Towards Deeper Intra-BRICS Cooperation: An Argument

This chapter outlines the purpose and the contours of this book. The subject of intra-BRICS cooperation has become topical and pertinent as a result of the large number of agreements, plans, roadmaps and undertakings that the BRICS have made. While the cooperation among BRICS countries about external agenda including the UN Reform, climate change negotiations and perhaps the sustainable development agenda is a subject in need of discussion, this book focuses on the crucial question of intra-BRICS cooperation on the basis that the cohesion of BRICS depends to a large measure on cooperation among BRICS countries over the issues and plans they have agreed to strengthen functional cooperation over. The existing literature and the discussion on BRICS underestimate the critical importance of internal cohesion. Given that the BRICS do not have a secretariat or other coordinating institution to preserve the cohesion of the body, there is a risk that what the BRICS promise may not materialise. The road to institutionalisation may in our argument pass through the phase of simply intra-BRICS cooperation across the arrears of priority that the bloc has agreed on.