Whether the largest emerging powers will fundamentally change the existing international order has become a central question for students of international politics. The collective expression of these powers and their global aspirations—the BRICS group—has inspired a parallel debate. Regarded by some as a sign of their growing weight in world politics and by others as a disguise for their strategic and economic rivalries, the BRICS group is unique among international institutions in tracing its origins to a label designed on Wall Street. Taken up by Russia in 2006, elevated at a summit among Brazil, China, India, and Russia in 2009, and expanded to include South Africa in 2010, the BRICS Group has often seemed uncertain about its aims. To many observers, despite its ambitions, the group illustrates the Asian adage, “same bed, different dreams.”

Cynthia Roberts, Leslie Elliott Armijo, and Saori N. Katada have illuminated the BRICS group through a careful examination of one policy sector: financial statecraft. They are uniquely qualified for such a cross-regional and cross-national enterprise, and they deliver a theoretically informed and empirically rich investigation of the group. Rather than treating it as unique, they embed it in a wider category of collective action, informal clubs with small membership, which has become a familiar feature of the global landscape in recent decades. As a club, this group displays the internal power asymmetry—China’s dominant economic position—and limited collective interests of other clubs. Specifically, Roberts, Armijo, and Katada note the common aversion of the BRICS to “unipolarity and the hegemonic power of the G7—particularly the United States” (p. 22) and their joint interest in enhancing their bargaining power within the peak financial and monetary organizations. One means for increasing their leverage within global organizations has been the creation of outside options in the form of parallel institutions, such as the New Development Bank (NDB).

The authors begin with a comprehensive review, accompanied by extensive statistical support, of the growing economic and financial weight of the BRICS economies in the current century. In contrast to some observers, they do not make the mistake of equating growing economic weight with usable capabilities or inevitably increasing influence. The core of their investigation of financial statecraft arrives in Chapter 3, with four carefully chosen cases of BRICS collective action: well-publicized efforts by the BRICS countries to expand their influence in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund; their resistance to the imposition of financial sanctions on Russia by the United States and its European allies; their support for parallel financial institutions and initiatives, such as the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement; and finally, support for China’s efforts to promote the use of the renminbi (RMB), a challenge to the dominant position of the U.S. dollar in international trade and finance. The authors are careful to describe failures of collective action as well as successes: for example, the inability of the BRICS to dislodge the United States and Europe from leadership of the IMF and World Bank. In other cases, contrasting outcomes would have added to the depth of their analysis: for example, their willingness to support United Nations sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program but not the sanctions imposed on Russia outside the UN.

Chapter 4, perhaps the most interesting in the book, outlines the motivations of each BRICS member for its support of the group and its financial statecraft. Variation in levels of commitment and in the value attached to BRICS collaboration become apparent: For China, the group represents one instrument among many in promoting its global rise; for Russia, it serves as a means of legitimation after international ostracism in 2014; but the three democracies have mixed motives for participation. The authors assign the BRICS group growing influence in international financial governance, but they underscore its “moderately revisionist” stance (p. 181). They also assess the (Obama-era) strategy of accommodation to BRICS demands for greater influence as an astute effort to cement their attachment to “inside reform,” rather than the construction of rival institutions.

Roberts, Armijo, and Katada have produced one of the best studies of the BRICS group to date. Their concentration on a single issue area allows them to evaluate the accomplishments and shortcomings of BRICS collective action more precisely, avoiding the “rise of” and “challenge to” formulation of less astute observers. Embedded in their detailed study, however, one can discern a different reading of the BRICS, one that might have situated and deepened their analysis. The group and its growing influence were a product of global economic trends: the “China boom,” a commodity supercycle that came to a crashing end after the first decade of the century. The BRICS group served to link three major commodity producers—Russia, Brazil, and South Africa—to a major export market, China. Linked to these structural conditions, the authors note, the group, like many other clubs, displays asymmetric internal relations that award a dominant role to one power, China. In their account of member interests in the BRICS group, the management of this stark asymmetry and economic dependence may be as important as the collective exercise of global influence.

In addition to its contribution to our understanding of this important international collective, The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft also provides theoretical insights beyond its immediate subject. The group is characteristic of another development in post–Cold War international politics: the rapid growth of informal intergovernmental organizations (IIGOs). These governments are “joiners”: They have created and participate in a growing array of IIGOs, from democratic IBSA (India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum) to one of their global favorites, the Group of 20 (G20). The BRICS group resembles other IIGOs by providing “cooperation light” that requires very little policy change from its members, while awarding them global voice and modest resource gains. Since BRICS cooperation is undemanding, the survival of the group is hardly surprising.

Finally, the authors touch upon two larger themes in global governance and international relations that deserve more attention. First, international institutions are not simply sites for cooperation; they are also arenas of conflict, representing efforts to expand national influence and produce outcomes that advantage some members over others. The tensions within the BRICS group, particularly between China and India, illustrate this second face of international institutions. The BRICS also raise the question of the limits of economic collaboration in the absence of security alignment—or at least an absence of security rivalries. The authors emphasize that the BRICS group does not have an explicit security dimension; its members are not allies or even security partners. In the case of China and India (and possibly China and Russia), its members are competitors or rivals in other domains.

The BRICS group, in other words, is an international institution for the twenty-first century, a century in which alignments are increasingly fluid and the menu of forums and institutions from which governments can choose grows longer. Scholars and policymakers who attempt to decipher this new world should be grateful to authors Roberts, Armijo, and Katada for their illumination of this collective manifestation of the influential—and often puzzling—BRICS.