Lawfare, Institutional Adaptation and the BRICS: Towards a More Diversified International Economic Order

This article examines how the growing use of economic lawfare has influenced the evolution of BRICS cooperation and assesses whether the group’s institutional responses are contributing to a more diversified international economic order. It argues that sanctions, export controls and other coercive economic measures have not merely constrained several BRICS members but have accelerated pre-existing efforts to develop alternative mechanisms of financial, monetary and commercial cooperation. The analysis adopts a qualitative legal and geopolitical approach, combining the literature on economic lawfare and weaponized interdependence with the examination of BRICS declarations, institutional documents and recent policy developments. Particular attention is devoted to five interconnected dimensions of institutional adaptation: alternative payment systems, BRICS financial institutions, de-dollarization, intra-BRICS trade and economic engagement with sanctioned states. The article concludes that BRICS are not seeking to overturn the current international economic order but to diversify it through a process of institutional layering in which new arrangements coexist with established institutions. Economic lawfare has therefore acted less as a constraint than as a catalyst for institutional innovation, strengthening the BRICS’ role as an increasingly influential platform of South-South cooperation within a progressively more multipolar global economy.