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Most research in policy transfer studies focused on cases of policies originating from the 'Global North'. However, recently countries of the 'Global South' became sources of models. With the exception of a few studies, literature has not considered these developments. This paper aims at contributing to this direction, by proposing an agenda drawn from policy transfer studies as well as from the observation of Brazil's and China's engagement in policy transfer. This exercise helps highlight a series of aspects overlooked by the literature. Understanding their motivations, their timing and other important aspects related to these processes can shed new light on policy transfer phenomena. New research questions are introduced and illustrated by examples from Brazil and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences of the hugely successful expansion of South-South Cooperation since the new millennium. For all the achievements, variations and change over the 1950s-late 1990s, 'SSC 1.0' was characterised by relative neglect within the 'international' development community, and by many orthodox and critical scholars. In the chronological schema of the paper, 'SSC 2.0' refers to the period of remarkable expansion from the early 2000s to the present. The emergence of 'SSC 3.0', I suggest, is currently revealed by a discernible set of shifts driven in large part by the expansionary successes of SSC 2.0, as well as other turns in the global political economy. Three contemporary trends are identified: cooperation narratives that are increasingly 'muscular', nationalistic and pragmatic; difficulties sustaining claims to 'non-interference' in partner countries; and the further erosion of ideational and operational distinctiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the role of the BASIC countries — Brazil, South Africa, India, and China — in UN climate change negotiations. The paper explores the formation and evolution of the group, and focuses on how the four major developing countries of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa have coordinated their positions and acted jointly to achieve an agreed outcome with other players in the recent UN Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun, based on an analysis of their country profiles and negotiation positions on a wide range of climate issues. The paper argues that the emergence of the BASIC Group is a reflection of the ongoing power shift from EU–US agreement to BASIC–US compromise in UN climate negotiations since the early 1990s. The rise of BASIC also has its roots in recent global market dynamics and further reflects the power transformation in the economic dimension of the international system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a study exploring children's participation and protection rights. The research was conducted by the International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership (ICCRP) – a multi-sectoral partnership, involving academic institutions, non-government organisations, and young people in five countries. Although funding came from a Canadian federal agency, partners adopted a decolonial approach to break down inequitable power dynamics. This approach ensured the usage of contextually relevant methods and that children's voices were heard. This paper reports on findings in Brazil, China, and South Africa, where participatory methodologies were used, to explore how young people and adults conceptualise the experience of 'participating together.' Our findings show that there is no single conceptualisation of participation that fits the different contexts where the ICCRP worked. In China, the emphasis is on education and respect for parents' decisions about their lives; in South Africa, it is on respect and duty to elders and community; while in Brazil, participation relates to 'protagonism' where there is a rhetoric of young people's autonomy in public policy. However, in all cases, intergenerational relations are dynamic and evolve over time. Additionally, individuals who experience meaningful participation in public spaces, change their attitude to participation in the private sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on recent and upcoming mega-events in South Africa, China and Brazil, this paper contrasts and critiques the associated image and identity opportunities and risks, as well as comparative motivations for hosting such events. Accordingly, the paper considers the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the scheduled 2014 World Cup and 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics in Brazil. In the context of an increasing number of mega-events being hosted in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China; South Africa is to join), the paper provides broader continuity and introduces a broader research agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies regional (spatial) inequality in the five most populous countries in the world: China, India, the United States of America, Indonesia and Brazil in the period 1980-2000. They are all federations or quasi-federations composed of entities with substantial economic autonomy. Two types of regional inequalities are considered: Concept 1 inequality, which is inequality between mean incomes (GDPs per capita) of states/provinces, and Concept 2 inequality, which is inequality between population-weighted regional mean incomes. The first inequality speaks to the issue of regional convergence, the second, to the issue of overall inequality as perceived by citizens within a nation. All three Asian countries, show rising inequality in terms of both concepts in the decade of the 1990s. Divergence in income outcomes is particularly noticeable for the most populous states/provinces in India and China. The United States, where regional inequality is the least, shows further convergence. Brazil, with the highest level of regional inequality, displays no trend. A regression analysis fails to establish robust association between the usual macro variables and the two types of regional inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the roles that political leaders have played in the formulation and implementation of government initiatives to tackle poverty and inequality in Brazil, China, India and South Africa since about 2002. While research on social policy and welfare expansion in the industrialised world has largely ignored leaders, we stress the importance of politics and political agency, since political leaders often exercised decisive influence even if their decisions to prioritise certain issues and to adopt certain strategies depend on the convergence of other factors. We examine their management of tensions and opposition within their governments and their political systems – as well as what we can discern of their motivations and political calculations. We consider the impact on government initiatives both of their adroit machinations and, at times, of their ineptitude. