The BRICS in the evolving architecture of global governance

The architecture of global governance is made up of intergovernmental global and regional organizations as the inner core of formal multilateral machinery. This chapter begins with a sketch of the state of uncertainty in the international governance architecture. It describes the evolution of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), followed by how it advanced global governance. The chapter discusses the structural and other limitations that constrain the group's role and influence and then notes the deepening institutionalization of the grouping. The ascendancy of informal modes of governance has benefited countries that in earlier eras were kept out of the central concerts of power. This is especially true of the BRICS countries, which continued to face the massive gaps in post-1945 and even post-1991 systems of governance. The most serious drag on being a major force in global governance is not resistance by the old order but serious differences of values and interests among the group's members.