BRICS is conceivably the most formidable organisation to have emerged in the post-Cold War period in the non-Western world. This book highlights the significance of BRICS in a wider global context and foregrounds the long-pending demand for the reform of global governance institutions. The volume: • Traces how the organisation came into being and looks at the distinct norms and principles espoused by it • Discusses the glaring limitations of the existing institutions of global governance • Explores the economic growth and the rising political influence of BRICS states • Analyses the internal threats to the survival of the organisation and assesses its prospects in the foreseeable future. A significant intervention in situating BRICS as one of the major players in global governance, the book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international political economy, international business and finance, international relations, politics, and Global South Studies.

BRICS is conceivably the most formidable organisation to have emerged in the post-Cold War period in the non-Western world. This book highlights the significance of BRICS in a wider global context and foregrounds the long-pending demand for the reform of global governance institutions. The volume: • Traces how the organisation came into being and looks at the distinct norms and principles espoused by it • Discusses the glaring limitations of the existing institutions of global governance • Explores the economic growth and the rising political influence of BRICS states • Analyses the internal threats to the survival of the organisation and assesses its prospects in the foreseeable future. A significant intervention in situating BRICS as one of the major players in global governance, the book will be of great interest to students and scholars of international political economy, international business and finance, international relations, politics, and Global South Studies.

This book aims to bring together a series of analyses on international development assistance in the BRICS, the group of countries that includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS states comprise approximately 3 billion people (~40% of the World’s population) and in terms of GDP account for 16.8 trillion dollars (~22% of the World’s economy). Over the last decade the loose coalition has evolved to become a formal partnership on both economic and political fronts. The first formal meeting of the then-four BRIC countries took place in 2006 during the United Nations General Assembly. This was followed in 2009 by the first summit of BRICS' heads of state, an event which has been convened annually ever since. On 3-5 September 2017, the ninth BRICS Summit was hosted in Xiamen, China. This book, an anthology of scholars based in BRICS countries, provides invaluable insights into the emerging global south coalition, and will be of interest to scholars, employees of NGOs, and China watchers.

In late 2017 and early 2018, South Africa and Zimbabwe both experienced rapid and unexpected political transitions. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, the only leader the country had ever known, was replaced in a “soft coup” by his erstwhile vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Over a twelve-day period in February 2018, South African president Jacob Zuma was prematurely forced from office by his former deputy president, Cyril Ramaphosa. The widespread popular rejoicing that accompanied their arrival compounded the shock of these sudden transitions. New Leaders, New Dawns? explores these political transitions and the way they were received. Contributors consider how the former liberation heroes Mugabe and Zuma could have fallen so low; the underlying reasons for their ouster; what happened to their liberation movements turned ruling parties; and, perhaps most importantly, what the rise to power of Ramaphosa and Mnangagwa foreshadowed. Bringing together fourteen leading international scholars of southern Africa, and adopting a political economy framework, this volume argues that the changes in leadership are welcome, but insufficient. While the time had come for Zuma and Mugabe to go, there is little in the personal histories or early policy actions of Ramaphosa and Mnangagwa that suggests they will be capable of addressing the profound social, economic, and political problems both countries face. New Leaders, New Dawns? reveals that despite what these new leaders may have promised, a “new dawn” has not yet arrived in southern Africa.

Master's Thesis from the year 2016 in the subject Business economics - Banking, Stock Exchanges, Insurance, Accounting, grade: 1,3, RWTH Aachen University (Faculty of Business and Economics), course: Corporate Finance, language: English, abstract: In order to fill a gap in the research on developing equity markets, especially emerging markets, this study deals with market anomalies in the BRIC countries, specifically focusing on identifying the anomalies size and price-to-book effect. However, the reason for an analysis regarding stock market anomalies in the BRIC countries is not exclusively limited to the lack of contemporary studies on this topic. The emerging markets in general, and, specifically, the BRIC stock markets are very interesting and valuable objects for respective examinations, since they still provide an enormous growth potential. The markets naturally show a high volatility. This study’s approach is to explain the established market anomalies and point at factors, which may enforce size and price-to-book effects in each BRIC country. Therefore, after presenting the BRIC concept in chapter 2, the standard method to estimate the stock return, the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), is introduced in chapter 3 in order to identify possible weaknesses and certain anomalies, which have been identified in the research. The most common anomalies will be introduced in chapter 4. Subsequently, an alternative method to explain the stock return, the Fama / French three-factor model is discussed as a possibility to identify further risk factors, which can invalidate anomalies with respect to the CAPM, in chapter 5. Furthermore, a brief overview on previous studies, which include valuation anomalies in the respective countries, is given in chapter 6. In the empirical part of chapter 7, each country is analyzed individually with respect to size and price-to-book effects. However, the study applies the same empirical analysis for each stock market in order to obtain comparable results, choosing a timespan, which covers the maximum period for which sufficient data is available in all stock markets. Two approaches are used per country. The first, to identify the mentioned stock market anomalies, the second to explain the cross-section of stock returns by means of three proxies for risk, namely systematic risk in form of CAPM-beta, size and book-to-market equity ratio. The empirical part of this examination investigates the time frame from January 1996 until June 2015 and uses a total sample of 6,054 stocks throughout the four stock markets. In the conclusion, the study’s results are summarized and findings presented.

Countries like India, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and South Africa which were previously lumped under the general heading of "developing" are fast becoming key players on the international stage. This book describes "Emerging States" and how they are transforming international relations.

The phenomenon of state fragility has become a mounting concern to the international community in the last decades. This edited volume consists of a compilation of articles that evaluates how countries may recover and return to a path of stable and democratic development. In its 17 chapters, the contributors analyze the difficult transformation processes of four countries: Afghanistan, Georgia, Kosovo and Moldova. The authors tackle theoretical approaches to state reform as well as country specific issues like the role of external actors, security sector reform, and anti-corruption strategies.