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent economic interaction between Latin America and Asia, particularly between Brazil and China, has attracted the attention of the academic world that seeks to understand the effects of this approach in terms of business cycle convergence, economic structure and development trajectory. This paper contributes to this debate, presenting new evidence about the type and quality of this relationship. Our results reveal that Brazil and China present different patterns of relationship between trade and productive specialization: while Brazil has an intra-industry trade pattern, China has an inter-industry trade pattern. We explore some normative implications and future research possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article brings to fore long-standing intricacies and dilemmas in Brazil's and China's international positioning. It reveals the complex discursive repertoires shaping the Brazilian and Chinese sense of Self in the world, in the Global South, and, more particularly, in relation to Africa. It engages with the concept of "liminality" to highlight how constructing South–South relationships and invoking Southern identities have been ambiguous, indeterminate—thus liminal—endeavors in these countries' international affairs. By dissecting their diplomatic and corporate narratives towards Africa, our analysis demonstrates, notwithstanding tensions and contradictions, how Brazilian and Chinese actors have creatively acted upon this liminality to pursue foreign policy goals and economic projects. In doing so, the article stresses the floating, ambiguous nature of powerful constructs such as "South" (and "West"), and binary oppositions between them. It concludes by discussing how a liminality perspective allows us to understand the unfixed and multifaceted nature of roles and identities in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying existing care pathways is the first step for understanding how services can be improved to enable early diagnosis and effective follow-up care for non-communicable diseases (NCDs); however, evidence on how care pathways can and should be identified in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is lacking. To describe generalisability and lessons learned from recruitment and data collection for the quantitative component of a mixed methods study designed to determine the care pathway for atrial fibrillation (AF) in Brazil, China and Sri Lanka. Adults (≥18 years) that spoke the local language and with an AF diagnosis were eligible. We excluded anyone with a hearing or cognitive impairment or ineligible address. Eligible participants were identified using electronic records in Brazil and China; in Sri Lanka, researchers attended the outpatient clinics to identify eligible participants. Data were collected using two quantitative questionnaires administered at least 2-months apart. A minimum sample size of 238 was required for each country. The required sample size was met in Brazil (n = 267) and China (n = 298), but a large proportion of AF patients could not be contacted (47% and 27%, respectively) or refused to participate (36% and 38%, respectively). In Sri Lanka, recruitment was challenging, resulting in a reduced sample (n = 151). Mean age of participants from Brazil, China and Sri Lanka was 69 (SD = 11.3), 65 (SD = 12.8) and 58 (SD = 11.7), respectively. Females accounted for 49% of the Brazil sample, 62% in China and 70% in Sri Lanka. Generalisability was an issue in Brazil and China, as was selection bias. Recruitment bias was highlighted in Sri Lanka. Additional or alternative recruitment methods may be required to ensure generalisability and reduce bias in future studies aimed at identifying NCD care pathways in LMICs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's rapid economic growth created new challenges and opportunities for Latin America over the 2000s. Much ink has been spilt analysing how countries in the region surfed the Chinese wave of commodity-based prosperity. However, there is fertile and quite unexplored territory to analyse how these regional powers in the Global South, from a comparative perspective, have interacted with China as they tried to improve their international position over the 2000s. We analyse in this article how Brazil and Mexico dealt with China's presence and strategic goals in Latin America and assess the outcomes they extracted from this relationship. We draw evidence from and offer comparisons across different presidencies in each country (Lula and Rousseff in Brazil, and Fox, Calderón, and Peña Nieto in Mexico) over the 2000s, which allows us to grasp the variation in ideology, governance style, and electoral legitimacy. We ground our theoretical framework in the concept of international insertion, a Southern-based framework that opens space to understand and explain how countries in the South behave in international politics from a different point of view. We claim that the efforts made by the national governments in both countries to improve their positions achieved limited or transitory results, if considering China as a strategic factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Country Brand Equity (CBE) is a core topic in international business; however, it is scarcely discussed in publications. Due to their global market importance as developing nations, Brazil and China were