Presently a great deal of attention is being paid to the rise of China. India, South Africa and Brazil are also - at different paces - assuming a greater roll in world affairs; and they are demanding with some success more prominence. What can be expected of these countries' foreign policy? What are their goals and how will they attain them? What are they going to do differently from the great powers before them? In which ways do the national histories of these countries affect their posture towards the rest of the world?

Despite a large and well-organised civil society, high economic growth rates and being a democracy India still suffers under high inequality rates. The functioning of the Indian state is frustrated by it, since the political game within Indian bureaucracies has more to do with keeping a certain status then with what is best for the country. How does this affect India’s role globally?

After the end of apartheid, South Africa under president Mandela became an important advocate of human rights and international law with a lot of prestige. However the image of South Africa has suffered greatly the past years, partly because of official attitudes towards HIV/AIDS.

Like much of Latin America Brazil has a left-wing president, Lula da Silva. The poor of South America have used the ballot box to reject the neo-liberal hegemony. The foundation of their own development bank with an explicit reference to the failure of the IMF and the World Bank is one of the many developments to have come from this rejection.

In the first part of The Globalised Crystal Ball, on the 13th of November, there was a discussion on how ‘good’ people can end up taking ‘wrong’ decisions. Bahram Sadeghi went in search of an answer to this question with the motto "If everyone wants a better world, why don't we have one?". The result will be presented during the evening. The third contribution to Visual Foreign Correspondents has been made by the Turkish artist Erhan Muratoglu.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is director of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. One of his most recent books is The burden of democracy. In it he argues that the democratic experiment in India has been impressive en has had a positive effect on the country but that it no longer functions well. This is due to chronic inequality in Indian society, along with a lack of accountability.

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge is a member of parliament in South Africa. She has been Deputy Minister at the ministries of Defence and Health. She was dismissed from the latter function in August. Whilst the official reason is not clear, in international media the assumption is that the reason is that she - unlike her boss - is of the opinion that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease.

Alcides Costa Vaz is the director of and a professor at the Institute of International Relations of the University of Brasilia. In Brazil he is a well known commentator on the country's foreign policy. At the moment he is writing a book about the roll of emerging powers on the world stage.

The Globalised Crystal Ball is a series by De Balie in association with De Volkskrant newspaper and Vrij Nederland news magazine and made possible by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and NCDO.

Online ticketsale stops one day before the event takes places. It is still possible to reserve tickets by calling 020-5535100.

date | januari 15th
time | 8 pm
entrance | € 8,- (€ 6,- with discount)