BRICS and the Global Financial Order: Liberalism Contested? (Elements in the Economics of Emerging Markets)

The global financial system is the economic bedrock of the contemporary liberal economic order. Contrary to other global-economy areas, finance is rarely analyzed in discussions on contestations of economic liberalism. However, a quite comprehensive process of external contestation of the global financial order (GFO) is underway. This contestation occurs through the rising share of emerging market economies within global finance in recent years, especially the rise of the BRICS economies. This Element investigates whether and how the BRICS contest the contemporary GFO by conducting a systematic empirical analysis across seven countries, eleven issues areas and three dimensions. This contestation occurs across issue areas but is mostly concentrated on the domestic and transnational dimension, not the international level on which much research focuses. Rather than the entire BRICS, it is especially China, Russia and India that contest liberal finance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.