Author: Ravi Palat.

The demographic weight and the scale and magnitude of economic growth in China and India—as well as in Brazil and South Africa—marks a seismological transformation in world politics. However, despite their economic clout, the emerging powers of the global South have done little to challenge the Euro-North American domination of the international stage—leaving that task to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Iran. The reluctance of the large states of the global South to challenge the contemporary world order—and the widening income and wealth inequalities within their borders—suggests that they are increasingly complicit in this new world order. However, as growing inequalities unleash greater political instability, it is in the interests of states in the global South to cooperate with each other to change the rules of the game.