International Affairs & Global Economics
BRICS and the G20
Two major international groupings, what they were built to do, and how they differ.
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International economic cooperation happens through a genuinely wide range of different groupings beyond the IMF and World Bank covered in the previous lesson. Two of the most frequently mentioned in the news are BRICS and the G20 - related in general spirit, but genuinely different in both membership and underlying purpose.
What BRICS actually is
BRICS began as an acronym - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - describing major emerging economies, and has since grown into a considerably more formal grouping that meets regularly and has added additional member countries over time. It was founded partly on the idea that fast-growing emerging economies genuinely deserved more influence over global economic rules than the traditional Western-led institutions had historically given them.
What the G20 actually is
The G20 (Group of Twenty) brings together 19 individual countries plus the European Union and the African Union, together representing the large majority of the world’s total economic output. It was elevated to a leaders’-level forum specifically after the 2008 financial crisis, precisely because policymakers recognized that a crisis of that particular scale required coordination well beyond the smaller group of wealthy nations that had traditionally met as the G7 alone.
Imagine a financial crisis spreading rapidly through interconnected banks and markets across dozens of countries at once, exactly as happened in 2008. A response coordinated only among seven wealthy nations would miss several of the world's largest and fastest-growing economies entirely - exactly the gap the G20 was elevated to close, bringing considerably more of the world's actual economic weight into the same coordinated conversation.
Why groupings like this exist in the first place
Multilateralism - countries coordinating policy together rather than acting entirely alone - exists because many economic problems, from financial crises to climate change to pandemic response, genuinely don’t respect national borders and are considerably harder to solve unilaterally. These groupings function as forums for that coordination, without carrying the binding legal authority of a formal institution like the IMF.
The mistake worth avoiding when reading about either grouping
Several countries are members of both BRICS and the G20 simultaneously, and there's genuine, ongoing debate about whether BRICS represents a complementary voice within the existing global economic order, or an emerging alternative to it - especially as some members have discussed reducing their reliance on the US dollar in trade with each other. Treating either grouping as though it always speaks with one unified voice misses that member countries within each frequently disagree with one another on important issues, sometimes significantly.
Why this matters for reading the news
When a headline covers a BRICS summit or a G20 meeting, the genuinely useful question is what specific coordination or disagreement is actually being reported - trade, currency policy, sanctions response - rather than treating either grouping as a single unified actor speaking with one voice.
- BRICS began as a grouping of major emerging economies seeking more influence over global economic rules.
- The G20 was elevated to a leaders' forum after 2008 to coordinate crisis response beyond the smaller G7.
- Multilateralism exists because many economic problems cross borders and are hard to solve unilaterally.
- Overlapping membership and internal disagreement mean neither grouping speaks with one unified voice.
- Ask what specific coordination or disagreement is being reported, rather than treating either as monolithic.