evaluated by U.S. consumers. The purpose of our model was to measure CBE by adding a new construct – Country Brand Reputation (CBRep) – to the classic models of brand equity at a country level [Country Brand Awareness, Country Brand Perceived Quality (CBQua) and Country Brand Loyalty (CBLoy)]. Therefore, these four constructs are represented by fifty-one variables founded on preexisting scales. By applying psychometric procedures, a CBE model was constructed and validated using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The Brazilian and Chinese models indicated quite similar results. The results implied consistency regarding both countries' CBE when measuring the Country Brand Reputation's influence on CBE. Thus, we propose a model named the Reputation-Driven Country Brand Equity Model (CBE-Rep) designed for countries, regions or cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role did the present emerging powers play in the creation of the United Nations? Drawing on Plutarch’s ‘ship of Theseus’ paradox, this article analyses how, and the extent to which, Brazilian, Chinese and Indian representatives influenced key debates leading up to the UN’s foundation. At the time Brazil was ruled by a fascist-inspired military regime, yet it had supported Allied efforts during World War II; China was split among Nationalists and Communists; and India was still a British colony. These national delegations reflected the main social and political struggles of their respective countries. While these three countries were able to influence the design, procedures and substance of the burgeoning organisation, their agency was limited by their primary focus on internal issues. By comparison, in the present era they have been able to extend their influence in global governance debates by coordinating certain reformist positions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the implications of global power redistribution processes for Argentina's foreign relations, focusing on the relative loss of centrality of the United States in the Southern Cone, the ongoing consolidation of a South American system with Brazil as the main power, and the re-emergence of China and its growing interest in South America. The period studied extends from the turn of the century until 2012. Argentina responded to these changes in a complex and distinct manner. A strategy of ‘coupling’ with the United States was replaced with that of ‘limited opposition’. Towards Brazil Argentina has pursued a strategy of accommodation, seeking to maximize benefits while retaining as much autonomy as possible. Finally, with China Argentina has practiced a strategy of ‘reliable engagement,’ which has provided clear dividends, but appears to be reaching exhaustion. We conclude by putting Argentine relations with these three countries into broader perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article proposes a cognitive and empirical approach, based on in-depth semi-structured elite interviews, to analyse the extent to which the dollar is becoming a negotiated international currency in the perception of financial elites in China, Brazil and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It shows that while the greenback is still the top currency in the system due to a lack of alternatives, its long term dominance is questioned because its economic pre-eminence and its political leadership are perceived to be fading. This in turn is stimulating financial elites in emerging markets to promote alternative regional monetary frameworks and the internationalisation of their own currencies. The article explores how financial elites in key dollar holding countries react to the US ‘exorbitant privilege’ of not facing disciplinary constraints in its economic policies. It then examines how the US has been able to misuse its central position in the system by delaying and deflecting adjustment costs upon others, and illustrates the disapproving response that this has provoked in emerging markets and Europe. Finally, it concentrates on Chinese proposals torenegotiatethe status of the dollar in the system and why these have been hitherto rejected by the US. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa (BRICS) is a popular yet poorly conceptualized group. This article builds a parallel between BRICS and OPEC in order to assess the former using a weak cognitivist version of the regime theory. The five countries created an international regime whose members cooperate in view of acquiring, collectively and individually, increased influence in international financial and economic institutions. As they do not concern this domain, the diverging interests of the five members do not hamper the rather limited socialization process at work and the implicit development of the regime. However, they will most likely prevent BRICS from reaching generalized political cooperation. Consequently, the group can be expected to increase its influence significantly in comparison to the present level but not to become one of the world's leading actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Regional powers such as China, India, Russia, and to a lesser degree Brazil and South Africa, now occupy a significant role on the world stage. The United States, while still enjoying superpower status, has taken note. At the same time, the transnational nature of the challenges facing the world will require multilateral and bilateral co-operation perhaps unprecedented in modern history. How will the United States respond to these new requisites within the context of this changed world? While it is too early to assess the Obama administration's foreign policy substantively, it looks to be adopting an approach emphasising the building of consensus and multilateralism in its international engagement. Moreover, there is reason to expect that it will actively seek a more constructive set of relationships with regional powers. United States domestic political constraints may yet hamper Obama in this new approach, as might the type of response the new administration receives from old and new powers to its overtures. Whether the changes are more in tone than substance remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]