An analysis of BRICS summit performance since its start on the margins of the G8’s Hokkaido Summit in 2008 through to its gathering at the G20’s Brisbane Summit in November 2014, shows it emerging as a solid, increasingly comprehensive, co-operative success,both alone andwithin the G20, on behalf of all emerging countries. This is due primarily to the failure of the other international institutions from the 1944-45 and 1975 generations to give the leading emerging powers an equal, effective place and thus to solve the new, compounding global financial and other challenges and crises arising since 2008. The BRICS is a plurilateral summit institution growing in its level, membership, agenda and interaction intensity, with its summit performance rising to a substantial level across an increasing array of major dimensions of global summit governance. This performance was driven somewhat by the global financial, economic and food shocks since 2008, but primarily by the failure of the multilateral organizations from the 1940’s, the G8-plus process from 2003 and the first two G20 summits to give the big emerging powers the equal role, rights, responsibilities and effective influence that their rising relative capability and international openness warranted and that were needed to solve the new challenges of an intensely interconnected world. It was also due to the increasing institutionalization of the BRICS as a constricted, compact club, where rational incentives to co-operate slowly started to breed personal bonds that enhanced co-operation among the participants themselves.

I am grateful for the research assistance of Caroline Bracht, Julia Kulik, Olga Milkina, Maria Marchyshyn and other members of the BRICS Research Group and the comments of anonymous referees.