Recently, new actors have emerged on the international political stage, signaling a change in the power structure established after the Cold War. China is considered the most prominent example. Similarly, however, Brazil, India, and South Africa—all important regional powers—have shown growing ambitions to gain importance internationally. They will be the focus of this project. At the international political level, these countries favor cooperative approaches, seeking both insertion into the international system and increasing participation in multilateral institutions. Concerning their relations among each other and with other developing countries, they have also taken a cooperative approach, thus giving new momentum to South-South Cooperation (SSC). SSC aims not only to leverage power to create benefits for cooperating countries, but also to form alliances between developing countries vis-à-vis the countries of the “Global North”. This paper outlines new categories for the analyses of SSC and investigates whether it is really different from North-South Cooperation (NSC). The focus is put on development cooperation as an instrument of foreign policy. Brazil, India, and South Africa are chosen as case studies and their activities as development partners are analyzed. The underlying questions are: Are emerging powers forming a new development paradigm? Or is the SSC following patterns similar to those of NSC, thus risking the creation of new asymmetries between the involved parties?
