The BRICS and International Development Assistance: Between the Old and the New

Abstract

The BRICS as individual countries and as a block have emerged as strong players in the landscape of international development assistance (IDA). This raised many expectations of changes in the way IDA is carried out, an area where traditionally the multilateral organizations and rich countries had a leading role in defining and providing development assistance. The BRICS IDA follows different procedures and even definition of traditional international aid based on their own interpretations and past experiences with inflows and outflows of IDA. However, BRICS international development assistance struggles between the old and new. There is a consistent discourse about different IDA and new development models and ways the BRICS support them, but putting this in practice has shown that changes are not always easy and we have seen limited changes in the development models. There are some innovations in development assistance, such as in the case of NDB, but with little understanding of the impacts of those innovations on development outcomes.