The first in a set of working papers in the ODID series focussing on India, Brazil and South Africa is now online.

The term BRICs to denote the rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China - later becoming BRICS with the addition of South Africa - entered the lexicon in 2001, shaping perceptions across the globe and encouraging an alliance of sorts between the countries themselves.

However comparative research on the BRICS has been limited by the vast differences between these five powers.

This set of working papers, edited by Sarah-Jane Cooper-Knock, Cintia Kulzer Sacilotto and Indrajit Roy, focusses instead on IBSA – India, Brazil, and South Africa. As the papers demonstrate, there are much stronger comparative threads between these multi-ethnic, multi-cultural democracies and emerging economies than there are between the wider BRICS group.

The papers also shift discussions from primarily economic issues to primarily political ones, which have received far less attention.

The first paper, 'Sustainable Development in India, Brazil and South Africa', by Elizabeth Chatterjee, Carl Death, and Laura Pereira, explores the contested meanings and implications of sustainable development as framed by these three emergent powers, both on the international level and within different levels of the Indian, Brazilian, and South African polities themselves.

Other papers in the set will examine formal politics, parties, and elections; the politics of mega-events; and everyday politics and social movements in the three countries.

The set of papers developed out of the IBSA: Comparative Perspectives seminar series held at ODID in Trinity Term 2011.

Read the paper.