BRICS and the Global Competition Law Project

BRICS and the Global Competition Law Project

By Alexey Ivanov (Skolkovo Institute for Law and Development

Evolving BRICS cooperation in the sphere of competition law and policy can provide new hope for the global competition law project. This cooperation is aimed to embrace the peculiarities of globalization in its current phase. What is common for the BRICS jurisdiction is that they are all in desperate search for a solution allowing to shortcut the developmental track. This experimentalist energy and creativity being the main characteristics of the group are extremely important for the current phase of global economic development. It is not only an institutional structure of the global order that is in transition but also the very nature of the global marketplace. The key focus of the new global competition policy should be facilitation of openness among global networks and value chains through the reduction of the manipulative and exclusionary potential of networks. The BRICS cooperation has an importation role in making the global marketplace both fairer and more equal as it has an ability to promote a form of competition encouraging a broader dissemination of knowledge and advanced technologies while eliminating barriers imposed on the global flows of innovation by both the global technological monopolies and cartel- like technological joint ventures burgeoning within their “walled gardens” at the expense of the excluded consumers and entrepreneurs around the world.