GIVEN THEIR RISING CAPABILITIES AND similar frustrations with the existing system, the emerging economic powers of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and, since December 2010, South Africa) are bound to have an impact on global economic governance, whether individually, as in the case of China, or collectively. Many scholars and policymakers have been skeptical that this eclectic group of five, dispersed around the world and only bound by the imagination of a Goldman Sachs economist, could create an effective coalition.1 As evidenced in this article, however, over the past decade, the BRICS governments have achieved discernibly successful collective action in their financial statecraft to further common foreign policy goals. International “financial statecraft” may be defined as a national government’s use of monetary or financial regulations, policies, or instruments to achieve foreign policy ends.2 Most analysts of financial statecraft begin with a set of assumptions about how the topic should be defined (see Table 1). Five assumptions implicit in the traditional conceptualization of financial statecraft are as follows. First, the agent, or initiator, is assumed to be an individual state, either acting alone or becoming the main mover behind a coalition of like-minded states. Second, the target is similarly assumed to be an individual state. Third, the purpose of the action is assertive or offensive on the part of the agent, and the means employed are coercive.3 Fourth, given the preceding assumptions, it is clear that the traditional financial statecraft literature understands power principally as influence, in which one state attempts to compel another to alter its previously determined course of behavior. Finally, it follows from these standard conceptualizations that the agent state necessarily will be a hegemon or major power, as less capable states have little hope of exercising such influence.
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Katada et al. (2017) studied this question.