International Insiders and Outsiders: The Hybrid Psychology of the BRICS

Originally designed as an investment concept by the US bank Goldman & Sachs in 2001, the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have formed a political grouping in 2009. Presenting itself as an exclusive emerging powers club, the BRICS have called on the established powers to open the international system and grant them more voice in international decision-making. As the group criticizes the established powers for the unfair and discriminative structure of the international system and promotes an alternative vision of world order, the BRICS group casts itself as an anti-hegemonic alliance of ‘institutional outsiders’ that have been kept away from the decision-making tables by the Establishment. However, all BRICS countries are members of the Group of 20 (G20), an international forum in which the 20 most important economic powers coordinate their positions and tackle global economic challenges. As fully-fledged members of this ‘21st century concert of powers’ the BRICS have thus successfully shifted their position from traditional ‘outsiders’ to institutionalized members of the inner circle of global governance. Interestingly, in the realm of the G20, the BRICS work hand in hand with the established powers and do not act as an alliance of emerging powers within this forum. Yet, even despite their rise to the status of institutional insiders, the BRICS group continues to cast itself as an oppositional force in international politics that represents the interests of the outsiders and unheard voices. What is the purpose of this ambiguous behaviour? Is the G20 the main game with a self-standing BRICS forum providing some form of psychological compensation as the former ‘outsiders’ become part of the establishment? Or do the emerging powers rather place their faith in the forum of their own making, working with the G20 on an opportunistic basis but with little actual buy-in? The paper seeks to explain this ambiguous international behaviour on the basis of the BRICS’ “hybrid personality” as (now) emerging, but formerly peripheral states.