BRICS’ contribution to the new world order: a capacity appraisal

The present paper analyzes BRICS’ capacity and contribution to building up the New World Economic Order. Our investigation is structured around three perspectives related to these countries: national, international and in relation to each other, enclosed in the theoretical framework of international relations. The argumentation is based on economic phenomena and processes, longitudinal and transversal comparative analyses and also the plentiful literature. In the introduction I clarify the concept of New World Order through the lenses of (neo)realism, (neo)liberalism and constructivism. In the following section, my objective is to bring to the forefront the five countries’ national performance estimated through four equally weighted components: critical mass, economic performance, military strength and quality of governance. In the succeeding section I assess the actual stage of BRICS’ multilevel cooperation, answering the question whether the economic projects initiated by these countries involve rival or complementary goals. The final section summarizes the main conclusions and several directions for further research.