Download 1 ) Swing States?

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Class 10 – Emerging Powers in Comparative Perspective
Dr. Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira (Postdoctoral Researcher)
IRI-USP, São Paulo, 25 April 2016
 The Party is Over!!!
Out of the BRICS?
 In the MINTs...
 Some in the CIVETS
Has South Africa been degraded?
 Quick Task: discuss why the BRICS (or the BRICs)
should be kept as a separate group from the MINTs and
the CIVETS?
 Quick Task: discuss in pairs why the BRICS (or the
BRICs) should be kept as a separate group from the
MINTs and the CIVETS?
 Elcano Index!!!  Methodology
Why out of the BRICS?
Out of the BRICS?
Characteristics of Emerging Powers (Bruera, 2015)
 Capacity to influence the international order (functions
of agenda setting and sponsorship);
 A strong international identity;
 Revisionism (not extreme, of course);
 Regional Leadership (Influence at least).
Characteristics of Emerging Powers (Bruera, 2015: 228)
Purusit of Structural Power: “...the capacity of any nation to
become an emerging power depends not only on its material
resources, but also on its capacity to exercise ‘structural
leadership’, understood as the ability to translate ‘the
possession of material resources into bargaining leverage cast
in terms appropriate to the issues at stake in specific
instances of institutional bargaining”.
 Brazil and South Africa have done that!!!
Out of the BRICS?
Out of the BRICS?

 Strong regional role;
 Growing international profile;
 Poverty;
 Diversity and Separatism.
QUITE SIMILAR TO CHINA AND INDIA!!!
 Does it deserve a place in the BRICS???
 FTA since 2010
Out of the BRICS?
Until mid-2000s
 Goal of joining the EU
 Change after Erdogan’s government
 Emphasis on Islamic heritage over Secularism
 Yet does identity explain everything?
 Realist move!  State empowerment.
A Potential Middle Power? “… the Middle East is characterized
by an exceptionally low level of regionalism and regionalization.
Intra-regional trade remains low in spite of some advances
achieved in the last few years. Similarly, transnational relations
between Arab countries let alone between Israel and the Arab
world is extremely limited. The absence of such relations is one
important obstacle in the way of conflict resolution and
reconciliation... In this respect, Turkey’s economic, social and
political engagement both at the state as well as the non-state
level clearly contributes to encouraging greater interdependence and possibly institutionalization too” (Kirisçi, 2012: 329).