BRICS+ smart mobility governance: digital sovereignty and infrastructure financing for urban transport innovation in the Global South

Abstract

Abstract The expansion of BRICS into BRICS+ has renewed scholarly debate on the role of emerging economies in global governance, South-South cooperation, and development finance. Yet little is known about how this expanded configuration can help us understand smart urban mobility governance in the Global South. This article develops BRICS+ smart mobility governance as a structured comparative heuristic for examining how emerging economies link urban transport innovation with digital sovereignty, infrastructure financing, governance capacity, and equity. Using structured, focused comparative policy analysis, the article examines publicly available policy documents, legal instruments, institutional reports, and secondary literature from China, India, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. The findings demonstrate that BRICS+ does not constitute a unified smart mobility regime. Rather, it provides a potential governance space in which diverse models can be compared: China’s state-led, technology-scale model; India’s digital public infrastructure model; Brazil’s inclusive sustainable mobility model; the UAE’s autonomous mobility experimentation model; and Indonesia’s ASEAN bridge model. The article contributes to smart city and International Relations scholarship by showing that smart mobility is not only a technical urban agenda but also a strategic field shaped by data control, platform power, infrastructure finance, institutional capacity, and development cooperation.