Challenges to Emerging and Established Powers

Marco Vieira, Jonathan Grix

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317269939
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This edited volume explores the analytical possibilities of contrasting Brazil and the United Kingdom as examples of emerging and established powers, respectively. It is organised around several themes focusing on the roles of Brazil and the United Kingdom in the management of global economic governance, international development, international security, the politics of regional integration, global climate change governance, and the political leveraging of sports mega-events. Each chapter explores Brazil's and/or the UK's particular foreign policies and their resulting impact on these key areas of global governance and politics. The conceptual focus is on these states' motivations as either status-seekers (Brazil) or status-maintainers (UK) in the context of a fast moving international landscape. The chapters in this book directly or indirectly indicate that these states wish to draw attention to their aspiring or established positions as key global players through either visible foreign policy action and/or symbolic rhetoric. This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Society.

Introduction: Challenges to Emerging and Established Powers: Brazil and the United Kingdom in the Contemporary Global Order

MARCO VIEIRA and JONATHAN GRIX

The question of how new centres of power such as China, India and Brazil will affect the global order, and the international regimes and norms that sustain it, is fast becoming one of the most pressing of the 21st century. Most analyses, however, focus on individual emerging powers or groups such as the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa partnership (BRICS). Rarely is this undertaken through an investigation of the actual differences and similarities in terms of particular emerging powers’ perceptions and sources of influence vis-à-vis the established powers. Brazil and the United Kingdom are prime examples of new and old powers which are trying to adapt their foreign policies to the fast-changing context of global politics and governance. For issues as diverse as climate change, development assistance, humanitarian intervention and international security, both states are clearly and inescapably involved in reshaping and renegotiating the current rules of global governance.

This special issue compiles a series of articles that explore the analytical possibilities of contrasting Brazil and the United Kingdom as examples of emerging and established powers, respectively. It is organised around several themes focusing on the roles of Brazil and the United Kingdom in the management of global economic governance, international development, international security, the politics of regional integration, global climate change governance, and the political leveraging of sports mega-events. Each article explores Brazil’s and/or the UK’s particular foreign policies and their resulting impact on the key areas of global governance and politics touched on above. The conceptual focus is on these states’ motivations as either status-seekers (Brazil) or status-maintainers (UK) in the context of a fast-moving international landscape. The articles in this issue directly or indirectly indicate that these states wish to draw attention to their aspiring or established position as key global players through either visible foreign policy action and/or symbolic rhetoric.

The first two articles, by Mahrukh Doctor and Chris Rogers, examine the contributions and central motivations of Brazil and the UK, respectively, in reforming global economic governance. In the opening article, Doctor argues that Brazil’s foreign policy goals and positions have changed in the past decade from an almost exclusive focus on economic development to the current and increasingly important additional element of prestige and status recognition. Doctor empirically examines Brazil’s positions at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the G20 to claim that “Brazil has shifted its foreign policy behaviour to the point where it sometimes seems to support positions that contradict its immediate material interests”.

In his article, Rogers argues that the institutions of global economic governance, from the Gold Standard to the G20, have favoured and reinforced the ideological and material agendas of policy elites in the UK. Interestingly, Rogers claims that “by incorporating emerging economies in the framework of the G20, it has also served to legitimise liberalisation in nations on which countries reliant on financialisation, like Britain, depend for liquidity and the supply of commodities”. Rogers’ point is that the G20 served well the British goal of consolidating a common narrative and policy framework among developed and developing states around the idea of “globalisation as a fact that must be managed in a particular way”. We can take away from Rogers’ analysis that the UK has successfully managed to preserve, in the context of a much more diverse and unstable international environment, its influential position as a key ideological and political pillar of the post-WWII international economic order.

The next two articles, by Adriana Abdenur and Emma Mawdsley, deal with the Brazilian and UK approaches to international development cooperation. Abdenur’s central argument is that in the past decade Brazil has more clearly and systematically used its particular model of South–South technical cooperation as a tool to promote broader foreign policy objectives. More specifically, she focuses on Brazil’s involvement in Africa to demonstrate that “technical cooperation is increasingly used to bolster the government’s global power aspirations and to resist Northern-led efforts to set international development norms”.

Mawdsley’s article turns to the British model of international development cooperation. She claims that in recent years the UK’s Department of International Development (DIFD) has shifted its mandate to accommodate the government’s private sector-led economic growth agenda. According to her critical assessment, “this strategy may well achieve growth outcomes in partner countries, but without sufficient conceptual rigour … or attention to the connective fabric between growth and development, the latter is more uncertain”. The doubling of DIFD’s budget for economic development (from 2012/13 to 2015/16) means this growth-led model of “international development” is likely to continue—a model which seeks to convince a domestic audience while maintaining international support.

