Introduction

Middle powers such as Brazil have become relevant players in the world stage. In the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, they displayed particularly impressive credentials—countries with large territories and huge populations, responsible for the major part of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth. As their relevance in international politics increases by leaps and bounds, so does their institutional investment. Not only by building coalitions and organizations of their own, middle powers also show considerable interest in those already available international institutional arrangements which conform the backbone of a post-World War II international system, such as the United Nations (UN) and the Bretton Woods institutions (the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the World Bank [WB], not to mention a latecomer, World Trade Organization [WTO], and a novel grouping, the Group of Twenty (G-20), brought to life as a multilateral response to the world’s financial crisis).

As we approach the Brazilian contribution to a shifting international order in the present chapter, we are interested in the ambivalent dimensions of the so-called emergence of middle powers. Such rise is marked by preening contradictions, and our analytical investment proceeds as follows. Rising powers are not spontaneously welcome in a world politico-economic architecture devised by decaying powers of old (Europe) and by superpowers defunct (the USSR) and in trouble (the US). San Francisco (SF) and Bretton Woods (BW) are tokens of the two most important international regimes to sustain the international liberal order whose foundations date back to the early days after World War II.

We argue that, under given circumstances, these regimes will unavoidably collide, no matter what states attempt to do in order to overcome such situation. Brazil exemplifies this trend by way of their efforts to reaching and keeping the status of emerging power in the twenty-first century. Facing contradictory logics in different institutions and having no available alternative, emerging countries may fall prey to their own middle power context—especially dramatic in the Brazilian case. So, this chapter approaches the institutional investment of middle powers in a shifting world order, focusing on the Brazilian case after the Cold War—a country renowned for its long-lasting respect for international law and order but still fiercely engaged in vowing its criticisms of the current arrangements as well as the pressing needs for encompassing transformation.

After 2008, Brazil pushed forward politically and economically. No longer relegated to the back seat, Brazil and emerging countries have become driving forces in a fast-changing world order, one that saw European powers crumble in crippling recession and political stalemate in unification processes, as well as a hesitant and overstretched North America. Brazil took the lead in the WTO negotiations regarding services and agriculture, eventually blossoming into the formation of G-20 (co-led by India) emphasizing access to markets as well as commodity prices. Middle powers also were prominent players in debates on climate change and sustainable development during the better part of the decade.

One of the noticeable offshoots of the rise of (once) middle powers has been their steady pursuit of international legitimacy by an institutional route. Often considered controversial, their foreign policies have been, during most of the past two decades, carefully funneled through multilateral mechanisms. The investment in public diplomacy in international fora is considered a pivotal device in the context of a new world order. This renewed institutionalism is fueled by the diffusion of domestic norms to third partners through multilateral institutions (Ramamurti and Singh 2009: 150). This process allows for the flexibilization of such norms in the passage between levels.

In the following five sections, we develop the Brazilian case in a changing international institution chessboard. The next section (‘Middle Power Politics’) provides some theoretical reference for our analysis. Then, the section titled ‘Foreign Policy Grand Strategies’ assesses Brazilian foreign policy grand strategies, especially in the past two decades, to demonstrate how this country incurred controversial and even contradictory behavior to assure its aspirations, as it has recently acknowledged its prominence in the world. Section ‘Evoking the Main Hypothesis’ recalls the hypothesis of incompatibility between SF and BW platforms for the purpose of delivering inclusive and efficacious global governance, and besides how Brazil contradicts its own diplomatic tradition on its moves for institutional revisionism. In the final section, we give some concluding remarks.

Middle Power Politics

The behavior that stems from Brazilian foreign policy in the past decades may be neatly described as middlepowermanship, a term that refers to the tendency of middle powers ‘to pursue multilateral solutions to international problems, their tendency to embrace compromise positions in international disputes, and their tendency to embrace notions of “good international citizenship” to guide their diplomacy’ (Cooper et al. 1993). In the absence of abundant material capabilities, a country will rely on reputational goods and well-established legal frameworks as a means to reach the best outcomes in international relations (IR), as well as to protect itself from the outside world—an IR perspective somewhat inspired by Hugo Grotius and his school of thought, known as ‘rationalists’ or ‘Grotians’.

