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Notes on the Evolution of Brazilian Multilateral Diplomacy
... As it was frequently stated by both Lula and Celso Amorim, the Brazilian diplomat who was foreign minister during the whole period (2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) and was recognised in 2009 as the 'World's best foreign minister' by Foreign Affairs magazine blogger David Rothkopf (2009), the country would strive for the 'democratisation' of the international system (critics have suggested that the real goal was, instead, to guarantee a place for Brazil in the global governance oligopoly). As we have already emphasised, historically Brazil had systematically struggled to build a peaceful and institutionalised international system (Corrêa 2007;Fonseca Jr 2011). Such an engagement is evidenced by the fact that the country was among the first members, if not one of the founding members, of most intergovernmental organizations. ...
The article argues that international policy diffusion should also be understood as one of the many foreign policy instruments, and that it is a rather versatile one, as it can be coupled to most or perhaps all traditional foreign policy instruments: political, economic, cultural, and military. It also proposes that the exportation of Brazilian policy innovations may be regarded as the backbone of Lula da Silva’s foreign policy (2003-2010), as it was central to: (a) the manufacturing of a renewed international identity for the country; (b) the promotion of post-liberal regionalism in Latin America; (c) the defence of new or expanded roles for international organizations, which was a central priority for Brazilian foreign policy in that period; (d) the revitalisation of the South-South coalition; (e) the presidential diplomacy; and (f) the promotion of systematic bilateral cooperation with Latin American and African countries.
... The country also vindicated the improvement of the UN institutional-juridical frameworks and the importance of humanitarian international law (Uziel, 2013;Hermann, 2011). Brazilian views expressed apprehension regarding the legitimacy of the use of force and coercion in international intervention, with special concern to the humanitarian impact of military action (Fonseca, 2011). Extreme poverty and the lack of institutional resources of countries subject to military intrusion were interpreted as consequences of colonial and neocolonial rule practiced by the same states that stood up for intervention. ...
This paper addresses the role of emerging powers and the importance of Southern soft power resources in global peace negotiations. It aims to examine the performance of Brazil as a contributor to peaceful solutions and the de-escalation of international security tension. Brazilian assertive diplomacy during the Lula da Silva government (2003-2010) made special efforts to build bridges in international negotiations to transcend deadlock scenarios. This text will focus specifically on the 2010 Brazil-Turkey joint initiative – known as the Teheran Declaration – set forward to mitigate the international tensions caused by the Iranian nuclear program. Both countries worked together to persuade Iran to accept a fuel swap deal which could de-rail a new round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran. The failure to change the course of Western-led coercive actions indicates the restraints emerging powers face as peace intermediators in global security. The lack of acknowledgement from Western powers, while effective to reverse the success of the Brazilian-Turkey initiative, also postponed positive outcomes in international negotiations with Iran. This text suggests re-visiting the consequences of this postponement, particularly after the Trump administration has walked away from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran.
... One consistency has been Brazil's traditional stance in multilateral organizations as a promoter of peaceful settlement of disputes, nonintervention, and preventive diplomacy (Fonseca, 2001). Herein lies a foreign policy dilemma, which pervades all the candidatures: Brazil seeks a position in the world body responsible for peace and security, but the country itself has a limited capacity to influence international security through the use of military means. ...
Emerging powers have increasingly been vocal about reforming the structures of global governance. Brazil has asserted itself both as a player to be reckoned with in multilateral organizations and as a candidate for permanent membership at the United Nations Security Council. This article aims at investigating the circumstances surrounding Brazil’s efforts at three historical moments: the failed attempt to gain a permanent seat on the Council of the League of Nations, the short-lived campaign to become the “sixth permanent member” of the Security Council in 1945, and the candidacy in the 1990s and after. Although some studies focus on each candidature separately, there is not a comprehensive comparison to put them into perspective. By comparing how foreign policy was conducted by different administrations, the article sheds light on the future behavior that could be expected from Brazil on this issue, regardless of the government in charge.
