The Politics of Brazilian Foreign Policy and Its Analytical Challenges

Abstract

Starting from the perspective that foreign policy is a public policy, this article discusses the conceptual and political implications of the new configuration of Brazilian foreign policy. Therefore, we abandon its automatic association with the cruder versions of realism and bring it to the field of politics, thus recognizing that its formulation and implementation fall into the dynamics of governmental choices which, in turn, stem from negotiations within coalitions, bargaining, disputes, and agreements between representatives of diverse interests. As a result, we remove foreign policy from a condition linked to inertial and supposedly self-evident and/or permanent national interests (which would be protected from injunctions of cyclical nature related to partisan politics) and undress it of features generally attributed to so-called state policies. Finally, we suggest ways for an innovative research agenda on the role of diplomatic agency, political institutions, and nonstate actors in Brazil's foreign policy. It used to be common among foreign policy analysts both from academia and from the media to ascribe the sources of Brazilian foreign policy mainly to a single agency. The main responsibility for Brazilian foreign policy making was generally attributed to either an individual (generally, the President or the Foreign Minister) or an institution (the Foreign Ministry, best known as Itamaraty). The reasons for this are well known: On the one hand, Brazilian presidentialism concentrates too much agency in the president's hands (Abranches 1988), giving him/her, when particularly attentive to foreign policy issues, a great latitude for action. On the other hand, the long-standing professionalism of Brazilian

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