Brandeis University, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management Sustainable International Development Graduate Program
Course Syllabus Multilaterals, the BRICS, and New Development Trends
HS-286F-1, Module I, Spring Semester 2016, Thursdays 9:00 - 11:50 AM, Room TBD
Prof. Mihaela Papa, [email protected]
Course Description. Rising powers, especially the BRICS, are now recognized as centers of development policy innovation, as well as drivers of global growth. They are actively reshaping multilateral rules and institutions underpinning global development efforts and challenging traditional practices. How do rising powers influence the policy opportunities for global development, and what are the implications of their rise? This course situates rising powers in the context of global development architecture and analyzes their development philosophies, funding priorities, and impacts. It examines the new China and BRICS-led multilateral development institutions including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank. It introduces the controversies of providing global public goods in various sectors including health and food security. The course also provides an overview of critical perspectives on rising powers in global development and discusses emerging development trends.
Core Competency Statement. This module teaches concepts and skills identified as core competencies for a Master of Arts degree in Sustainable International Development, which are rooted in global values of sustainable development and the social justice mission of the Heller School and Brandeis University. students will: 1) develop literacy in the historical and current debates on the role and impact of rising powers in the development field; 2) study the convergence and divergence of development philosophies of traditional and new donors; 3) examine rising powers’ leadership potential by examining their financial flows, sector-specific engagement and joint development initiatives; 4) build rising powers and BRICS- related development vocabulary as used by practitioners at UN organizations, development agencies; governments, and international civil society organizations; 5) critically assess these countries’ roles in global development from a social justice perspective; 6) develop writing and communication skills including presentation skills.
Sustainable Development Statement. The importance of rising powers for the future of sustainable development cannot be overstated – besides being the drivers of global growth, they have undergone a major transformation from “recipients of development aid” to donors and have been actively defining new development agendas and launching new development institutions. The BRICS group as an analytical category is interesting because it comprises 27% of the world’s GDP and 42% of world’s population. The emergence of the BRICS studies in the development field enables students to access a wide range of BRICS resources, new datasets and comparative analyses and deepen their understanding of these phenomena.
University Notices. If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis University and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately. The University policy on academic honesty is distributed annually as section 5 of the Rights and Responsibilities handbook. Instances of alleged dishonesty are subject to possible judicial action. Potential sanctions include failure in the course and suspension from the University. If you have any
1 questions about my expectations, please ask. Academic integrity is central to the mission of educational excellence at Brandeis University. Each student is expected to turn in work completed independently, except when assignments specifically authorize collaborative effort. It is not acceptable to use the words or ideas of another person without proper acknowledgement of the source. This means you must use footnotes and quotation marks to indicate the source of phrases, sentences, paragraphs or ideas found in published volumes, on the internet, or created by another student. If you are in doubt, you must ask for clarification.
Assignments and Grading:
Participation (10% of the final grade). You are required to prepare the assigned readings and engage in discussion and group activities during class. Attendance is required. If a student has an excused absence due to travel or sickness, we will discuss the feasibility of skype participation and the opportunities for a make-up assignment so that participation grade is not affected.
Analysis of a BRICS’ development agency to be presented in class 3 (20% of the grade). You are required to prepare a short presentation analyzing an agency of your choice. You are given the relevant resources and a presentation template.
Analysis of rising powers’ engagement in a specific development sector to be presented in class 4 (20% of the grade). You propose a sector (food, health, internet, education etc.) you would like to discuss in class and prepare a short presentation to start the discussion. You are given the relevant resources and a presentation template.
Final report (50% of the grade). Reflects on the original question of course: “How do rising powers influence the policy opportunities for global development, and what are the implications of their rise?” The scope of your answer is up to you: examining a coalition of rising powers and their institutions, only one of these powers active in your own country; changing trends in a specific sector or something else. The report should be organized in the following format: 1) identify a specific development challenge and explain why it needs to be addressed; 2) conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis of rising powers’ actual or potential engagement in addressing that challenge; 3) specify what actions need to be taken to make rising powers a part of the solution to the challenge you identified.