The fifth and sixth articles in the issue, by Monica Hirst and Page Wilson, respectively, look at the role of Brazil and the UK in the global management of international and regional security. Hirst argues that Brazil has in recent years expanded the reach of its international security agenda to areas conventionally controlled by the Western powers. This has been achieved through a foreign policy based on a “double-track course of action, both of which may be considered fertile sources for the accumulation of soft-power assets”. In her account, Brazil’s soft power strategy relies on: 1) coalitions of emerging powers, namely the BRICS and the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA); and 2) “an enhanced involvement and responsibility in UN-led operations, accompanied by a robust portfolio of bilateral and multilateral accords with developing countries”.

Wilson’s article focuses more closely on identifying and discussing three particular areas which, according to the author, will most likely be central to the British national security agenda in the mid-21st century. These are: 1) cyber security threats; 2) changes in the balance of global power and its impact on a “rules-based” international system; and 3) growing economic inequality within the UK. With regards to the latter, Wilson claims that growing economic and social disparities can be “a motivation for actions that undermine the legitimacy of the UK’s governing elites and state institutions”.

The following two articles, by Elena Lazarou/Bruno Teodoro and Tim Oliver, discuss Brazil’s and the UK’s regional integration politics in South America and Europe, respectively. In their article, Lazarou and Teodoro seek to examine the particular features of Brazil’s engagement in regional integration and cooperation. They identify five key foreign policy instruments, or models, which have been historically used by Brazilian foreign policy leaders in South American regionalism. These are “post-democratisation regionalism”, “presidential regionalism”, “reactive regionalism”, “concentric/multilevel regionalism” and “instrumental regionalism”. Following an analysis of these different models, they conclude that “regionalism serves more as an instrument to promote Brazil’s global aspirations and preferences, rather than a norm-driven goal (end)”.

Oliver’s article focuses on the UK’s (awkward) relationship with the EU. He argues that both the EU and the UK should consider and balance carefully the geopolitical and economic implications of the UK’s potential withdrawal from the European Union, a possible outcome, if an in-out referendum is held by 2017. Oliver suggests that the UK’s exit will have little or no impact on advancing the extremely entangled diplomatic, security and economic interests of the UK and the EU. On the other hand, London’s withdrawal would represent a blow to the UK’s already declining influence in global politics. In particular, a “Brexit” would negatively impact on the UK’s bilateral relations with its main global ally, the United States of America.

The ninth and tenth articles, by Larissa Basso/Eduardo Viola and Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou, respectively, focus on the roles of Brazil and the UK on global climate change governance. Basso and Viola address Brazil’s energy climate politics and policy from the early 1990s to 2014. The authors argue that Brazil has gone through three distinctive stages in terms of its positions on global climate negotiations. Brazilian negotiating positions ranged from an initial conservative and obstructionist stance in the early 1990s to a more accommodating reformist position from 2005 to 2010. In the current period, under Dilma Rousseff’s administration, the authors claim that “Brazil has taken a step back, moving from moderate reformism to moderate conservatism, due to the discovery of deep oil reserves and the use of oil prices to maintain higher rates of economic growth”.

In her article, Vezirgiannidou discusses the UK’s engagement in global climate politics. In particular, she focuses on the UK’s climate diplomacy towards emerging powers on two analytical levels: firstly, she looks at multilateral climate governance whereby the UK acts in cooperation with its EU partners; secondly, she analyses the UK’s bilateral engagements with emerging states outside the multilateral governance framework provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). She concludes that “despite continued divergence in international negotiations, domestic agendas are showing signs of convergence, and further bilateral cooperation can only build on and ameliorate these trends”.

In the last article, Jonathan Grix, Paul Brannagan and Barrie Houlihan conceptually operate and critically engage with the concept of “soft power” to empirically demonstrate how and why the UK and Brazil have used sports mega-events to leverage their international political influence and seek to either maintain and consolidate their international status (the UK) or to boost it (Brazil). Two important points emanate from this final piece. First, the authors offer an analysis of the concept of “soft power” and the strategies used by a variety of advanced and “emerging” states to promote it. Second, the authors turn to sport by drawing on the hosting of sports mega-events (London Olympics, 2012; FIFA Soccer World Cup, Brazil, 2014; Rio Olympics, 2016) to shed light on how the UK and Brazil respectively manipulate(d) global sporting to achieve their soft power aims.

In aggregate, these articles offer interesting comparative insights (even if still analytically tentative at this stage of the research programme) into the roles and motivations of emerging and established powers in the context of a fast-moving international order. The interrelated issues of status recognition and foreign policy adaptation, to an uncertain international normative/institutional landscape, seem to be the common thread cutting across all the articles in the issue. Collectively these articles shed light on the variety of strategies in a range of areas used by Brazil in seeking a new-found status in the global order and the UK in attempting to maintain its position.

