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Abstract
The global power shift towards Brazil, India, China and other non-western powers has led to pressures to adjust international institutions to new economic realities. Most power shift theories assume that established powers defend their institutional privileges, while emerging powers challenge them. Conversely, in this article we reverse this assumption by shedding light on 'privileges' of the weak: many international institutions have established special rights for disadvantaged regime members. We ask what strategies emerging powers adopt as they come under pressure to give up these rights commonly reserved for regime members with developing country status. We present a novel conceptualization of four ideal-typical strategies that combine elements of resistance and accommodation. Empirically, we examine the strategies that Brazil, India and China (BICs) have adopted in the World Trade Organization. We find that no uniform approach exists across the BICs: while India fiercely resists giving up its status as a developing country and the flexibilities it comes with, Brazil adopts a pragmatic approach that largely accommodates established powers' demands to give up special rights reserved for developing countries. China pursues a mixed strategy of selective accommodation and resistance. These findings contribute to recent debates on global power shifts by illustrating how material incentives and status considerations shape the adaptation of international institutions as privileges for the weak are re-negotiated.

This article examines the implications of the rise of new powers in the Global South for a central principle of global order: the distinction between the 'North' and the 'South', or 'developed' and 'developing countries', that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. In doing so, we assess whether, and if so, how, the increasing tension between the binary 'North-South' distinction and growing heterogeneity within the Global South - as evidenced by the rise of emerging economies - has been reflected in the rules of multilateral trade policymaking. In the case of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the 'North-South' categorisation forms the basis of the legal principle of Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) that grants special rights to developing countries. To trace the evolution of SDT, we analyse legal developments and processes of contestation based on our conceptualisation of possible options for adaptation: graduation, individualisation and fragmentation. Drawing on a dataset of WTO decisions and agreements from 1995 to 2019, we find that the group of developing countries increasingly competes with other groups of disadvantaged countries for equity-based differential treatment. The resulting fragmentation contributes to the unmaking of the North-South distinction as a central ordering principle in global trade politics.