Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Brazil, the Entrepreneurial and Democratic BRIC

  • Article
  • Published:
Polity

Abstract

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 Brazil's material capabilities are more significant than commonly supposed. Moreover, Brazil's 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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Andrew Cohen, While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2004).

  2. For a less sanguine view, see Mac Margolis, “Lula gets aggressive,” Newsweek, 27 June 2009.

  3. Michael F. Sullivan, Power in Contemporary International Relations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990); Robert Dahl, “Power,” in International Encyclopedia of Social Science, Vol. 12, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 405–15; David A. Baldwin, Paradoxes of Power (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1989).

  4. Andrew Hurrell, Andrew F. Cooper, Guadalupe González González, Ricardo Ubiraci Sennes, and Srini Sitaram, “Paths to Power: Foreign Policy Strategies of Intermediate States,” Working Paper #244, Latin America Program (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, March 2000); Andrew Hurrell, “Brazil: What Kind of Rising State in What Kind of Institutional Order,” Paper prepared for GIR-Princeton Summer Workshop on “Rising States; Rising Institutions”, Princeton, NJ, 25–27 August 2008; Derrick V. Frazier and Robert Stewart-Ingersoll, “Power within Regions: Moving Toward a Conceptualization and Measurement of Regional Power Structures,” Paper presented at International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, 28 February – 3 March 2007.

  5. G. John Ikenberry, Michael Mastanduno and William C. Wohlforth, “Unipolarity, State Behavior, and Systemic Consequences,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 1–27 at 7.

  6. University of Michigan Correlates of War Project, “State System Membership List: Frequently Asked Questions,” 21 April 2003, www.correlatesofwar.org (accessed August 2009).

  7. A.F.K. Organski and Jacek Kugler, The War Ledger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Daniel W. Drezner, All Politics is Global: Explaining International Regulatory Regimes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter, 1994).

  8. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).

  9. Dominic Wilson and Anna Stupnytska, “The Next 11: More than an Acronym,” Goldman Sachs Global Economics Paper #153, 28 March 2007.

  10. John W. Holmes, The Better Part of Valour: Essays on Canadian Diplomacy (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1970).

  11. Robert W. Cox, “Middlepowermanship, Japan, and Future World Order,” in Approaches to World Order, ed. Robert Cox with Timothy Sinclair (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 241–76.

  12. Martha Finnemore, “Legitimacy, Hypocrisy, and the Social Structure of Unipolarity,” World Politics 61 (January 2009): 58–85.

  13. Ikenberry et al., “Unipolarity,” 20.

  14. See David Rothkopf, “It's 3 am. Do you Know Where Hillary Clinton is?” Washington Post, 23 August 2009. www.washingtonpost.com.

  15. Fred Chernoff, “The Study of Democratic Peace and Progress in International Relations,” International Studies Review 6 (May 2004): 49–78; Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller, eds., Debating the Democratic Peace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

  16. Henry Laurence, “Japan and the New Financial Order in East Asia: From Competition to Cooperation,” in Debating the Global Financial Architecture, ed. Leslie Elliott Armijo (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002).

  17. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “The 15 major spender countries in 2008.” www.sipri.org (accessed July 2009).

  18. See Wade Huntley, “Diversity and Convergence in Middle Powers’ Space Programs,” in The Politics of Space, ed. Eligar Sadeh (forthcoming).

  19. Jonathan Wheatley, “The World's Unwanted Food Basket,” Financial Times, 27 April 2008.

  20. Emilo Lèbre La Rovere and André Santos Pereira, “Brazil and Climate Change: A Country Profile,” November 2005. www.scidev.net (accessed May 2006).

  21. See data available at www.cepal.org and www.indexmundi.com (accessed July 2009).

  22. See note 15. For an overview of the reasons that democratic policymaking tends to be incremental and moderate see Leslie Elliott Armijo and Carlos Gervasoni, “Two Dimensions of Democracy and the Economy,” unpublished paper, 2009.

