Abstract This article examines patterns of differentiated agenda engagement under the Brasília Consensus (2023–2025), a light intergovernmental mechanism created to revitalize South American regional dialogue following the fragmentation of UNASUR. Although the Consensus adopted an ambitious roadmap encompassing seventeen thematic areas, early operationalization unfolded unevenly. Drawing on official documents, presidency pro tempore work plans, and semi-structured interviews with regional officials, the article maps how selected policy domains translated into observable coordination while others experienced limited engagement or were addressed through alternative regional venues. The findings reveal a multi-speed pattern shaped by institutional legacies, issue characteristics, and rotating political leadership. Policy areas supported by dense pre-existing regional networks, such as energy, disaster risk management, health, and infrastructure, generated sustained sectoral coordination. Other domains, including migration, exhibited continued political attention but more limited institutional consolidation. In contrast, domains characterized by higher political sensitivity, regulatory density, or distributive conflict, such as trade, defense, financing for development, and gender, experienced limited engagement within the Consensus framework. By integrating insights from agenda-setting and regional governance scholarship, the article argues that light concertation mechanisms allocate attention selectively, relying on existing technical infrastructures to produce meaningful yet differentiated regional coordination without supranationalization.
Abstract This article examines Brazil’s recognition of Mozambique’s independence in 1975. It argues that this recognition marked both a symbolic rupture with Portugal’s colonial order and a strategic attempt to deepen Brazil’s engagement with newly independent African states. Drawing on documentary research from the Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the study explores how colonial legacies, Cold War geopolitics, and domestic strategic interests converged to shape this pivotal moment. The analysis also highlights the ambivalences in Brazil’s diplomatic practice, shaped by postcolonial pressures and shifting alliances, and reflects on the influence of the imperial imaginary in framing Brazil’s perceptions and policies during this transitional period.
Abstract This article examines Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy from Abe to Kishida administrations through its engagement with Vietnam. It argues that, in response to shifting regional power dynamics, Japan has employed cooptation, combining security, cultural, and economic initiatives as a central foreign policy instrument to expand the FOIP framework. This strategy seeks to engage regional partners while signaling commitment to key allies. Based on document analysis and data on trade, development assistance, and security cooperation, the study analyzes Japan’s policies toward Southeast Asia between 2012 and 2024. It demonstrates how FOIP integrates security, political, and economic statecraft to navigate contemporary Indo-Pacific geopolitics.
Abstract What if third-party involvement and economic interdependence, often assumed to foster compromise, are precisely what entrench escalation in international negotiations? This paper introduces a supermodular game-theoretic framework to explain how indirect third-party alignment and domestic political constraints can produce strategic complementarities that lock actors into rigid bargaining positions. Drawing on an analytic narrative of the 2006 Bolivia–Brazil gas negotiations, we demonstrate how Venezuela’s political and financial backing emboldened Bolivia to harden its stance, while Brazil’s capacity to respond assertively was neutralized by domestic audience costs, intensified by electoral pressures. The result was not mediation or de-escalation, but a contested equilibrium shaped by positive feedback dynamics. Our findings show that third-party support can strategically reshape payoff structures in ways that incentivize escalation, even under conditions of deep interdependence. This framework advances the study of international negotiations by modelling how escalation can emerge endogenously from the strategic structure of trilateral interactions.
Abstract Contemporary world order exhibits interdependence without a single state able to impose ordering principles unilaterally and without the hegemonic war often presumed to clear the slate. Scholarship conflates dominant power with the order it sponsors, so criticism of the liberal international order (LIO) is read as an attack on primacy. This article theorises hegemony, in Gramscian terms, as a relational ordering structure that fuses coercion, political economy, and ideas, and that endures through absorption and co-option of dissent. Challenges are incorporated through selective concessions and institutional redesign, diluting their transformative content while reiterating core principles. Our argument decouples power transition from order transition, moving debate beyond collapse versus persistence by advancing an analytically tractable account of adaptive endurance that shows how hegemonic orders renew themselves through the managed incorporation of critique into institutional reform.
Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, China's overseas interests have been faced with a growing array of multidimensional threats. China has carried out legislative and institutional reforms, forming a "vertical-horizontal model" for interagency cooperation and government-society fusion. The central government of China has passed a series of legislative acts to legalise China's protection of overseas interests, a top-down vertical governance. Parallel ministries, departments, and offices have formed task-based institutions through consultation to promote China's overseas interest protection, thereby establishing a cross-sectoral horizontal governance mechanism. The implementation of the "vertical-horizontal model," however, confronts an array of hurdles, with heavy bureaucracy potentially giving rise to problems such as inefficiency and collective irresponsibility.
