Professor Jason Ralph co-authors a new BRICS+ Thinking policy paper
Professor Jason Ralph co-authors a new paper examining how the political West should respond to the changing global balance of power.
Jason Ralph, Professor of International Relations in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, and Gunther Hellmann, Professor of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt, have published a new policy paper with BRICS+ Thinking, a policy platform set up earlier this year by Lord Jim O'Neill, and Dr Gemma Cheng'er Deng.
Their paper, The Political West as Globally Oriented Pragmatists: Core Values in Engaging Diverse Powers, addresses the question of which core values the political West should preserve as global power shifts towards the BRICS and other non-Western states.
The authors reject two competing approaches to dealing with the changing global order: a radical conservative retreat into civilizational nationalism and geopolitical blocs, and a radical liberal effort to preserve Western primacy in order to universalise liberal democracy.
They argue that both approaches intensify polarisation and obstruct cooperation on common challenges, including climate change, pandemics, technological governance, economic instability and international security, which no political bloc can manage alone.
Globally oriented deliberative pragmatism
Instead, the authors argue that the West should pursue globally oriented deliberative pragmatism, which they describe as a core Western tradition that can provide a viable basis for future strategy.
This would involve the selective and problem-specific inclusion of capable non-Western states; reform of international institutions through reciprocal exchanges of recognition and obligation; trade arrangements that protect domestic cohesion without externalising costs; and a consistent framework for distinguishing legitimate cultural difference from intolerable conduct, including maintaining the ability to oppose aggression. The approach also supports liberal values as a significant voice within a wider global dialogue, while simultaneously recognising legitimate cultural difference and addressing the charge of Western hypocrisy.
Ultimately, the authors argue that sharing power under principled conditions represents neither Western decline nor moral capitulation. Instead, it recovers a democratic ethos of dialogue and collective problem-solving that is better suited to an increasingly plural and interdependent world.
BRICS+ Thinking
In 2001 Lord Jim O'Neill, then Head of Economic Research at Goldman Sachs, coined the phrase BRIC, an acronym that stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China, to identify those countries that he predicted would challenge the global economic power of the 'political West' as identified by the Group of Seven (G7) nations.
The acronym was subsequently adopted by those nations, together with South Africa, and they began formally meeting as a group from 2010 onwards. BRICS+ is now used to refer to the group as it has expanded to include more countries from across the Global South.
Earlier this year, the 25th anniversary of his initial report, Jim O'Neill established BRICS+ Thinking, an independent, not-for-profit policy platform dedicated to addressing shared global challenges by producing collaborative policy research and fostering expert dialogue between the Global South and North. It was co-founded by the group’s CEO Dr Gemma Cheng'er Deng.
Read more about The Political West as Globally Oriented Pragmatists: Core Values in Engaging Diverse Powers and access the policy paper here.