  23. Emanuel Adler and Michael Barnett, Security Communities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 30.

  24. E. Bradford Burns, The Unwritten Alliance: Rio Branco and Brazilian-American Relations (New York: Columbian University Press, 1966); Joseph Smith, Unequal Giants: Diplomatic Relations between the United States and Brazil, 1889–1930 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1991); Mônica Hirst, “Brazil,” in From Superpower to Besieged Global Power: Restoring World Order after the Failure of the Bush Doctrine, ed. Edward A. Kolodziej and Roger E. Kanet (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 281–82; Mônica Hirst, The United States and Brazil: A Long Road of Unmet Expectations (New York: Routledge, 2005).

  25. Gordon Mace, Jean-Philippe Thérien and Paul Haslam, eds., Governing the Americas: Assessing Multilateral Institutions (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007).

  26. Luiz Felipe Lampreia and Ademar Seabra da Cruz, “Brazil: Coping with Structural Constraints,” in Diplomacy and Developing Nations: Post-Cold War Foreign Policy-Making Structures and Processes, ed. Justin L. Robertson and Maurice A. East (London: Routledge, 2005).

  27. In fact Brazil's business community frequently has expressed frustration to the extent that trade policy has focused on long-term political rather than immediate commercial goals.

  28. Leslie Elliott Armijo and Christine A. Kearney, “Does Democratization Alter the Policy Process? Trade Policymaking in Brazil,” Democratization 15 (December 2008): 991–1017.

  29. Pedro da Motta Viega, “Política Comercial no Brasil: Características, Condicionantes Domésticos e Policy-Making,” in Políticas Comercais Comparadas: Desempenho e Modelos Organizacionais, ed. Marcos Sawaya Jank and Simão Silber (São Paulo: Singular, 2007).

  30. Fernando Simas Magalhães, Cúpula das Américas de 1994: Papel Negociador do Brasil, em busca de uma agenda hemisférica (Brasília: IRBr/FUNAG/Centro de Estudos Estratégicos, 1999); Richard E. Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: A Progress Report (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1997).

  31. In fact, IIRSA is administered by genial and experienced international technocrats in office space shared with the Argentina headquarters of the Inter-American Development Bank. Much of the actual work is done by contract employees.

  32. Sean W. Burges, Brazilian Foreign Policy After the Cold War (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009), 120–23.

  33. Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1933 (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin Books, 1973); Charles P. Kindleberger, “Dominance and Leadership in the International Economy: Exploitation, Public Goods, and Free Rides,” International Studies Quarterly 25 (June 1981): 242–54.

  34. Jonathan Wheatley, “Brazil Signs ‘Historic’ Power Deal,” Financial Times, 26 July 2009.

  35. Jared Ritvo, “Brazil Spearheads UNASUR Defense Council,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), 28 May 2008; Ministerio da Defesa, Estrategia Nacional de Defesa, www.defesa.gov.br, 2008; “BRAZIL: Defence Strategy Raises Practical Doubts,” Oxford Analytica, 23 February 2009.

  36. “Geopolitical Diary: Coming to Terms with Argentina's Economic Problems,” 13 August, 2009. www.stratfor.com.

  37. Marie Delcas, “Le Venezuela et l’Equateur protestent contre un accord militaire américano-colombien,” Le Monde (3 August 2009): online edition.

  38. Felipe Matsunaga, “Amid UNASUR Summit, Brazil Likely to Emerge a Winner, with Colombia a Questionable Beneficiary,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 2 September 2009. www.coha.org.

  39. In the 2006 World Values Survey, 87 percent of Brazilian respondents thought having a democratic political system was “very good” or “fairly good,” compared to only 34 percent with similar positive feelings about having the army rule. Citizens polled had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in these institutions: the current (Lula) government (46 percent), political parties (21 percent), major companies (57 percent), and the armed forces (69 percent). See www.worldvaluessurvey.org. According to a 2006 Latinobarometer survey, 46 percent of Brazilians thought democracy was “preferable to any other system of government,” up from only 30 percent in 2001. But in both years, only 18 percent agreed that “in certain circumstances, an authoritarian government [could be] preferable to a democratic one.” http://worldpublicopinion.org (accessed August 2009).

