Diplomats on BRICS: Drawbacks and benefits of cooperation without integration

BRICS, a geopolitical project-type organization, has become the object of heightened research interest by some, sceptical controversy/dismissal by others and tacit neglect by most in mainstream academic studies.Disagreements range significantly from its ability to remain united in the absence of meaningful commitments to integration, to its real capacity to wield behavior-transforming power on the international stage and stand up to a unipolar American-led world.Its five historic members -Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -recently joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have come a long way in their cooperation since the first summits were held in the 2000s and have even embarked on a semblance of institutionalization process with the creation of the New Development Bank which allows the countries to support each other by circumventing both the US dollar and the Western financial system.The future of BRICS remains, however, indeterminate, with few studies making sense of the perceptions of its members' leaders and the challenges they face on a daily basis in maintaining this apparently disparate format.The present qualitative study is based on 21 anonymous expert interviews with diplomats from BRICS countries in which they reveal the true mechanisms at work in the bloc and the way in which a basic set of values concerning international interaction glues the organization together.The findings show that integration is not a condition sine qua non for successful, long-term cooperation.By refusing to give up on anything they value (particularly sovereignty) and by avoiding open confrontation, BRICS members have been able to creatively establish a platform for cooperation that allows them to successfully accomplish a number of their foreign policy and economic goals on their own terms without compromising their pledge on sovereignty and perceived autonomy of foreign policy action.