Acknowledgements

This special issue evolved out of a conference the editors organised at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Birmingham, 30–31 May 2014, in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of International Negotiations (CAENI) at the University of São Paulo. The original papers underwent significant revisions following comments by peer reviewers and the editors. This project was financially supported by the University of Birmingham-São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) joint research fund. We are grateful to Rubens Duarte and Bruno Dalponte, PhD researchers in the Department of Political Science and International Studies (POLSIS) at the University of Birmingham, for their invaluable support in both capacities as research assistants and conference organisers. Finally, we thank Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, editorial assistant of Global Society, for his professionalism and dedication while assisting us in producing this volume.

Brazil’s Role in Institutions of Global Economic Governance: The WTO and G20

MAHRUKH DOCTOR

The article evaluates the extent to which Brazil’s foreign policy actions, negotiating positions and diplomatic strategies in global governance institutions contribute to supporting its national interest and foreign policy aims. It compares Brazil’s preferences and behaviour in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Group of 20 (G20). For decades, Brazil’s primary national interest has been national economic development. The article argues that Brazil is moving from a material interests based definition of its prime national interest to a more complex one that includes both material and prestige/status based aspects. Research demonstrates that Brazil has become increasingly focused on gaining recognition as a leader of developing countries, sometimes even at the cost of realising its full material interests. It considers the value of constructivist international relations theory to understanding Brazilian foreign policy.

The past decade has seen a major shift in global economic dynamism and power distribution. Ideological as well as pragmatic factors colour established and emerging powers’ attitudes towards the emerging world order. Moreover, the growing political, economic, and ideological diversity present in the international system has dissipated the like-mindedness that guided post-war collaboration on issues of global governance. The impacts of the global financial crisis, Eurozone troubles, and turbulence in emerging markets required both established and emerging powers to rethink their behaviour in arenas of global economic governance. Although there are a plethora of institutions, organisations and networks that deal with issues of global economic governance, this article focuses on the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Group of Twenty Leaders’ Summit (G20). These organisations are particularly interesting, because even though they have different organisational logics, established and emerging powers formally sit as equals in both (i.e. with equal voting power). Moreover, Brazil plays an active and significant role in both of them.

The main aim of the article is to examine to what extent Brazil’s foreign policy actions, negotiating positions and diplomatic strategies in global governance institutions contribute to supporting its national interest and foreign policy aims. It compares Brazil’s preferences and behaviour in the WTO and G20 to explain how Brazil appears to be moving from a material based definition of its national interest to a more complex one that includes both material and prestige/status based aspects. It argues that by prioritising leadership of the Global South/developing countries, in addition to its own direct material interests, Brazil has shifted its foreign policy behaviour to the point where it sometimes seems to support positions that contradict its immediate material interests. The key sources for the analysis are public speeches and media interviews by top officials complemented by personal interviews with Brazilian diplomats. My aim is to provide evidence that provokes discussion rather than present definitive conclusions on the evolution of Brazilian foreign policy. The analysis is developed in four sections: (1) Brazil’s traditional foreign policy aims and negotiating strategy; (2) Brazil’s positions and actions in the WTO, with special reference to the “Bali package” signed in December 2013; (3) Brazil’s positions and actions in the G20, with special reference to the St Petersburg Action Plan signed in September 2013; and (4) an evaluation of Brazilian diplomatic strategy and foreign policy achievements as well as some comments on whether established powers can hope to work with and accommodate Brazil’s interests and preferences.

A secondary aim of the analysis is to consider whether traditional approaches to studying Brazilian foreign policy still provide a complete and convincing explanation for Brazil’s evolving discourse and actions in the foreign policy arena. Traditionally, the academic literature emphasises liberal institutionalism when discussing Brazil’s approach to issues of global economic governance, given its active engagement in international institutions and international regimes as well as its valuing of international law. However, recent diplomatic lang...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Challenges to Emerging and Established Powers: Brazil and the United Kingdom in the Contemporary Global Order
• 2. Brazil’s Role in Institutions of Global Economic Governance: The WTO and G20
• 3. Global Economic Governance and the British Economy: From the Gold Standard to the G20
• 4. Organisation and Politics in South–South Cooperation: Brazil’s Technical Cooperation in Africa
• 5. DFID, the Private Sector and the Re-centring of an Economic Growth Agenda in International Development
• 6. Emerging Brazil: The Challenges of Liberal Peace and Global Governance
• 7. Three Emerging Security Challenges for the UK
• 8. Regionalism as an Instrument: Assessing Brazil’s Relations with its Neighbourhood
• 9. Europe’s British Question: The UK–EU Relationship in a Changing Europe and Multipolar World
• 10. Brazilian Energy-Climate Policy and Politics towards Low Carbon Development
• 11. The UK and Emerging Countries in the Climate Regime: Whither Leadership?
• 12. Interrogating States’ Soft Power Strategies: A Case Study of Sports Mega-Events in Brazil and the UK
• Index