Sean W. Burges

Consensual Hegemony: Theorizing Brazilian Foreign Policy after the Cold War

Conventional approaches to hegemony emphasize elements of coercion and exclusion, characteristics that do not adequately explain the operation of the growing number of regional projects or the style of emerging-power foreign policy. This article develops the concept of consensual hegemony, explaining how a structure can be articulated, disseminated and maintained without relying on force to recruit the participation of other actors. The central idea is the construction of a structural vision, or hegemony, that specifically includes the nominally subordinate, engaging in a process of dialogue and interaction that causes the subordinate parties to appropriate and absorb the substance and requisites of the hegemony as their own. The utility of consensual hegemony as an analytical device, especially for the study of regionalism and emerging market power foreign policy, is outlined with reference to Brazils post-Cold War foreign policy, demonstrating both how a consensual hegemony might be pursued and where the limits to its ideas-based nature lie.

Bounded by the Reality of Trade: Practical Limits to a South American Region

This article argues that regionalism in South America will meet with limited success because continental and subregional integration projects lack the necessary economic underpinnings. The result is an incomplete form of regional integration that, while offering some rewards to the participating countries, predominantly serves the energy security needs of the regions major players. Brazil, in particular, benefits from this process and also is the prime reason that regionalism in South America will not deepen. Without a major state to absorb the costs of region-building the process will stall. As the evidence in this article implies, Brazil is not willing to absorb these costs, placing severe limits on the region and regional acceptance of Brazilian leadership.

Brazil as a bridge between old and new powers

Brazilian foreign policy demonstrates an interesting double aspect in the changing global system. Its rhetoric and overt positioning is framed around the idea of Brazil as a value-creating actor, while in reality there are significant value-claiming characteristics at the core of its approach to regional and global affairs. The key for Brazil is its position as a ‘bridge’ between the South and the North, which allows its diplomats to establish the country as a critical coalition organizer and ideational leader for southern actors looking for major changes in global governance systems, and a central interlocutor for northern actors trying to cope with pressure from the South. Brazils ambitions are simple: focusing more on an improved relative position, rather than a complete reformulation of the international system, which serves it well in economic, political and security terms. To explain this argument the article focuses on Brazilian engagement with Africa and South America, as well as the countrys approach to major negotiations such as the WTOs Doha round, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and the evolution of regional governance mechanisms such as the Organization of American States and the recently created Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. The pattern that emerges is one of Brazil working to create a consensus around its position, using its consequent leadership to improve Brazilian leverage in the regional and global arena.

Brazil, the Entrepreneurial and Democratic BRIC

By most objective metrics, Brazil is the least imposing of the “BRICs countries”—less populous than China and India, slower-growing in recent years than China, India, or Russia, and the only member of the group lacking nuclear weapons. We argue that Brazils material capabilities are more significant than commonly supposed. Moreover, Brazils democratic transition in the mid-1980s, along with that of its neighbors, has for the first time enabled Brazil to realize its promise of becoming a regional leader in South America. On the basis of its democratic and regional prominence, Brazil has become an effective political entrepreneur at the global level, initiating and participating in multilateral fora as diverse as the trade G20, the financial G20, and now the BRICs club. On issues of style, inclusion, and distributive justice, Brazil reliably sides with the “South.” Yet its core public policy instincts embrace familiar “Northern” preferences: liberal, and mixed-capitalist, democracy.

Brazil's International Development Co-operation: Old and New Motivations

Brazil has entered the world of development assistance, but with its own twist. This article argues that Brazil is taking a cross�?government policy approach to the provision of development assistance, and which includes recruitment of business interests. There is a genuine concern with global poverty alleviation in Brazil, but this does not preclude policy�?makers from using aid and development�?related activities to advance national interests. The added quirk that sets Brazil apart from Northern counterparts is that the provision of development assistance offers significant benefits in terms of building up international bureaucratic experience inside the country and helping national firms internationalise their market activities.

Mistaking Brazil as a middle power

This paper argues that Brazil can only be classified as a middle power by engaging in what Sartori criticized as the process of conceptual stretching. Moreover, it is argued that Brazil neither sees itself as a middle power, nor conducts itself as one despite superficial appearances. After the context is set with a survey of thinking on middle power theory, attention is turned to explaining how Brazil might be mistaken for a middle power before explaining in more detail why the country is not one. Evidence is drawn from Brazils multilateral engagement in institutions such as the WTO, the inter-American system, the NPT, and the wider context of global development. Ultimately the paper advises policy-makers and academics against using the concept of middle power as a conceptual guide or shortcut to understanding Brazil.

DEVELOPING FROM THE SOUTH: SOUTH-SOUTH COOPERATION IN THE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT GAME

This paper looks at the rise of South-South cooperation as an alternative to traditional foreign aid provision by member agenices of the OECDs Development Assistance Committee. It tracks the rise of South-South cooperation and places it in the context of contemporary approaches to development programming, arguing that there are valuable lessons for the North in this Southern-driven approach to development.

The importance of presidential leadership for Brazilian foreign policy

ABSTRACT The conventional wisdom in Brazil is that foreign policy is a policy of state and, as such, not part of the daily political debate. The result is an understanding that foreign policy is largely driven by the foreign ministry, with the president generally only taking a role when needed to advance a particular initiative through presidential diplomacy. We challenge these assumptions, arguing that the engagement and authority of the president are the essential factors in bringing about not only substantive strategic change in Brazilian foreign policy, but also alterations in the policy process that have democratized foreign policy and moved it from a policy of state to another area of public policy. To do this, we draw on and deepen Sergio Danese’s theory of presidential diplomacy and map out major strategic changes in post-authoritarian Brazil’s foreign policy. We find that the major changes that have taken place were initiated by the truncated Fernando Collor presidency and then deepened and amplified by the highly internationally engaged presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Lula. By contrast, the presidencies of Itamar Franco and Dilma Rousseff emerge as instances of inertial continuity lacking in dynamism and innovation.

Strategies and Tactics for Global Change: Democratic Brazil in Comparative Perspective

Brazil has consistently been seeking a more influential place at global decision-making tables in order to preserve its sovereignty and protect its national policy autonomy. The challenge for Brazilian diplomats is that their country lacks the economic or military muscle to force a way onto these tables. Subtler avenues for inclusion are thus needed. Seven of the main tactics employed in Brazilian foreign policy are outlined here, and range from the defensive/passive (avoiding mindless opposition, collectivisation) through the neutral (consensus creation, technocratic speak) to the assertive (building new organisations, propagating new thinking) and finally to the aggressive (principled presidential righteousness).

Brazil: Towards a (Neo)Liberal Democracy?

One of the mantras that a student of Brazilian politics and society quickly encounters is that Brazil is not like other countries in the region, being a Portuguese-speaking former monarchy in a continent of Spanish-speaking republics. This assertion of difference and exceptionalism in core principles of national identity also resonates in debates on economic policy and the consolidation of democracy. Where other countries in South America such as Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela have spent most of the first decade of the twenty-first century profoundly questioning the economic models implemented within their countries and seeking to radically reformulate representative institutions and traditions, the reverse has taken place in Brazil. Here, the process has been one of continuity of central features of the national political economy, with change primarily limited to the mode of application. The 2002 electoral transition from the Center-Right government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso to the leftist government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva saw the rise of a Chile-like consensus on what shape economic policy should take. Mainstream political questions now revolve more around a tinkering with existing institutions, not the wholesale reformulation of repre sentative systems. This is not to argue that there is no dissatisfaction with the socioeconomic situation; it is obvious that great challenges remain.