The political and legal mechanism of cooperation among BRICS countries in the field of electronic trade

The subject of the research is the systematic organization of the political and legal mechanism of BRICS cooperation in the field of electronic commerce. The goal of the study is to propose and substantiate conceptual ideas about the political and legal mechanism of cooperation among BRICS states in the area of electronic commerce. In this regard, an analysis of the coordinated approach of BRICS to the necessity of developing electronic commerce and transforming it into a specific thematic area of cooperation at the level of the association was carried out. The authors focus in detail on the characteristics of the structural elements of the cooperation mechanism at the BRICS level in the field of electronic commerce and justify its political and legal nature. Significant attention was given to forecasting promising areas of the BRICS agenda in the field of electronic commerce, which are the focus of the thematic cooperation mechanism. A key aspect of the study is the disclosure of the system and intra-system connectivity of political and legal instruments and organizational structures of institutional interaction. The methodological basis of the research includes the following methods and approaches: historical and systemic approaches, formal-dogmatic, historical-legal, and comparative-legal methods, as well as the method of legal forecasting. The main conclusion of the study is the assertion that, thanks to the functioning of the appropriate political and legal mechanism within BRICS, the institutionalization of cooperation in the field of electronic commerce is taking place, moving towards the formation of a systematically organized common electronic trading space in accordance with a model that is already quite visible. It has been established that the formation of a multilateral BRICS system model in the area of electronic commerce is the ultimate goal of the cooperation mechanism's functioning. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time in scientific literature, the processes of institutionalization of cooperation among BRICS countries in the field of electronic commerce have been systematically studied, manifested in the formation and development of a political and legal interaction mechanism. The contribution of the article to the subject area of research is the systematization of areas of cooperation within BRICS in the field of electronic commerce, as well as the proposal of the hypothesis that a subsequent direction of the discussed mechanism's work will be the development and implementation of measures to harmonize both the sectoral legislation of the member states and the harmonization and subsequent unification of technical standards in this area.