During the week of class 4 you are required to see me during office hours to discuss your topic. You should have a tentative title and one paragraph describing the final report. I will talk to you about developing your idea. The paper should not be longer than 7 pages (single spaced, Times New Roman font 12). It will require some personal research and will be due three days before the final class (class 7). You will discuss the findings in the final class.
Course Policies:
Assignments should be submitted on time. If you are unable to submit assignments on time, you need to let me know as soon as possible. If your advisor sends me a letter excusing you or you have a medical excuse, your grade will not be affected and you will be given a new deadline. Otherwise, late assignments will be graded with a lower grade (1-3 days late an A assignment would be A-, A- would be B+; 4-7 days late an A becomes B+, A- becomes B etc.). If I do not receive your final assignment and do not hear from you within 5 days after the deadline, your grade for the course will be incomplete.
Students will be given feedback within one week after they complete the assignment. If students would like to discuss the feedback in more detail, they are welcome to visit me during office hours.
2 Laptops are allowed for note-taking, but engaging in e-mailing or social networking during class is not allowed: it distracts the whole class and negatively affects your participation grade. Eating during class is discouraged, so please eat during the break.
Classes and Readings:
CLASS 1. Multilateral Development Cooperation: Actors & Institutions in a Changing Global Order
Role of multilateral cooperation in development practice Architecture of development assistance: UN and beyond Economic and geopolitical shifts – what is changing? The end of North-South imagery?
Pieterse, Jan Nederveen. 2011. Global Rebalancing: Crisis and the East-South Turn. Development and Change 42(1): 22-48.
Weiss, Thomas G. and Adriana Erthal Abdenur (eds.) 2014. Emerging Powers and the UN: What Kind of Development Partnership? Third World Quarterly 35(10), Special Issue, particularly
South-South Cooperation and the Future of Development Assistance: Mapping Actors and Options, by De Renzio, Paolo and Jurek Seifert, p. 1860-1875.
Financing the UN Development System and the Future of Multilateralism, by Bruce Jenks, p. 1809-1828.
OECD. Multilateral Aid 2015: Better Partnerships for a Post-2015 World, Highlights report (20 pages) available at http://www.oecd.org/dac/aid-architecture/OverviewChapter-MEP.pdf
Total reading: 66 pages
CLASS 2. The Rise of the BRICS: From an Economic Label to a Political Force
The concept of “rising powers”/”emerging powers”/”emerging markets”
Economic case for focusing on the BRICS and current trends
Multipolarity in development governance
BRICS as a political group seeking to reform global development
O’Neill, Jim. 2001. Building Better Economic BRICs. New York: Goldman Sachs, Global Economics Paper No. 66. p. 3-11 http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/archive/archive-pdfs/build-better- brics.pdf
Evenett, Simon. 2015. The BRICS’ Export Competitiveness: Even Worse than Previously Thought?
3 http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2015/07/13/the-brics-export-competitiveness-even-worse-than- previously-thought/ (3 pages)
Stuenkel, Oliver. 2015. BRICS and the Future of Global Order. Lexington Press (1-38).
BRICS Ufa Summit 2015. Action Plan (2 pages), Economic Partnership (online document around 13 pages) http://www.brics.utoronto.ca/docs/index.html#ufa
Total reading: 60 pages
CLASS 3. “Western” vs. BRICS’ Development Philosophies
Are there any differences between “Western” liberal and BRICS’ approaches to development
Domestic understanding of development and its international implications
The rise of development banks in BRICS countries (every student chooses one to report on in class)
Convergence amongst BRICS in development assistance
Ban, Cornel and Mark Blyth (eds.). 2013. Dreaming with the BRICS? The Washington Consensus and the New Political Economy of Development. Special Issue: Review of International Political Economy 20(2) please read 241-255
Zhang, Yanbing et al. 2015. China’s Engagement in International Development Cooperation: The State of the Debate. IDS Evidence Report No. 116. Please read pages 6-24
Rowlands, Dane. 2012. Individual BRICS or a Collective Bloc? Convergence and Divergence amongst ‘Emerging Donor’ Nations. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 25(4): 629-649.