... As Gelson Fonseca stated regarding the case of Brazil, the UN remained the preeminent multilateral institution in Brazilian diplomacy-the core of the country's "multilateral ideology." 27 The UN continues to be a legitimization platform for emerging countries, increasing the visibility of their actions. ...
Using the examples of the UN Development Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, this article aims to analyze how the role of international organizations (IOs) is being changed through the incorporation of South-South cooperation (SSC) narratives and practices into their activities. Despite increased interest in the role of SSC in global governance, few empirical researchers get inside these organizations to see and analyze how this form of cooperation impacts IOs and how the latter adapt to these changes. Based on fieldwork and participant observation, the article presents some results on the mechanisms of IOs in their efforts to permanently readapt to the international environment and, at the same time, participate in the configuration of the international scene. The main argument is that the revival of SSC by rising powers has offered them an opportunity to establish individual and collective strategic partnerships with IOs. In doing so, these powers used SSC modalities to engage several redirections of IOs’ governance to lift SSC to the top of the international agenda. IOs first resisted these changes and then readapted by using these strategic partnerships as a means to reaffirm their role in the international system’s hierarchy as main institutions promoting SSC.
... As the former Chancellor Celso Amorim stated more than once, Brazil is in a permanent struggle to promote democratic values and reduce the inequality among states in international order (Amorim 2011). In this vein, some analysts emphasize that multilateralism is a historic pillar of Brazilian foreign policy (Fonseca 2011 for multilateralism is in fact a strategy of articulating the norms and principles that constitute the international structure/order to promote the national interest without relying on force or threats, known as "consensual hegemony" (Burges 2008). Although the interpretations on the use of the discourse to accomplish foreign policy goals vary, Itamaraty seems to promote an image of a "negotiating power" and "consensus-builder". ...
Abstract Based on the "street-level" and the "theory of the bureaucracy" approaches, the article contends that national bureaucracies may play an important role in explaining the relation between Brazilian foreign policy and international technical cooperation. Drawing lessons from a 2009 ENAP-ISAP project in Mozambique, we concluded that the Brazilian National School of Public Administration - ENAP's interests and autonomy in the implementation process may influence Brazilian bilateral relations.
... Em seu retorno ao órgão, em 1988, adequou-se à nova era, mas procurou manter certo grau de autonomia e contribuir ativamente para a construção do arcabouço institucional. 58 O padrão de voto confi rma essa evolução histórica, ao explicitar uma opção pelas abstenções com efeito limitado e uma aversão por, de um lado, bloquear os trabalhos do Conselho, por outro, "perder" votações. ...
... Amorim Neto's (2011;171-73) research underscores a continuous search for autonomy toward a universalistic foreign policy, not only in the choice in disagreeing with the U.S. and other great powers but also in trying to contribute significantly to a growing array of issues. This tendency is also the result of a deeply ingrained commitment to multilateral politics, including in peace and security affairs (Fonseca 2011). In view of the data and examples cited, hardly could Brazilian choices in the council be attributable to systematically yielding to P5 whims. ...
... While recognizing this recent shift toward working with different country groupings, it should be noted that the Brazilian foreign policy establishment prefers a "South orientation" in its geopolitical actions. That is, rather than seeking closeness to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other "North oriented" organizations, Brazil has a strong preference for the G-77 (Group of 77 UN countries) as a platform for exerting its international influence (Gratius 2008;Fonseca 2011). ...
... The means for boosting such claims remain an integral part of Brazilian diplomacy-considerable political investment in multilateralism. 33 Brazil was a founding member of both the league and the UN, and from time to time, Brazilian foreign aspirations to participate in international rules setting get rearticulated, always with special investment in multilateral forums. ...
How do rising powers engage in norms entrepreneurship on issues of global relevance? In this new article, we analyze Brazil's efforts to mobilize support for international regulation of electronic espionage. More specifically, the article examines Brazil's reframing of electronic espionage as an issue of development and human rights (rather than merely a security one) as part of an effort to trigger a norms cascade that would significantly modify what is viewed as acceptable use of the Internet by state agencies. Through this reframing, Brazil has begun to push for broader Internet governance reform as a prerequisite for curbing electronic espionage. In assuming the role of norms entrepreneur, Brazil incurs both opportunities and risks to its role and image as an innovative multilateralist.
