Chapter 4: The BRICS potential Role in Appeasing Sino-Indian Tensions
4.2 Achievements and limitations of the BRICS
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International Organizations which establish proper headquarters have more chances to insure their success. In the case of the BRICS, there is no permanent headquarter. Therefore, the sovereignty of the BRICS can be put into question.
Control:
The BRICS established a fair voting system with every country having the same voting power. Moreover as we have seen, the New Development and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement have been built in a way that country members could not emerge as dominant especially in the case of China; despite the fact that China invested more money its voting power remains the same. The BRICS always needs a consensus to approve a decision.
Flexibility:
The flexibility of the Institution is hard to tell as the author encountered a lack of data.
However, the equal status and decision role of every BRICS member state leads us to assume that the BRICS could easily adjust in the case of crisis with a consensus.
4.2 Achievements and limitations of the BRICS
State Compliance and BRICS governance effectiveness
The analysis of the contribution of the BRICS institutionalization level to its effectiveness is essential in this chapter. Indeed as stated above, the level of institutionalization of the BRICS is not optimal but the Organization succeeded into establishing the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement. Therefore, the present institutionalization of the Quasi Organization has an impact on its effectiveness. In fact, the BRICS decision-making and compliance are the key factor for enhancing BRICS effectiveness to its members.
However, the consensus decision-making and compliance performance depends on the
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solidarity of members’ interests and political will to handle common issues. (Larionova, Shelepov 2015)
The dynamics of BRICS cooperation institutionalization has increased and can be considered as high. From 2009 to 2015, 88 meetings have taken place. The BRICS member states are engaged in this organization and are constantly expanding the agenda and the problems to address. In 2015, they had produced almost 40 documents and keep increasing the number of standalone meetings, the publication of documents and reports as well as the establishment of new working groups in different sector ( from economic to agricultural), and lastly the launch of mechanisms of coordination between members states to insure effectiveness.
In the book chapter “Is BRICS Institutionalization enhancing its effectiveness?”
Larianova M. and Shelepov A. (2015), define two important concept commitments and compliance. “Commitments are defined as discrete, specific, publicly expressed, collectively agreed to statement of intent, it is a promise or an undertaking by institutions members that they will undertake future actions to move toward, meet or adjust to meet and identifies welfare target.” (Larionova, Shelepov 2015) Furthermore, compliance is understood as national government action aimed toward formal legislative and administrative measures designed to implement summit commitments (Kirton, et al 2014). These two definitions are essential for the study of state compliance in the case of the BRICS.
Regarding compliance, the BRICS compliance performance of 2011-2013 has been published.
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Figure 4.2: BRICS Compliance performance from 2011 to 2013 0-2(Larionova, Shelepov 2015, p. 52)
Source : Larianova M. and Shelepov A., “Is BRICS Institutionalization Enhancing Its Effectiveness?”, 2015, p 52.
This chart can be understood as followed (University of Toronto 2012):
scale from -1 to +1, where +1 indicates full compliance with the stated commitment
-1 indicates a failure to comply or action taken that is directly opposite to the stated goal of the commitment
0 indicates partial compliance or work in progress, such as initiatives that have been
launched but are not yet near completion and whose final results can therefore not be assessed.
This chart shows that compliance is easily applied in the field of development, trade, climate change or even energy with a compliance of above 0.45. However, the areas of macroeconomics policies and regional security are way below the average of 0.41 and both register an average of 0.20. These statements show the lack of effectiveness of the member states to comply and commit in these domains. This means that the BRICS are not focused on these subjects yet and are not considered as top priorities. In the case of Sino-Indian relations, the two main problems are related to these areas. The negative impact of the Complex Interdependence such as trade deficit can hardly be handled through the organization yet.
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Moreover, the territorial dispute and military tensions are part of the Regional Security topic and the effectiveness of the BRICS on these issues is therefore questionable.
However, the “compliance” performance has been improving since the BRICS creation in 2009 and can be explained by the development of the institutional culture within the BRICS and the rising role the Organization. In addition, the members’ motivation to strengthen the organization legitimacy and the will of the member states to earn returns on investment from the building of the BRICS is contributing to the rising power of the BRICS. For now, the compliance rates of the BRICS member states to their commitments are still lower than those of the G20 and G8 (Ibid, 2015).
Mechanism of dispute resolution/sanctions enforcement
The BRICS Organization is built on the United Nations Charter. This means that the BRICS do not have a treaty or a charter dedicated to its own organization. Therefore, dispute resolution and sanctions enforcement that theoretically insure peace or prevent dispute outbreak within an institution are, in this case, based on the UN charter.
Regarding dispute settlement, in Chapter VI, Article 33 is the most important article and states that: “The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.” (United Nations Official Website) The United Nations is an Institution specialized in maintaining peace and international security however as seen previously the BRICS are not focused on security. The fact that the BRICS do not provide proper dispute resolution mechanism among member states will be an obstacle to settle disputes in case of Sino-Indian conflict outbreak. As such, the role of the BRICS to solve Sino-Indian dispute is limited.
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In addition, during the 8th BRICS Summit in Goa in October 2016, the member states discussed the opportunity for addressing new dispute resolution mechanism. The idea of an institution dedicated to dispute resolution was mentioned. Indeed a BRICS Center for Dispute Resolution already exists since 2015 initiated by the Shanghai International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission but it is dedicated to business level disputes among BRICS countries. Therefore an institution specialized in dispute resolution between governments of the BRICS member states has to be established. According to Medha Srivastava and Ameen Jauhar (2016), this would have a positive impact on cooperation and lead to sustainable growth for the BRICS Organization. (Srivastava, Jauhar 2016)