Official Framings of Foreign Policy: South–South Leadership as Starting Point of the IBSA Initiative

Abstract

This chapter presents the results of the content analysis of official speeches centered on the main dimensions of IBSA: global actorness (global leadership, supporter vs. revisionist, North–South vs. South–South, regional-global nexus); development (internal development and developer frames); and democracy (notion of democracy and significance to foreign policy, the promotion of democracy). The chapter presents an analysis of the actual emphasis put on these dimensions by officials in their speeches, the shifts in emphasis between different governments (if applicable) and the trilateral coincidences and divergences that arise from these framings. The analysis shows that the main core toward which the role conceptions of the three members converge has shifted over the course of the IBSA’s existence. While the founding governments coincided in an emphasis on South–South cooperation and global revisionist frames, today the main and growing coincidence seems to exist in the concept of the three countries becoming donors of development cooperation. With regard to political practice, this would indicate that joint efforts in the first two dimensions of IBSA (multilateral coordination and South–South cooperation) lost trilateral support while the third dimension (development cooperation with third countries) has moved to centre stage.