La historia, los actores, las condiciones —junto con la disposición de los sujetos—
y las oportunidades son elementos conceptuales que nos permiten
ahondar en el sentido que le podemos asignar a las relaciones internacionales,
asumiéndolas como proceso de construcción de interdependencias
complementarias. No en vano, Innerarity (2006) considera que en la esfera
internacional “el poder no se mide por los recursos acumulados, sino que
consiste en la capacidad de hacer o impedir” (p. 232).
Considerar el régimen presidencialista como elemento clave para analizar
las relaciones bilaterales entre dos países es asumir que las que hemos
llamado interdependencias complementarias no se limitan al juego
tensionante del poder; por el contrario, conlleva un elemento histórico de
encuentros y desencuentros, unas condiciones institucionales y estructurales
que han definido los acercamientos o distanciamientos —considerando
también la disposición de quienes lideraron las políticas conducentes a convivir
con, o alejarse de, ese país vecino— y las oportunidades que ofrecen las
diversas circunstancias en las que se presenta el juego del poder político en
cada país y, por ende, en la región donde se ubican los actores interesados.
This study provides insight into the current evolution of the New Development Bank (NDB). It examines the role of the agency of the global South reshaping intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) in the case of Brazil's influence on the NDB to expand its membership. In that process, this article homes in on the admission of Uruguay to the NDB as a prospective member in September 2021, the first case of NDB expansion into Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The study shows that the membership negotiations between Montevideo and the Bank were less rigid and formal than the procedural norms of multilateral development banks (MDBs) of the North, thanks to the collaborative agency by the various LAC actors involved. It makes the case that Uruguay's accession to the NDB will produce numerous win‐win benefits for both the country and the Bank. It also argues that the membership will inspire the future accession of other countries in the LAC region to the Bank. The study adds to the scant literature which conceptualizes the mechanics of membership expansion by small or new IGOs. The piece also adds to existing studies investigating how LAC agency has previously shaped and continues to shape MDBs.
This dissertation discusses the influence of climate change adaptation discourses and policies on local governance processes in Brazil. It analyses how climate change adaptation discourses and policies are elaborated at international, national and local levels and translated into interventions carried out in specific geographic areas, considered to be "priorities". A study case of a community-based adaptation (CBA) project in the Brazilian rural semiarid region is presented, Adapta Sertão, analysing to what extent it was able to impact local livelihoods, institutions and governance processes. This research shows how the social construction of climate change influences perceptions, confers authority to scientific and technical knowledge, and legitimises concrete interventions at the local level. The concept of 'adapting to adaptation' is explored, examining how local formal and informal governance processes respond or 'adapt' to adaptation policies and discourses. The research argues that the climate change adaptation discourse, framed in the Brazilian semiarid as 'climate-proof development', matches local stakeholders' expectations for more development. Paradoxically, while CBA aims to promote a 'bottom-up' approach, it remains linked to traditional international and national 'top-down' development structures and financing instruments.
As International Relations (IR) has started to grapple with its geo-cultural parochialism, there has been an overwhelming focus on its ‘Western-centrism’ and how ‘non-Western’ IR might differ. This paper argues that attempts to deprovincialize ‘Western’ (i.e. Euro-American) international thought do not always revolve around ‘non-Westernness’, a negation with often cultural-civilizational connotations, but also deploy a North/South worlding that is more bound up with imperial-colonial experience and a ‘peripheral’ concern with economic insertion into the core. Based on interviews with scholars, diplomats and foreign policy intellectuals in Brazil, the paper explores the different ways ‘the South’ is deployed—as (post)colonial subjectivity, as problematique, as relation, as outside, and as political move—to provide an alternative perspective on the debate on ‘Global IR’.
