The chair Laurence Whitehead (University of Oxford) and the secretary Vinícius Rodrigues Vieira (Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation, FAAP, and Getulio Vargas Foundation, FGV) are proud to release our updated research goals. By advancing further the previous version, which was launched in 2015 by our founding chair and past IPSA president (2006-2009) Lourdes Sola (University of São Paulo), our academic targets now address better emerging topics that are essential for analyzing the emerging market democracies (EMDs). Those topics include but are not limited to the ongoing backlash against globalization that has emerged from populist-nationalist trends and democratic backsliding, apart from China's rise and its potential consolidation as a dominant actor in the international order in the aftermath of the pandemic:

"The RC 51 aims to cast a new light on theoretically-informed analysis of power transitions, and the rebalancing of the world economy, with special emphasis on the interaction between emerging market democracies (EMDs) and globalization. The intention is to extend the range of analysis from the traditional International Political Economy (IPE) agenda focused on on the two main pillars of economic globalization (trade and finance) to include new avenues of research, including:

1 ) Transformative processes driving long term trends in EMDs, including state-building and democratization trajectories that may not always lead to “convergence” but instead take into account the rise of populist, illiberal governments, and that can help explain contemporary backlashes against globalization;

2 ) New topics related to the distribution of resources within and between 21st century sovereign states, in particular environmental and technological questions that are displacing conventional “realist” understandings of international relations and IPE;

(NEW) 3) The political economy of the relative decline of the “liberal international order” as it was pictured at the end of the 20th century, as regional powers (notably our EMDs) widen the scope of their statecrafting options, while previously hegemonic western powers retreat inthe face of the shift of leadership towards Asia in general, and China in particular".