Regional integration and Brazilian foreign policy: the role of BNDES as a financier of infrastructure projects in South America

• Grant number: 12/23470-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2013
• End date: June 30, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Passini Mariano
• Grantee: Tiago Franca Menegatti
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Humanas e Sociais (FCHS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Franca. Franca , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to better understand the significance that international action of the BNDES has assumed in Brazilian position in South America, particularly in the physical integration of the region. From the end of the Cold War, the Brazilian foreign policy has incorporated new agendas, actors, and has raised its participation in international institutions and regimes. When it comes to the processes of regional integration in South America, Brazil's performance has been characterized by maintenance of intergovernmental institutions because they retain much of the decision-making processes in the sphere of the national state. However, more consolidated processes of regional integration, generally, present a state willing to pay some costs of these institutional processes to support community institutions and, also, promote the creation and development of regional financing structures (Mattli, 1999). In this regard, we ask whether the growing role of BNDES in financing infrastructure integration in South America can be understood as an attempt to modify the outlines of Brazil for the region, which would assume a greater share of the costs of integration in South America. We seek, therefore, to understand what meaning the BNDES financing for infrastructure projects in South America has taken to the Brazilian performance in the processes of integration and cooperation in the region. (AU)