  40. Chris Alden and Marco Antônio Vieira, “The New Diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and Trilateralism,” Third World Quarterly 26.7 (2005): 1077–95; Amrita Narlikar and Diana Tussie, “The G20 at the Cancun Ministerial: Developing Countries and Their Evolving Coalitions in the WTO,” The World Economy 27.7 (2004): 947–66.

  41. Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, “Interview with Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim,” Inter-Press Service (IPS), 10 August 2007. http://doha-round.blogspot.com.

  42. On the NAM and NIEO see Jaqueline-Anne Braveboy Wagner, Institutions of the Global South (London: Routledge, 2008). The “Cartegena Consensus” was signed in May 1984 by Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico in the ultimately unrealized hope of jointly renegotiating their sovereign debt with wealthy country commercial banks.

  43. Figures available in early August 2009 show China, Russia, India, and Brazil as first, third, sixth, and eighth worldwide, respectively, in their international reserve holdings. Japan is second and Germany ninth. Source: http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/ir/colist.htm.

  44. “Interview: Rubens Ricupero, former Brazilian finance minister,” “Brazil Political and Business Comment,” 8 June 2009. www.brazilpoliticalcomment.com.br.

  45. Armijo and Kearney, “Does Democratization Alter the Policy Process?”

  46. Kathryn Hochstetler, “Organized Civil Society in Lula's Brazil,” in Democratic Brazil Revisited, ed. Kingstone and Powers, 33–56.

  47. See Gilberto Nascimento's interview with Grajew in Isto E, 12 December 2000.

  48. Guido Mantega, “Bancos públicos e desenvolvimento,” Seminário Valor Econômico e Caixa Econômica Federal, São Paulo, June 2009.

  49. “Top 1000 world banks 2009,” The Banker, 24 July 2009, accessed online.

  50. The 2009 Brazilian IMF loan is a purchase of SDR-denominated IMF bonds.

  51. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, “Em Ecaterimburgo, os Bric atingem sua maioridade,” Opinion piece, Valor Econômico, 16 June 2009. http://www.valoronline.com.br [Our translation.]

  52. “Diferenças dificultam um acordo entre os BRIC,” Valor Econômico, 16 June 2009. http://www.valoronline.com.br [Our translation.]

  53. Paulo Nogueira Batista Jr., “BRICS, G20 e FMI,” Folha de São Paulo, 18 June 2009. www.folha.com.br.

  54. A recent interview with a former Argentine Vice President makes clear the increasingly political objectives of MERCOSUR and UNASUR. See Laura Carlsen, “Perspectives and Challenges in Mercosur: An Interview with Carlos Alvarez of Mercosur,” Americas Program Special Report (Washington, DC: Center for International Policy, 14 August 2009). http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6324.

  55. Both French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently have promoted their G20 initiatives on financial reform as a way of shoring up their domestic political popularity. See Lionel Barber and Philip Stephens, “[Brown's] Three-part prescription to take to G20,” Financial Times, 31 August 2009.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Portland State University,

    Leslie Elliott Armijo

  2. University of Ottawa,

    Sean W Burges

Authors
  1. Leslie Elliott Armijo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Sean W Burges
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

The authors thank Parag Khanna, Cynthia Roberts, and Christine A. Gustafson for their helpful comments. Any remaining errors are our responsibility.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, “Discurso durante cerimônia em comemoração ao Dia do Diplomata,” Palácio Itamaraty, Brasília (7 May 2009), authors’ translation.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Armijo, L., Burges, S. Brazil, the Entrepreneurial and Democratic BRIC. Polity 42, 14–37 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2009.15

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2009.15

Keywords

Search

Navigation