What word would you rather have news organizations use?
Yes, I worded that sentence deliberately.
No it did not end well.
I think your “ad hoc of the wanting” as a gloss of the BRICS group’s motivation is very apt.
If your real complaint is that the lay press can’t / won’t see or explicate the difference between e.g. the UN and any random collection of hotheads / malcontents claiming mutual solidarity this week about that topic, well … I fully agree with you. The lay press is stupid because their audience is stupid. Or at least inexpert and disinclined to become more expert.
The shame is that at one time the lay press had lofty ideals of bettering their audience through persistent almost subliminal education on many small things. Now instead they simply pander. How much those lofty ideas were ever actually tried, much less effective, would be an interesting topic in its own right, but a hijack here.
The De-Liberators! (Yes, I worded that deliberately too).
Thank you, yes, that is the main thrust of my peeve. And I don’t mind a little hijack in the right direction if it is interesting. You have carte blanche.
I suppose we could ascribe some of the lay press’s laziness to the modern habit of writing articles based almost entirely off of press releases.
When the “BRICS Organization” emails you a nice press release, who are you to question its provenance as you cut and paste it into a quickie article, and perhaps contact whoever the press release claims their actions are in response to, then cut and paste their PR department’s vague press release back into the same article. [Submit].
How about “China and their satellite states”? Or just “China”, since they’re almost all of the strength of that “alliance”.
The point I’m making is that there is not a universal definition of what is an organization, much less a formal organization. Newspapers use a common word understood by all for an institution that would commonly be referred to as an organization. They do not use other words because the objection to organization is an idiosyncrasy of yours.
No, they did not. Ever.
There perhaps was a time when conservative (in the larger, non-political sense) chuckleheads demanded adherence to outdated style guides. At no point in history was this ever a favorable trait. It obscured meaning by using a set of elite terms even when the world both moved past the narrowness of those definitions and moved past the narrowness of elite authoritarianism. Whenever the reign of the elites may have existed, it was long past by 2001, when the term BRIC was coined.
At no time since has the term organization for now BRICS not been the most appropriate word to be used in “good” writing, “good” writing being my term for what standard mainstream news and information sources require of their non-casual contributors, a matter of usage not style guides.
This being the internet, griping that an international body of nations who happen to be chafed by American hegemony but do a remarkable number of things over a remarkably long period of time don’t cohere to your preferred definition of what is sufficient lofty to be termed an organization is less than remarkable. But the rest of the world is not wrong on this matter. As long as no definition of a formal organization exists, except in the broadest possible sense that takes in almost anything, even the Dope, they cannot be, nor would a different term suit to inform instead of propagandize.
Thank you for helping emphasize my objection.
I am afraid there is, or should be. As I see a difference between a real formal Organisation like the UN, NATO, EU etc and the BRICS I am trying to get other people to see it too. So I started this thread.
Newspapers are too lazy, and do not reflect properly what they write. LSLGuy has a point here, even if it is a hijack. That a word is commonly used does not make it the right word. In the case of the BRICS I am arguing that it is the wrong word, because it gives the wrong idea.
It may be an idiosyncrasy of mine, but I am trying to argue that it is a justified idiosincrasy. The term Organisation is manipulative in this context, and the press should expose that manipulation. It does not. So here I am, trying to convince at least a couple of people in this remote corner of the internet that this is something that should change. I do not expect real life consequences, but some people may see what I mean and nod. I am not asking for much more, I am not a fool. (Oh, wait…)
As we are in Max Weber territory now, I quote from your link:
Characteristics [of Organisations]
Well defined rules and regulations
Lacking in the BRICS
Determined objectives and policies
Only ad hoc, open to change on the whim of the five leaders.
Status symbol
Yes, check. That is whole point: form, not content. Empty gestures, grandstanding, no true idea behind the whole enterprise.
Limitation on the activities of the individual
The five heads of state are not bound by the institution, as they should in a proper Organisation. Their activities are not limited.
Strict observance of the principle of co-ordination
Nope, the ruling principle is hierarchical. The five leaders dictate, the organisation bends to their whims.
Messages are communicated through scalar chain
Not sure about that. Probably yes, once the decisions are adopted in the smoke filled room (that’s a metaphor, I know Putin and Xi do not smoke) where the five leaders take decisions.
It is to best attain the objectives of the enterprise.
The BRICS enterprise has no objectives, no strategy, only short term tactical moves.
Hierarchical work distribution or clear division of labour.
Labour may be distributed, the decision making process that leads to the labour though is not. It is a strong man setting.
Serves me right for trying a pun. But I don’t believe I emphasized your objection. May I retract my weak joke and suggest The Cabal or The Conspiracy instead? Say The Cabal of Five or the Pentaconspiracy, to give them a unique name? Or simply the C-5?