The legacy of US hegemony makes it difficult for Latin American nations to exercise their agency in international affairs. The urge to escape that hegemony precipitated the creation of new organizations without the USA. Complicating the effectiveness of these organizations will be the following: historical differences among nations, the asymmetry of power between the USA and other nations in the hemisphere, older regional organizations, and the rapprochement between Cuba and the USA which removes the symbol of defiance to hegemony that was so important in Latin America. The chapter reviews the geopolitics of the new organizations and expressions of agency by individual countries and concludes that each nation will decide how it wants to use the new organizations in realizing their agency.
La multiplication des mouvements d’exportation et d’importation des modèles de gestion sociale, politique et économique a récemment trouvé un foyer privilégié et peu exploré : celui de l’échange entre acteurs du « Sud ». L’expérience brésilienne de modernisation agricole ou de politiques sociales a attiré l’attention de la communauté internationale dans les années 2000, en manque de réponses politiques face aux défis mondiaux de « lutte contre la pauvreté ». Cet intérêt s’est accru eu égard aux efforts diplomatiques brésiliens pour intensifier la coopération, le commerce et les investissements avec les pays en développement, notamment sur le continent africain. C’est dans le but de saisir le contenu, les processus et les implications politiques de l’internationalisation des instruments des politiques publiques brésiliennes pour le secteur rural que nous réalisons cette étude. Il nous intéresse également d’appréhender de manière plus large les dynamiques de distribution de pouvoir à l’échelle internationale face à l’insertion de nouveaux acteurs et de nouveaux référentiels d’action publique, en tenant compte de la particularité historico-politique des échanges sud-sud. Nous montrerons que l’influence des acteurs brésiliens dans la production et la circulation de normes internationales en matière de développement rural a été plus effective dans le changement organisationnel et normatif au sein des institutions multilatérales telles que la FAO que dans la réorientation des instruments politiques au sein des institutions publiques des pays du Sud, dans notre cas le Mozambique. Cette conclusion repose sur l’idée selon laquelle l’internationalisation d’instruments d’action publique fait l’objet d’un processus politique impliquant des réseaux d’acteurs à de multiples niveaux. Nous identifions trois ordres de facteurs influençant les résultats des interactions entre les acteurs brésiliens et les « récepteurs » des normes au niveau multilatéral aussi bien que national : i) les stratégies d’acteurs impliquant la redistribution des ressources politiques ; ii) le changement du cadre cognitif de la coalition dominante ; et/ou iii) l’altération du contexte intérieur ou extérieur au système politique (structure d’opportunité). Ces étapes devraient nous permettre de mieux saisir les enjeux de la transformation de l’État dans un contexte de mondialisation et de consolidation de nouvelles recettes mondiales de solutions publiques.
This article aims to explore the relationship between regional powers and the United Nations (UN) with respect to regional issues by examining UN-Turkish ties concerning the Middle East during the 2000s. Bidding for a leading regional role in the Middle East, especially in the 2000s, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in Turkey has increasingly used international platforms, including the UN, to gain a significant regional position in the Middle East. Turkey’s relationship with the UN in this respect could provide a relevant example to explore multilateralism and multilateral instruments in Turkey’s perceived regional power role during the last decade. The term “regional power” will be used as a conceptual framework to explore Turkey’s behavioural pattern with respect to the UN in view of the regional-global linkage, as global activism is nearly a standard behaviour of any state with a leading regional power role/claim. In view of this, the period during which Turkey held a temporary seat on the UN Security Council between 2009 and 2010 will be given particular attention in order to identify any significant link or at least any tentative correlations between Turkey’s then-closer involvement in the UN and its regional power role/claim in the Middle East. Moreover, fluctuations recorded in Turkey’s relations with the UN with respect to the Middle East during the last decade will be taken into account to examine a variety of challenges involved in any regional state’s relations with the UN regarding regional issues. Conducting a periodical analysis of Turkey-UN relations with respect to the Middle East could provide some provisional answers regarding both limitations and opportunities related to the future state of relations between any regional power and the most universal organization of world politics.
