The growing economic importance of emerging powers is altering the balance of power in international politics. Whether or not the power shift towards emerging countries represents a fundamental challenge to the Western norms that shape global order is a question that has received significant scholarly attention (Ikenberry 2011; Kupchan 2012; Steinfeld 2010). In distinction from this research, we are primarily interested in how the rise of Brazil, China and India-the three most prominent emerging markets in the Global South (Acharya 2014: 653)-has impacted the binary differentiation between the Global North and the Global South, a conceptualization that emerged within and then came to constitute a core feature of the post-WWII international order. Addressing this question with a specific view to international norms of differential treatment for developing countries, we seek to understand the conditions and mechanisms through which the rise of Brazil, China and India either strengthens or weakens global norms that provide differential treatment to developing countries as a group. Conventional wisdom suggests that greater economic fragmentation amongst the Global South delegitimizes a one-size-fits-all approach to norms of differential treatment, which provide the entire group of developing countries with privileged access, financial compensation or exemptions from obligations. But there remains an open empirical question: Are emerging powers continuing to side with developing country bargaining coalitions in defense of this binary approach? Do they join forces with developed countries that have economies increasingly similar to theirs? Or do they create an entirely new grouping of their own? Our research seeks to examine not only which of these possibilities prevails, but also the conditions and mechanisms through which the bargaining power of emerging countries shapes the alleged demise of norms of differential treatment for developing countries as a group. In addressing this question, we do not adopt a normative position on the desirability of “pro-Southern” norms, and we acknowledge that the debate on the merits of such norms is controversial. Our key contribution is thus an analytical one. We seek to understand whether the rise of a portion of the Global South empirically strengthens norms that redress structural inequalities between developed and developing countries that Southern coalitions have long advocated for in world politics, or whether, to the contrary, the rise of Brazil, China and India undermines these norms by disrupting the coalitions that support norms of differential treatment for developing countries as a group. With its focus on the shape and strength of differential treatment norms, our project engages directly with debates on the relevance of historically grown “North-South” relations as a central structuring principle of global politics in the 21st century (Hurrell/Sengupta 2012: 467; see also Jones/Weinhardt 2015). Theoretically, we bring together key insights from two bodies of literature that are rarely in dialogue: constructivist research on how norms change, and institutionalist research on the dynamics and consequences of international regime complexes. Building on these two strands, we assume that whether the bargaining behavior of Brazil, China and India strengthens or weakens norms of differential treatment for developing countries depends on factors that exist at the levels of shared normative beliefs on the one hand and of institutional opportunity structures on the other. To measure the strength of differential treatment norms for developing countries, we assess their pervasiveness, scope and legal quality. We test our model by closely examining the normative and bargaining dynamics in the trade and climate regimes, two major areas of global governance in which North-South politics have played a key role. The norm of special and differential treatment was introduced into the world trading system in the 1960s to counterbalance the demands for trade liberalization with the special needs of developing countries (Lichtenbaum 2002: 1008). In the climate regime, the norm of common but differentiated responsibilities grants the group of developing countries temporary exemptions from sharing the costs of mitigation and of adaptation to climate change (Martin 2011: 39; Meyer/Roser 2006; Roberts/Parks 2007). The examination of two regimes with high economic stakes helps us to hold a number of contextual variables constant. Meanwhile, by covering particular time periods, particular areas of regulation in each of the two regimes and, last but not least, particular rising powers, we ensure variation in the key parameters of our model. Methodologically, we rely on a combination of co-variational analysis and causal process tracing, with document analysis as well as qualitative interviews serving as our main tools for collecting primary data.
