Cooperation for Development, Brazilian Regional Leadership and Global Protagonism

Abstract

This article aims to analyze Brazil's policy towards South America during Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva's government by discussing what kind of leadership the country was able to perform in the region during this time. The authors examine the role played by the policy of International Cooperation for Development on such regional leadership. The central argument is that although Brazil has performed the role of a regional leader, there is a need for distinguishing leadership for regional matters-inwards regional leadership-from leadership for global issues-outwards regional leadership. The article argues that inwards regional leadership was in fact successfully performed by Brazil in South America, mainly due to its role as a Development Leader. On the other hand, such leadership for regional matters did not always allow Brazil to act on behalf of the entire region on the global arena. Nevertheless, the Brazilian diplomacy left behind the belief that, in order to have global protagonism, the country should use South America as a regional launching platform. Instead, Brazil has been making use of global coalitions such as IBSA and BRICS to boost its global role.

Brazilian Regional Leadership Revisited: Testing the Long‐Term Determinants of South American Followership (1995–2015)

“…(ii) The stability of the regional power itself is a prerequisite for influence projection (Hurrell, 2006;Herzog, 2014). The probability of followership increases if the regional power enjoys stability and is seen as a role model (Pinheiro and Gaio, 2014). The ICRG is used to measure the stability of both followers and regional power.…”

“…The literature is divided on Brazil's motivations. Some authors emphasise that the drivers for engaging South America are selfish and state-centred (Spektor, 2010a: 37), and that the region is regarded as a means to the end of preserving Brazilian autonomy (Vigevani and Cepaluni, 2011;Burges, 2015;Lazarou and Luciano, 2015), while others see less self-interested reasons (Pinheiro and Gaio, 2014).…”