This chapter provides a preliminary assessment of this emerging body of literature on rising powers and multilateral organizations, mapping its evolution, the main contours, foundational works, key contributions, gaps and promising future research agendas. The main finding is that the literature on the BRICS and multilateral organizations has evolved in three phases, and is currently in the middle of the third phase. The foundational work in Phase One focussed mainly on how the contemporary group of rising states positioned themselves in relation to the established multilateral arrangements and the global order more broadly. The literature in the Second Phase delved more deeply into the preferences of the individual rising states to assess whether, or to what degree, the rising powers actually want to be incorporated into the existing global multilateral arrangements. Wading into comparisons of their foreign policy agendas, the contributions gauged whether the rising powers were behaving as “status quo or revisionist” powers, the issue of their socialization into the existing multilateral arrangements, and some focussed on how best to “manage” their integration into the existing international regimes. However, for the Third Phase, we can observe an analytical shift in the focus of the emerging research and published work. Whereas the early literature, especially that related to China’s global rise (e.g. Johnston and Ross, 1999), was oriented toward managing the integration of the rising states into the established multilateral institutions, the emerging literature addresses the main gap heretofore in the literature: that is, whether the rising powers are trying to (re)shape some global norms and rules even while they selectively internalize some of the established global rules.
O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o desenvolvimento das relações entre Brasil e
Israel, a partir de uma perspectiva histórica, retomando pontos de convergência e
divergência no relacionamento bilateral à luz de novas interpretações e dados. A
hipótese que sustenta este artigo é a de que as contradições entre Brasil e Israel,
em vez de serem vistas como uma rejeição às aspirações israelenses ou alguma
incompatibilidade ideológica, devem ser compreendidas a partir de elementos externos
às relações israelo-brasileiras: (1) o grau de proximidade, de alinhamento ou de
confronto com os Estados Unidos; (2) a visão universalista, visando inserção ampla no
mundo; (3) o viés majoritário das políticas multilaterais do Brasil. Tais forças
condicionaram, em alguma medida, as preferências do Brasil com relação ao Oriente
Médio, em geral, e a Israel, em particular.
Emerging powers like China, India and Brazil are receiving growing attention as objects in International Relations (IR) discourse. Scholars from these emerging powers are rarely present as subjects in mainstream IR discourse, however. This paper interrogates the conditions for scholars in emerging powers to speak back to the mainstream discipline. It argues, first, that ‘theory speak’ is rare from scholars based in periphery countries perceived to be ‘emerging powers’. Despite increasing efforts to create a ‘home-grown’ theoretical discourse in China, India and Brazil, few articles in mainstream journals present novel theoretical frameworks or arguments framed as non-Western/Southern theory or even as a ‘Chinese school’ or ‘Brazilian concepts’. Second, scholars from emerging powers tend to speak as ‘native informants’ about their own country, not about general aspects of ‘the international’. Third, some scholars even speak as ‘quasi-officials’, that is, they speak for their country.
This article examines the long-term trends of foreign policy convergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (brics) to determine the similarity of their positions on world issues, as they seek to ‘insert’ themselves more fully into global decision making. The analysis is based upon their votes in the UN General Assembly. The article compiles two indexes of voting for the period 1974–2011. Both demonstrate a high and now growing degree of cohesion among brics. Their voting is broken down by pairs to show common themes and the major issue divergences, and how often individual states voted with others. Nuclear disarmament and human rights are the two areas that reveal persisting divergences between these states.
This article analyzes the configurations of Brazilian foreign policy after 2002 in order to relate to gains and losses the structural changes of the international system. The aim is to achieve a balance of material capabilities of Brazil, as well as its challenges and opportunities, from the categories proposed by Randall Schweller. Jackal or Lamb? How does Brazil behave in the international system in transition, and what can be the consequences? That is, while Jackal it acts in pursuit of relative gains by following the more revisionist actor (China), and as Lamb in direct association with the unipolar power.
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