Domestic structures, foreign economic policies and global economic order: Implications from the rise of large emerging economies

Abstract

The rise of the large emerging economies of Brazil, India and China can easily be counted among the most important contemporary structural changes in the global political economy. This article attempts to determine whether these countries have a common institutional model for governing their economies and addresses the implications of these commonalities for global economic institutions. The approach consists of three major steps: first, a general ideal type for encompassing capitalism in these large emerging economies is constructed, and dubbed ‘state-permeated market economy’; second, we compare these countries empirically, with regard to the features highlighted by the ideal type and in contrast to other varieties of capitalism; and, finally, we extrapolate some long-term implications for the global economic order, based on the assumption that foreign economic policies will be informed by domestic institutional structures. Based on these three steps, we conclude that a further deepening of the liberal global order is highly unlikely.