This article aims to understand the basic characteristics of regionalism in Brazilian foreign policy. For this purpose, it goes over the recent history of Brazilian involvement in regional trade and security arrangements in South America. It also examines the manner in which economic uncertainties, brought about by the 2008-2009 global financial crisis, affected Brazilian foreign policy towards its region. Based on this historical analysis, it defines five key aspects that characterise Brazilian behaviour in the region, namely: post-democratisation regionalism; presidential regionalism; reactive regionalism; concentric/multilevel regionalism; and instrumental regionalism.

This article discusses the role of think tanks in the production of ideas guiding recent change in Brazil's economic policy. It claims that think tanks are significant policy-making agents preparing the society for change -via their communicative discourse -but also attempting to influence the interaction between political elitesvia their coordinative discourse. The polarization of think tanks' communicative discourse in regard to austerity during two critical junctures for Brazil is analysed.

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