Abstract This article presents the foreign policy index, a quantitative empirical instrument whose objective is to measure Brazilian foreign policy engagement in a time series with 191 countries and 26 years. Through a factor analysis of 6 key variables for Brazil’s international insertion, we constructed the foreign policy index based on three central dimensions: commercial, diplomatic and regional. In order to assess the validity of the index, we resorted to a systematic analysis of the most cited articles in the specialized literature on Brazilian foreign policy, analyzing the convergence between the arguments mobilized in the texts and the index scores for the sample presented. The results indicate good convergence between both, consolidating the perception of the validity and usefulness of the index as an empirical instrument to measure Brazilian foreign policy engagement.
Abstract This study examines how academic publications in China have interpreted the U.S. impact on Sino-Latin American relations between 2009 and 2024. This period encompasses three different U.S. presidents: Barack Obama, Donald Trump (first presidency), and Joe Biden. The findings indicate that, strikingly, distrust toward the U.S. was already present well before U.S.-China tensions erupted during Trump’s presidency, and that publications consulted perceived this administration as a strategic opportunity for China to expand its presence in the region. Under Biden, distrust toward the United States remained, and his presidency was not seen as much of a strategic opportunity. The study also highlights the consistent recommendation among Chinese scholars for Beijing to adopt a conciliatory approach toward Washington.
Abstract How do ideas and identities affect how countries evaluate joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative? This article employs process tracing to analyze Argentina’s negotiations prior to its accession in February 2022. Argentina is a crucial case to explain because both the Macri and Fernández governments faced similar material benefits of infrastructure finance. However, the Macri government defined the BRI as a form of alignment with China, while the Fernández government interpreted it as South-South cooperation and autonomy from Western-led financial institutions. These findings show that developing countries evaluate both the material and symbolic costs and benefits of the BRI.
Abstract This article explores the role of China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB), in Brazil, analyzing how the country positions itself in the shift toward alternative currencies to the U.S. dollar amidst changing global monetary power. It addresses three key questions: How widely is the RMB used in Brazil’s economy? What institutional measures support RMB adoption in Brazil? And what are the implications of this engagement for Brazil’s role in the international monetary and financial system? Findings indicate a modest but growing RMB integration in Brazil. Rather than embarking on a de-dollarization process, Brazil appears to be employing an incremental approach – one that leverages selective institutional measures to diversify its financial risks while preserving its strategic ties with the dominant global currency.
Abstract This article investigates the structural, institutional, and financial determinants of national performance in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Using cross-sectional data for 193 countries and Ordinary Least Squares regression models, it compares three explanatory dimensions: governance quality, foreign direct investment (FDI), and productive sophistication measured by the Economic Complexity Index (ECI). Results show that economic complexity is the strongest and most consistent predictor of SDG performance, while institutional indicators and FDI exhibit limited statistical significance. The analysis explains 64% of cross-national variance in SDG scores, confirming that productive capabilities, rather than governance or financial inflows, drive sustainable development outcomes. Conceptually, the paper situates these findings within the political economy debate on the global financial architecture, arguing that current frameworks reproduce structural asymmetries and fail to support long-term transformation. The study concludes that mission-oriented industrial and innovation policies — aligned with green and inclusive objectives — are essential to combine economic diversification with sustainable and equitable growth.
Abstract How do international institutions adapt to structural changes in global power? We examine the WTO amid escalating US-China tensions. The WTO, central to the post-Cold War order, faces a multidimensional crisis exacerbated by the trade tensions between these nations. We assess the Thucydides Trap crisis within institutional change literature through four pieces of evidence: (i) the case of non-recognition of China as a market economy; (ii) USA-China relations among 636 complaints in the DSB; (iii) data on the Appellate Body representation; and(iv) ‘trade war’ crisis and unilateral trade strategies. Findings reveal that US diplomacy undermines the institutional body from within, compelling institutional change by preferring discretion rather than rule-making, through conversion, drift, layering, and displacement, disrupting dispute resolution, blocking the Appellate Body, and implementing authoritative rule interpretation. As a result, the US increasingly bypassed WTO mechanisms, relying on unilateral strategies. This dysfunction weakens the multilateral trade regime, raising concerns over the WTO’s ability to regulate international trade effectively.
Abstract This article analyzes the emergence of Brazil-China relations in the context of Richard Nixon’s foreign policy toward Latin America. It examines how American perceptions of Brazil as a potential competitor, and the geopolitical economic maneuvers of the Nixon administration influenced Brazil’s foreign policy decisions. The article highlights Brazil’s growing nationalism and its engagement with the Third World, including economic interactions with the Soviet Union and the eventual establishment of relations with mainland China. Ultimately, it argues that U.S. foreign policy played a significant role in shaping Brazil’s understanding of its Third World imperative, paving the way for closer relations with China that continue to this day.
