Discourse power and decision-making power of developing countries are both on the rise within global governance regimes. Emerging countries in particular are trying to stand out through this process.

Although discussions of emerging markets date back to the 1990s, emerging countries gained true momentum with the creation of the term “BRIC” by Jim O’Neill in 2001, said Laura Mahrenbach, a research fellow of public policy at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. Though hardly the only emerging countries in the world, the BRICS grouping—Brazil, Russia, India, China and, since 2010, South Africa—have subsequently become synonymous with emerging countries’ ambitions in global governance.

Emerging countries and countries in the Global South have had some significant successes in achieving a bigger role in global governance, said Matthew D. Stephen, a research fellow of global governance at WZB Berlin Social Science Center. For example, they have brought about a modest redistribution of voting quotas at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In addition, developing countries have increased their share of staff at the secretariats of international organizations. 

Emerging countries’ effects on global governance have been diverse. In Mahrenbach’s view, we have seen real changes in the ways some global governance institutions operate. Nowhere is this clearer than at the World Trade Organization (WTO), where activism and leadership from Brazil, China, and India have changed how trade negotiations are conducted. Simultaneously, these states have used the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism to hold traditional powers accountable to globally agreed-upon rules.

Emerging countries are playing a growing role in shaping the 21st-century world, with China at the forefront, said James Paradise, a senior fellow from the Asia Research Center at Yonsei University. He noted China has co-created two new multilateral development banks, is seeking greater international use of its currency, is playing an important role in the G20, and is pursuing the Belt and Road Initiative. 

According to Paradise, one factor crucial to China’s success is maintenance of economic and financial stability at home.

As the second largest economy in the world with tremendous intellectual resources, China has the capability to make major contributions to global governance in areas such as poverty alleviation, economic growth, technological development and regional security, Paradise anticipated. 

Recent events have highlighted a very pressing problem of global governance: the continued dependence of global governance institutions on their major donors, whether traditional or rising powers, as well as their vulnerability to these countries’ geopolitical aims. Emerging countries have already shown initiative in addressing these problems, Mahrenbach noted. One example is the so-called “vaccine diplomacy” in which China, India and Russia delivered free or low-cost COVID-19 vaccines to poorer African countries as a means of overcoming the geoeconomically motivated “vaccine nationalism” practiced by traditional powers, including the US, Canada and the UK.

However, Stephen said that several reasons have limited developing countries from having a higher impact in today’s global governance. “It is generally harder to reform institutions than to keep them as they are—you need to mobilize a reform-minded coalition and overcome opposition, and this can take time.” 

It is disputable to what extent emerging countries have disrupted the established global governance system.

Salvatore Babones, an associate professor of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney, warned that history provides little guidance here. The narrative of rising powers against the established hegemon, which has been popularized as the “Thucydides trap”, isn’t even a correct reading of Thucydides. In the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian empire was the largest and richest power in Greece, while the so-called “established” power, Sparta, was a much smaller and poorer country. The Peloponnesian war was more representative of a war to resist Athenian expansion than a war caused when a rising power encounters an established hegemon.

Stephen said that developed countries have shown considerable reluctance to give up their control over the most important international organizations. In addition, until recently, developing countries have generally lacked credible exit options—there have been no obvious alternatives to established institutions.

“There is a long way to go,” Stephen said.