South African Institute for International Affairs. 2015. BRICS Insights Collection: BRICS and Development Finance Institutions. http://www.saiia.org.za/news/brics-insights-papers-brics-and- development-finance-institutions (each student can choose one of the offered readings based on regional interest – around 15 pages)
Total reading: 67 (includes students presentation assignment)
CLASS 4. New Development Agendas? Health, Food Security, Gender, Education…
Rising powers’ commitment to providing global public goods
Discussion of rising powers’ approaches to various development themes
Students choose one of the issues and discuss it in class
4 BRICS or rising powers-centered programming in international organizations
Hou, Zhenbo et al. 2014. Will the BRICS Provide the Global Public Goods the World Needs? http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9037.pdf 1-40
Health
Harmer, Andrew and Kent Buse. 2014. The BRICS – a Paradigm Shift in Global Health? Contemporary Politics 20(2): 127-145.
Gautier, Lara et al. 2014. Reforming the World Health Organization: what influence do the BRICS wield? Contemporary Politics 20(2): 163-181.
Food Security
Hawkes, Shona and Jagjit Kaur Plahe. 2013. Worlds Apart: the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture and the Right to Food in Developing Countries. International Political Science Review 34(1): 21-38.
Printseva, Maria. 2015. Can BRICS Feed the World? BRICS Business Magazine. http://bricsmagazine.com/en/articles/can-brics-feed-the-world
Gender, Education, Industrial Development, Internet (themes to be added based on class vote)
Total reading: 40 pages + chosen topic assignment-related preparation maximum 40 pages
CLASS 5. China and BRICS’ New Multilateral Initiatives
Proliferation of multilateral development initiatives: complementary vs. competing with Bretton Woods; focusing on infrastructure
BRICS New Development Bank
AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
New Silk Road Fund
Reisen, Helmut. 2015. Will the AIIB and the NDB Help Reform Multilateral Development Banking? Global Policy (first published online), Pages 1-7.
Lin, Justin Yifu. 2013. How Infrastructure Investment Can Advance the Development Agenda. In: Multilateral Development Cooperation in a Changing Global Order (ed. Besada, Hany and Shannon Kindornay). Palgrave Macmillan. Pages 19-36.
BRICS New Development Bank: documents establishing the bank and its agenda from http://www.brics.utoronto.ca/docs/ (online documents around 10 pages) Agreement on the New Development Bank, July 15, 2014 Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation with the New Development Bank, July 9, 2015
5 Sun, Yun. 2015. How the International Community Changed China's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The Diplomat, July 31. http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/how-the-international-community- changed-chinas-asian-infrastructure-investment-bank/ 2 pages
Zhu, John. 2015. On the New Silk Road. HSBC Global Research. (11 pages) https://www.research.hsbc.com/midas/Res/RDV?p=pdf&key=TWu0Pqka9m&n=456891.PDF
Total reading: 46 pages – an additional reading from the BRICS New Development Bank is expected where the BRICS bank defines its vision of “New Development” – it will not be longer than 15 pages and is not yet available from the BRICS bank source – I am aware that work on that is in progress so should be ready by the time this class takes place.
CLASS 6. Critical Approaches to the Role of the BRICS in the Global Development Agenda
New actors, old problems? Neo-colonialism
Sustainability of BRICS economies and problems of global leadership
Myth of a multipolar world order?
Bond, Patrick and Ana Garcia. 2015. BRICS: An Anti-Capitalist Critique, pages 1-35. Lund-Thomsen, Peter and Peter Wad. 2014. Global Value Chains, Local Economic Organization and Corporate Social Responsibility in the BRICS Countries. Competition & Change 18(4): 281-290.
Sustainable Governance Indicators Project, BRICS study http://www.sgi-network.org/brics/ pages 9-31
Total reading: 65 pages.
CLASS 7. Future Directions and Class Discussion
China and BRICS’ slowdown: implications for FDI as well as on development assistance
How can developing countries position themselves toward changes in global development and effectively manage associated political and economic risks?
Who are the next “rising powers”?
Wertime, David, 2015. Is China About to Plunge the World into Recession? Foreign Policy, August 18.
Domínguez, Gabriel. 2015. How China’s Slowdown is Affecting Africa (interview with Oliver White). Deutsche Welle, August 19. http://www.dw.com/en/how-chinas-slowdown-is-affecting-africa/a-18657923
Kynge, James. 2015. Redefining EM: Choosing the Best Matrix. Financial Times, August 18.
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