Abstract In recent years, the international order has undergone profound transformations that have weakened its stability, particularly affecting global decision-making and participatory mechanisms. Increasingly contested is the global governance system established after the Second World War, which, according to emerging powers such as the BRICS , no longer reflects today’s multipolar reality and fails to grant meaningful participation to the Global South, historically sidelined in global decision-making. This article investigates whether the BRICS are offering an alternative and more inclusive model of global governance, focusing on climate change while acknowledging that their reform agenda also extends to economic and institutional domains. Using a comparative and critical method, the findings suggest that the BRICS are making progress in reshaping governance, particularly against the backdrop of crises in the European Union and the United States. However, internal divisions, continued reliance on outdated energy sources, and the uncertainties of the BRICS Plus expansion may hinder their capacity to present a coherent and effective alternative.
Abstract For much of the United Nations’ history, the United States has benefited from structural advantages—its permanent seat, financial weight, and host-country status—but its influence within the Security Council has always depended on sustained diplomatic investment rather than formal authority alone. In recent years, that investment has declined. We argue that the concept of diplomatic capacity —the human, institutional, and experiential resources a state can mobilize to effectively participate in and influence multilateral decision-making—helps explain how the distribution of influence in the Council is shifting even as the formal rules remain unchanged. Drawing on new data on mission staffing and ambassadorial experience across the permanent members, we show that U.S. diplomatic capacity has eroded over time, a process which is accelerating under the current administration. This shift has created opportunities for other actors to shape Council outcomes. We outline several plausible pathways for future leadership, including expanded roles for European permanent members, growing Chinese engagement, and more coordinated initiatives by elected members. These developments suggest that influence in the Security Council increasingly reflects patterns of institutional investment rather than assumptions about U.S. predominance, with implications for the Council’s agenda, coalitional dynamics, and prospects for effective collective action.
This essay examines the renewed political salience of the Global South in contemporary global governance and its implications for the liberal international order (LIO). It argues that recent Global South positions most visibly in responses to Russia's invasion of Ukraine reflect not indifference to liberal order but long-standing frustrations with its illiberal practices. First, the essay challenges Global North assumptions that the post-1945 order has been consistently liberal, showing instead how Western hegemony has often been coercive and exclusionary from the perspective of formerly colonized states. Second, it demonstrates that Global South actors have historically demanded a more genuinely liberal order one offering greater voice, equality, and institutional fairness rather than an alternative illiberal system. Finally, the essay identifies the emergence of "illiberal transnationalism," linking populist and nationalist forces across North and South, as a key driver of fragmentation within the LI O. The result is a more decentralized and contested order that presents both opportunities and risks for global cooperation.
This short essay thinks the ideas of the (Global) South and the West together. The two concepts have both been discussed extensively but mostly separately. By juxtaposing the two concepts, we consider whether they are commensurable. Although the Global South emerged much later than the idea of the West, it is similarly ambiguous in terms of scope and meaning. But as a normative project, the Global South seems to have largely disappeared during the last several decades as the sense of solidarity between the countries it once included has eroded and the term has increasingly been instrumentalized, especially by the four BRIC countries.
