Foreign policy change as rhetorical politics: domestic-regional constellation of Global South states

Autor(es)

Villa, Rafael D. ^[1] ; Sundaram, Sasikumar S. ^[2]

Afiliação do(s) autor(es)

^[1] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Int Relat, Dept Polit Sci, Int Relat, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[2] City Univ London, Int Polit Foreign Policy Secur, London - England

• Tipo de documento: Artigo Científico
• Fonte: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; OCT 2021.
• Citações Web of Science: 0

Resumo

Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors. In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign policy change - persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction - how it operates, and the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil's South-South grand strategy under the Lula administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international relations. (AU)

• Processo FAPESP: 19/08492-6 - Norma de intervenção humanitária e práticas de política externa: reputação e autoridade moral do Brasil e da Índia na política internacional
• Beneficiário: Sasikumar Shanmuga Sundaram
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Exterior - Estágio de Pesquisa - Pós-Doutorado
• Processo FAPESP: 17/10021-6 - Reputação, poder emergentes, e governança global: uma análise pragmática de compromissos do Brasil e da Índia sobre crises humanitárias no Exterior
• Beneficiário: Sasikumar Shanmuga Sundaram
• Modalidade de apoio: Bolsas no Brasil - Pós-Doutorado