendix C).

From 2009 to 2021 BRICS leaders made 844 commitments (see Appendix C). They were led by those on international cooperation with 78, followed by development with 73, regional security with 63, crime and corruption with 59, trade and the digital economy (including information and communications technologies) each with 50, and macroeconomic policy with 46. The BRICS had become a security club.

Lower on the list were energy with 32 commitments, climate change with 25 and the environment with 12. Gender equality had only one. The BRICS was not a consequential ecological club, unlike the G7 since 1979 and, increasingly, the G20.

Delivering these decisions, through members' compliance with their commitments, averaged 77%, about the same level as the G7 and above the G20's 71%. BRICS compliance peaked in 2016 at 89%, then slid in 2020 to 72% (see Appendix D).

Achievements

Several major achievements came from this performance.

The most visible achievement was the creation of the BRICS New Development Bank, whose original five members have now been joined by a few, much smaller ones.

A second achievement was getting the G20 to increase the quota shares of the big emerging countries at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank by almost as much as the BRICS had asked.

Yet failure came on many major issues.

BRICS summits have not stopped the recurrent deadly military conflict between its two biggest members, China and India.

They have not secured, or even endorsed, the permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council that India, Brazil and South Africa seek.

They have not ended the American-European monopoly on who should choose whose citizens are appointed to the top job at the Bretton Woods twins of the IMF and the World Bank.

Prospects

What then are the prospects for the Johannesburg Summit in ten weeks and the summits that follow?

There is much more uncertainty about Johannesburg than about any BRICS summit so far. But let me predict the following outcomes on the major issues it confronts.

First, the summit will take place, but without President Putin participating in person. Since the events of June 23, 2023, involving the Wagner Group, he has more reason to stay at home than he did for the G20's Bali Summit in November 2022. Each of the other four members will welcome this outcome and let him participate virtually should he wish.

Second, the Johannesburg Summit will produce, as its leaders promised last year, clarified "guiding principles, … standards, criteria and procedures" for admitting new members. It will not say any self-declared applicant has met yet them. It will likely affirm informal membership criteria of being 1) a big economy, 2) an emerging country and 3) a country from a substantial terrestrial region not already represented within the BRICS. Saudi Arabia has a sound claim to represent the Middle East, but so does a much poorer Türkiye, whose membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization could compromise its candidacy. The agreed framework is likely to hinder China's or Russia's desire to add countries dependent on them.

When Russia hosts the next BRICS summit in Kazan in 2024, this process of refining the criteria could continue, if Russia has not yet lost its war against Ukraine. Russia may seek an institutional success by adding more deck chairs for new members, but its partners might not agree to add them to help a sinking ship.

Brazil's 2025 BRICS presidency will be the time to admit more members, especially those that reinforce the priorities that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has set. Here climate change control stands out.

That will be the time for the two presidents of the European Union to follow French president Emmanuel Macron's current, poorly timed suggestion to participate in the BRICS summit, and signal that they would be willing to come to the BRICS summit as invited guests.

However, to pave the way, members of the European Parliament can start now, by meeting with the BRICS Parliamentary Forum, to discuss climate change, gender equality and women parliamentarians' roles, an issue dear to both.

[back to top]

Appendix A: BRICS Summit Performance ↩

Notes: Only documents issued at a summit in the leaders' name are included.
Domestic political management refers to participation by BRICS members. Compliments are references to members in summit documents.
Deliberation refers to the documents issued in the leaders' name at the summit.
Decision making refers to number of commitments as identified by the BRICS Research Group.
Delivery: scores are measured on a scale from −1 (no compliance) to +1 (full compliance, or fulfilment of goal set out in commitment). See http://www.brics.utoronto.ca/compliance.Figures are cumulative scores based on compliance reports.
Development of global governance: internal are references to G20 institutions in summit documents; external are references to institutions outside the G20 (2016 from Courtney Hallink).

[back to top]

Appendix B: BRICS Conclusions Summary, 2009–2012 ↩

Note: Compiled by Maria Marchyshyn, March 15, 2023.

[back to top]

Appendix C: BRICS Commitments by Year and Subject, 2009–2021 ↩

Notes: Complied by Caroline Bracht; updated by Alissa Wang, November 29, 2016, and John Kirton, December 30, 2021.
IFI = international financial institutions; ICT = information and communications technologies.
Spread is the number of subjects on which commitments were made.
a. Includes only the declaration and not the two other documents released at the summit.
b. Science and education.
c. Tourism.

[back to top]

Appendix D: BRICS Compliance by Member and Subject, 2008–2021 ↩

Note: Compiled by Alissa Wang, December 30, 2021.
IFI = international financial institution; ICT = information and communications technologies; WTO = World Trade Organization.

Follow @BRICSresearch on Twitter | Please send comments to brics@utoronto.ca
This page was last updated on July 16, 2023
All contents copyright © 2023. University of Toronto unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved.