News
ESRC awards funding to research network on 'Beyond the BRICs: The Emerging Middle and Global Poverty Reduction' led by Professor David Hulme
The ESRC has awarded funding to a research network led by IDPM's Professor David Hulme, that will explore different ways of identifying rising powers beyond the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China) that are likely to play a major role in global development. The principal aim of the network is to move beyond an exclusive focus on the BRICs and explore how changes in global power relations, resulting from the rise of other middle income countries, affect the global governance of poverty reduction.
The network will comprise significant number of researchers from IDPM, SED, the Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI), the University of Manchester's School of Social Sciences, and leading researchers based in the emerging Middle countries and at universities across the OECD. In addition, the network will engage with key policy actors from institutions such as DFID and the World Bank, as well as civil society organisations and the private sector.
The award signals the ESRC's recognition of IDPM and SED's excellence and potential in setting up international research networks on key contemporary international development issues, attested also by a similar award under the same scheme for a research network on Rising Powers and Global Standards led by Dr Khalid Nadvi, also of IDPM.
Beyond the BRICs: The Emerging Middle and Global Poverty Reduction
Over the last decades, the growing political and socioeconomic power of middle income countries has obtained wide-spread attention. We are no longer wondering whether a newly emerging middle will change the global balance of power and transform our lives in profound ways. Instead, understanding how these changes will impact on global governance arenas and shape wellbeing and equity remains a key challenge and calls for intellectual attention. The proposed network of academics, policy makers, and activists seeks to push forward thinking about the future role of the rising middle in the global governance of poverty reduction. Extreme poverty continues to be a major problem in an increasingly affluent world, a pattern that is exemplified by middle income countries. While middle income countries have outperformed low and high income countries in economic growth over the last 30 years, they remain home to nearly seventy percent of the world’s poor.
High-quality social science should offer clear answers to what impacts the emerging middle has on the institutions and processes of contemporary global governance. We need innovative research about how rising powers among middle income countries relate to issues of global poverty reduction. In particular, we need research that moves beyond an exclusive focus on Brazil, Russia, China, and India (the so-called BRICs) and identifies other middle income countries that are likely to play a major role in global policy-making. For instance, will countries such as Turkey or Vietnam become involved in poverty reduction initiatives outside their national borders, or will they ‘not care’? We also need to understand how the emergent middle will affect the workings of multilateral organisations and transnational activist networks involved in global development and public policy initiatives. While Brazil and India have been given a more prominent position in WTO negotiations, how will the role of other emerging countries change as their economic and political power grows? These are not just scholarly concerns. To effectively tackle extreme poverty and deepening inequalities it is crucial to create policy-relevant knowledge about the nexus between international power dynamics and the capacities of global institutions in poverty reduction.
This network aims to produce cutting edge research and foster the interdisciplinary and international co-production of new understandings of the emergent middle and global poverty reduction. One major goal is to evaluate different analytical tools and theoretical approaches for offering more fine-grained explanations of the rise of regional powers and economic powerhouses beyond the BRICs. Our starting point is the idea of the ‘Next Eleven’ (N11), which identifies middle income countries with high growth potential due to large and rapidly growing populations and reasonably strong political, social and economic frameworks, yet we will not be restricted to this concept. Another major goal of the network is to assess how the emergence of new regional powers affects global development and global poverty reduction by focusing on questions related to global trade regulation, social provision and changing international aid dynamics.
12 January 2010