The fact that the name is just an acronym of the names of the members tells you something. I mean, could I say that Botswana, Australia, Lichtenstein, and Lithuania are members of the BALL group? The purpose of the BALL group is to look out for the interests of Botswana, Australia, Lichtenstein, and Lithuania, whatever those are.
This is in contrast to, say, OPEC. OPEC has a clear purpose: They’re countries that want to keep selling oil, at as high a price as possible. And they have a name that reflects that. Someone wants to join OPEC? Well, do they export petroleum? That’s the criterion for membership, because any country that exports petroleum has certain interests, and those interests are what OPEC works towards.
I totally see @Pardel-Lux’s point that the BRICS grouping is rather more like several riders on a train sharing a common destination than it is a hierarchical business, political party, or a sports team. OTOH, often NATO or the EU seems a bit like riders on a train who although friends to one another can’t pick a common destination.
If the term “organization” simple means “vaguely like minded gaggle” then yes, BRICS is an organization. If “organization” is to mean something well … more organized, then the BRICS grouping probably doesn’t count despite the development bank they (China really) invented for the purpose of giving them an evident HQ & staff.
Nuance and news are two N-words that don’t go together. I read a lot more professional foreign policy analysis than I do ordinary news*. Folks in that industry understand the BRICS club for what it is. And for what it isn’t. Regardless of its provenance or its charter, it’s still capable of having coherent interests and the means to agitate for them and to pursue them as against other multi-national entities’ interests arrayed against them.
The fact the club is actively seeking new members is in fact a decent proxy for them being a real organization with real goals, not just a photo-op for certain leaders.
* Dumb hobby but somebody has to have it.
Does the Council on Foreign Relations do serious policy analysis? In the link above it uses the word eight times, including in this paragraph.
The BRICS countries indeed have deepened their partnership over the past eight years, developing a real organization out of a mere idea, and showing their capacity to create new financial institutions that they can control.
Would you like to do a serious thread on BRICS related policy and American response to it? I’d love to read it. Unfortunately, this thread is not serious and FQ is not amenable to analysis.
If the BRICs skyscraper is staffed with workers who only do BRICs stuff, on a permanent basis, then I’d say that it’s an organization in either sense. It may only be as important to the participant nations as though they’d delegated their spouses to organize a “Who’s got the coolest Pokemon swag” competition for their children but, if you build a building and staff it permanently then that is an organization - irrelevant to all things that really matter to anyone as may be.
If there were a BRICS central bank maintaining a BRICS currency backed by BRICS resources used to trade all that oil it would probably be more well-defined who is in and what the membership criteria are.
This sounds similar to people who insist the UK doesn’t have a Constitution because it’s not all entrenched in a written document like the US has.
Words like « constitution » and « organisation » can have different meanings in different contexts.
ETA: the Commonwealth likely doesn’t meet your standards either.
- Webster’s New World Dictionary: Organization… 4 Any unified, consolidated group of elements; systematized whole; esp a) a body of persons organized for some specific purpose, as a club, union, or society…
That’s not a very restrictive definition. Methinks there are worse journalistic crimes.
- FWIW, this week’s Economist refers to it as the “BRICS bloc”. (sub req). They sometimes referred to it as a club, but not an organization. I appreciate the accuracy and precision. They noted that BRICS doesn’t have any charter or formal membership criteria, much like the G7. BRICS claims that 40 countries have applied to join it or have expressed interest in doing so. China wants expansion; South Africa is less than enthused.
Let them have their fun I say. Much better to jaw-jaw than war-war, though R, I, and C do that too in the Himalayas or other locations. With that in mind giving India and China another networking opportunity probably isn’t bad and might be good.
I went to a meeting once at the NDB to discuss projects in an area related to my work.
They were quite professional but also Asian-hierarchical. It was interesting to note that some of the staff were from Western countries.
However it was largely whitewash. Their projects were lacking the usual due diligence and safeguards you would expect from an international development bank and were more or less a cover to justify building dams wherever China wanted.
That isn’t true. It was a massive, international, slap in the face to Putin. It was a personal insult for him to be kicked out of a very exclusive club and and to be put in his place (deservedly) by member countries he despises. Despotic authoritarians generally don’t like that kind of stuff to happen to them, much less for all the world to see.
To Putin and his Russia, prestige matters a whole lot more than you think. The repercussion was that he lost respect on a global stage.
Moderating
While there is some factual discussion about the nature and structure of BRICS, this thread seems to be mostly about opinions regarding what does and does not constitute an “organization”. Since we are already getting a lot of opinion in this thread, let’s move this to IMHO (from FQ).
The Fed or ECB analogy is a bad one, because those are central banks, which the NDB is not. It’s a development bank, i.e. a government-funded bank that provides loans to development projects. Better analogues would be the Inter-American Development Bank or the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Thanks for the clarification, after looking at the webpages of both institutions I see your point, and you are right. It is important to be precise when naming things, I’ll keep that in mind, not only when talking about International Organisations, but also development banks.