Brazil as a Middle Power - analysing Brazils performance in international crises and negotiations

• Grant number: 18/11538-5
• Support type: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): January 15, 2019
• Effective date (End): May 14, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - International Politics
• Principal researcher: Feliciano de Sá Guimarães
• Grantee: Feliciano de Sá Guimarães
• Host: Nuno Miguel Peres Monteiro
• Home Institution: Instituto de Relações Internacionais (IRI). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Yale University, United States

Abstract

This project aims to analyze the behavior of Brazil as a middle power in international negotiations and crises since the beginning of the New Republic (1990-2017). Our objective is to verify which external policy instruments (material power, normative power and coalition power) and structural conditions (position of the great power) are necessary and / or sufficient for success and failure in these two types of scenarios. The literature on middle powers has analyzed the behavior of these countries essentially from case studies and, therefore, has not carried out systematic studies that allow greater inference capacity on the conditions that lead the country to reach or not its objectives in global scenarios. Using the qualitative method of research called Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we sought to analyze about 30 international crises and 30 international negotiations in which Brazil participated both in Latin America and outside the region. The QCA method requires that the evaluation and codification of success and failure, as well as the instruments of action in foreign policy, should be made from methodological protocols that allow each of the 60 case studies to be constructed through three research techniques: documentary analysis, interviews and discourse analysis.