Do BRICS Countries Want to Shape a New World Order?

The world order has been analysed since the early 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc as centered around the United States and its Western allies, marking an era of US hegemony and unipolarity. This order has been based on a set of “liberal” values (democracy, rule of law, human rights, economic and political freedom, etc.), which Western powers have deemed as “universal” and often imposed to other countries as a precondition for being accepted into the society of states. However, some scholars already warned at that time that the international system was entering an “era of ‘waning hegemony’,” marked by a decreasing US dominance. [1] This hegemony has been challenged by the emergence of “rising” powers, with the potential to initiate a progressive process of global rebalancing on the international scene. This phenomenon has been best symbolised by the rise of the “BRICS” countries. Jim O’Neill – a Goldman Sachs analyst – published two famous e