Abstract China’s rise has influenced global affairs, including its relations with Brazil. This study explores knowledge diplomacy - academic collaborations forming innovation networks that complement traditional state diplomacy. Marking 30 years of strategic partnership (1993-2023) and 50 years of Sino-Brazilian diplomatic relations (1974-2024), the research poses and addresses the following question: “To what extent does knowledge diplomacy manifest in Brazil–China bilateral relations?”. Using a systematic literature review and social network analysis, the findings indicate that knowledge diplomacy between Brazil and China remains in its nascent stages. Only three initiatives related to the co-production of scientific knowledge were identified, involving a total of six researchers from both countries. Despite the comprehensiveness of the analysis, the results reveal that state-level, proactive engagement between higher education institutions in Brazil and China has remained superficial throughout the three decades under examination.
Abstract What if the alarm never goes off? This article rethinks legislative oversight in foreign policy through the lens of proactive calibration, a model that transcends classic police patrol and fire alarm paradigms. Drawing on over 70,777 legislative records from the Brazilian Senate (1985–2025), we uncover patterns of institutional vigilance in which parliaments internally generate salience and exert control. In this framework, requests are not mere reactions, but deliberate signals of political concern and symbolic assertion. Unlike the fire alarm model, where external actors trigger institutional response, here the legislature itself becomes the initiator of the alarm, reframing visibility and activating scrutiny on its own terms. Silence, therefore, is not passivity but strategic latency; activation is not always coercive, but expressive and anticipatory. Our findings challenge dominant assumptions about legislative irrelevance in foreign affairs and propose a novel theory of how parliaments manufacture visibility, manage discretion, and exert control.
Abstract This article examines the overlooked U.S.–Brazil textile dispute of the late 1960s and early 1970s and its impact on Brazilian foreign policy during the military regime (1964–1985). Drawing on recently declassified U.S. diplomatic sources, it highlights how the contradiction between the Nixon administration’s cooperative rhetoric toward Latin America and its protectionist actions against Brazilian textile exports shaped bilateral relations and Brazil’s role in the international system. Although Brasília made concessions and temporary geopolitical alignments masked tensions, the dispute’s aftermath fostered the emergence of a Third World outlook, though in a tempered and qualified form.
Abstract BRICS increased its geopolitical reach with a recent expansion. However, a divergent status-seeking, conceptualized as antagonistic strategies to gain status, emerged in BRICS during this process. While China defended the expansion, Brazil hesitated to accept it. Focusing on Latin America, where both seek to gain status, I analyzed how Brazil’s and China’s divergent status-seeking influenced the applications of Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela for BRICS. I concluded that status-seeking motivations drove the candidacies of these states. However, Brazil served as a gatekeeper, potentially hardening the acceptance of Latin American countries in BRICS due to status calculations. Argentina’s entry was more acceptable for Brazil’s strategy to garner prestige than Venezuela’s. Meanwhile, China defended a broader expansion, supporting all four candidacies.
Abstract Amid intensifying US–China rivalry over digital governance, middle powers like Chile face growing pressure to navigate an increasingly fragmented global order. This article examines Chile’s response through expert interviews and analysis of three key technology cases involving Chinese firms. The findings show that Chile has adopted a Hedging Strategy, limiting involvement in sensitive tech projects aligned with US security concerns, while continuing to attract Chinese investment in areas like electromobility and renewables. The study underscores the combined impact of geopolitical tensions, domestic bureaucratic constraints, and the challenges of engaging with China, whose growing presence still requires a process of mutual adaptation. These dynamics raise questions about Chile’s priorities and the limits of its autonomy in this complex context.
Abstract Since the beginning of the 21st century, China and Latin American countries have actively collaborated across various fields, including politics, economy, culture, and technology. Transportation infrastructure cooperation has emerged as a key aspect of this relationship. This article analyzes the characteristics of China–Latin America transportation infrastructure cooperation using project data from 2009 to 2023 and evaluates its effectiveness and future prospects. The findings indicate that this cooperation has yielded significant achievements; however, challenges remain in areas such as communication with indigenous communities and environmental protection. Moving forward, it is essential for China and Latin America to deepen their collaboration, prioritize quality projects through strategic planning, and promote the green development and digitalization of transportation infrastructure.
Abstract This article analyzes the Valemax crisis to explore how regulatory barriers and domestic interests shape trade. When the Valemax, vessels owned by Brazil’s giant mining company Vale, were barred from Chinese ports, allegedly due to safety concerns, a diplomatic and commercial impasse emerged. Drawing on the Bureaucratic Politics Model, the study shows how Brazilian state agencies coordinated to defend Vale’s interests, while China protected its shipping sector. The eventual resolution, by transferring ship ownership to Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), illustrates how foreign firms must adapt to China’s political economy. The case highlights the influence of large companies on foreign policy and the complexities of commercial diplomacy in asymmetric economic relationships.
