Brazil's International Activism: Roles of an Emerging Middle Power

ISBN-13: 9780367750268 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 280 str.

Monika Sawicka

Opis

In Brazil’s International Activism Monika Sawicka questions how Brazil’s deep-rooted craving for greatness has led to the quest for status in the 21st century and contends that the categorization of Brazil as an ‘emerging middle power’ enriches the understanding of modern Brazilian foreign policy.

Between 2003 and 2014, Brazil significantly improved its visibility on the international stage, strengthening ties with actors of the Global South and advocating for an increased participation in world affairs. Drawing on the rich vocabulary of role theory, Sawicka sets out to establish an original theoretical framework comprised of the structural (status), the behavioral (role), and the cognitive-ideational (identity) to assess whether Brazil has performed roles distinguishing a middle power and how the state has re-conceptualized them. The model is applied to scrutinize how ideational and material drivers impacted Brazil’s engagement as an integrator in Latin America, coalition builder of developing states in global fora, donor in Africa, and mediator in the Middle East. Despite recent criticism of the concept of ‘emerging middle powers’, Sawicka argues that Brazil’s international activism stands as a precise embodiment of such a power.

With an aim of theory development and contributing to the debate on Brazil’s international standing, Brazil’s International Activism provides a much-required reinterpretation of Brazilian foreign policy which will be of interest to scholars and students of Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations and Latin-American Studies.

Spis treści

Introduction: Brazil on the World Stage: building coalitions of the Global South  1. Role theory capturing the quest for status  2. Status as a variable in foreign policy analysis  3. Brazil, the middle power longing for grandeza  4. Brazil: the reticent regional power  5. Solidarity diplomacy in Africa: Brazil’s fraternal gift or unfulfilled promise?  6. The improbable mediator  7. Brazil on the World Stage: building coalitions of the Global South  8. Conclusions  Appendix

O autorze

Monika Sawicka is an assistant professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Her research interests include Brazilian foreign policy, contemporary Brazil, development cooperation, international stratifications of states and constructivist research in international relations.