Brazilian diplomats and academics alike have long regarded regional leadership as a springboard to global recognition. Yet Brazil's foreign policy has not translated the country's structural and instrumental resources into effective regional leadership. Brazil's potential followers have not aligned with its main goals, such as a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and Directorship-General of the World Trade Organization; some have even challenged its regional influence. Nevertheless, Brazil has been recognized as an emergent global power. This article analyzes the growing mismatch between the regional and global performance of Brazilian foreign policy and shows how both theoretical expectations and policy planning were "luckily foiled" by unforeseen developments. It argues that because of regional power rivalries and a relative paucity of resources, Brazil is likely to consolidate itself as a middle global power before gaining acceptance as a leader in its region.

The relative success of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) is a puzzle for most theories of regional integration. This is due to its having achieved remarkable progress in spite of lacking features such as significant levels of previous interdependence (demand factor) or major regional institutions (supply factor). To account for this puzzle, it has been claimed that the operation of MERCOSUR rests on presidential diplomacy. Such a mechanism is understood as the resort to direct negotiations between the national presidents whenever a crucial decision has to be made or a critical conflict solved. This article argues that presidential diplomacy-understood as political, summit diplomacy as opposed to institutionalized, professional diplomacy-is insufficient to account for the performance of MERCOSUR. Through the empirical analysis of three critical episodes, the article shows how institutional structures, shaped by the system of government of the member countries, have sustained presidential intervention and, hence, the process of regional integration.

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Is it domestic politics or the international system that more decisively influences foreign policy? This article focuses on Latin America's three largest powers to identify patterns and compare outcomes in their relations with the regional hegemon, the United States. Through a statistical analysis of voting behavior in the UN General Assembly, we examine systemic variables (both realist and liberal) and domestic variables (institutional, ideological, and bureaucratic) to determine their relative weights between 1946 and 2008. The study includes 4,900 votes, the tabulation of 1,500 ministers according to their ideological persuasion, all annual trade entries, and an assessment of the political strength of presidents, cabinets, and parties per year. The findings show that while Argentina's voting behavior has been determined mostly by domestic factors and Mexico's by realist systemic ones, Brazil's has a more complex blend of determinants, but also with a prevalence of realist systemic variables.T he emergence of left-leaning governments throughout Latin America, the socalled Pink Tide, has become conspicuous in recent years. As a consequence of the pervading ideology of the new administrations, "one would expect a more assertive approach to foreign policy" (Gardini and Lambert 2011, 1). This scenario provides a good opportunity to perform a test: to evaluate the relative weights of systemic and domestic variables. Since the United States has been traditionally the antimodel and antagonist for the Latin American left-as much as a reference and ally for the right-we posit that focusing on a country's alignment with the United States is a proper way to gauge the impact of ideology and related domestic factors, such as regime type, on foreign policy. From a more general perspective, this strategy can inform us as to whether it is systemic or domestic forces that have more decisively influenced Latin American foreign policy.

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This article investigates the sources of foreign ministries' policy-making capacity in presidential regimes. Using the concept of family resemblance, we argue that professionalization of the diplomatic corps is a necessary condition, whereas the institutional attributions of the ministry and the degree of presidential delegation are relevant but substitutable elements. The higher the scores on either of the latter dimensions, the stronger is the capacity of the foreign ministry to influence the chief executive and to contest other players' policy preferences. To empirically validate our concept, we measure the three dimensions in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico between 1946 and 2015 using data on diplomats' recruitment and career paths, influence of diplomatic schools and doctrines, appointment patterns of foreign ministers, and relevance of presidential diplomacy, with an emphasis on travels abroad. Our analysis indicates that Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico enjoy a high level of professionalization of their diplomatic corps; however, differences-both across countries and over time-remain regarding institutional attributions and presidential delegation.