Regardless of the theoretical standpoint one adopts to understand the role middle powers play in international relations, there seems to be a conceptual common ground that may be summarized as follows: (1) historically, middle powers had no special place in regional blocs during the Cold War, but they were closely linked to the process of international organization (Cox 1996: 245); (2) middle powers support the goals of international peace and security because they are ultimately interested in a stable and orderly environment (Flemes 2007: 10); (3) they try to build consensus around multilateral issues, such as non-proliferation or environmental protection, as a means to overcome their lack of material capabilities (ibid.: 11); and finally, (4) they base their demands in international institutions on a discourse of global justice and democratic multilateralism (ibid.: 24).

Behind this line of reasoning, there might be a bet on the effective role of regulation played by international regimes, as long as they are believed to matter and influence international behavior by providing ‘selective incentives’ (Olson 1965) for a country to resort to multilateral institutional solutions rather than ‘ad hoc’ unilateral policies. By placing emphasis on institutional power instead of military and economic assets, Brazil assumes international institutions to function as proxies to ‘raw power’ disputes. It can work as a formula to borrow international prestige without incurring the risks and costs involved in ‘great-power politics’.

A country like Brazil will manifest strong preferences for multilateral arrangements and collective decision-making processes as it proves an efficient way for burden-sharing and countering hegemonic intentions. To assure Brazil’s political independence and territorial integrity, Brazilian diplomats have often stressed the importance of a coherent multilateral diplomacy, on practical as well as on discursive grounds. To paraphrase a quotation from San Tiago Dantas (a former Minister of External Relations in Brazil), in the absence of exceeding levels of material power, stability of principle becomes the strongest weapon of those militarily weak (Dantas 2011).

Reputational assets have therefore been the cornerstone of Brazilian foreign policy well before the country became a middle power. The shift from a purely diplomatic discourse to a more consistent set of practices, however, has arguably taken place in the past few decades. For the first time, Brazil has made use of its credibility in the context of multilateralism to consistently push its interests forward and maximize ‘soft’ power attributes. In previous attempts at going global, the country was either too feeble and powerless (therefore falling short of having a say in world politics, such as in the case of Brazil’s participation in the League of Nations), or too suspicious of international governance (therefore shying away from a greater engagement with the United Nations in the 1970s and early 1980s). The past decade saw the country pursue a more active diplomacy in various fields, including in matters of international security, making use of soft power as its primary foreign policy tool (Pereira 2011). Brazil’s activism in the realms of the WTO, the environmental and non-proliferation regimes, or peacekeeping operations (PKO) are good examples of how these identities ultimately shape behavior in world politics.

There seems to be a close link between the behavior of middle powers within international institutions—and toward one another—and such attempts at countering America’s preponderance. Stephen Walt’s definition of soft balancing describes it as ‘the conscious coordination of diplomatic action in order to obtain outcomes contrary to U.S. preferences – outcomes that could not be gained if the balances did not give each other some degree of mutual support’ (Walt 2005: 126). Since this is a broader concept, which encompasses not just US military policies but preferences by and large, it seems particularly useful to explain cooperative efforts between middle powers in nonmilitary arenas, and seems quite evident when linked to multilateral strategies.

But what may lead middle powers to soft balance against the US? In the words of Walt, this strategy can have at least four objectives. First and foremost, states may balance so as to increase their ability to stand up against US pressure—in political, economic, or military terms. Secondly, soft balancing comes at times as a way of improving states’ bargaining position in international negotiations, be it related to a discrete issue or to broad institutional arrangements of global governance. Third, balancing may function as a warning to the US that it cannot rely upon the compliance of other countries. Finally, it may also operate as a means to become less dependent on US protection and aid, allowing for some states to chart their own course in world politics (ibid.: 127–129). While all goals seem to make sense when looking at the behavior of middle powers in global affairs, the second one embodies the institutional strategy usually favored by such states, and the fourth one deals with the quest for autonomy—which is also a key aspect of middle power politics in general.

The bottom line of the behavior of middle powers is thus the engagement in global governance. Their diplomatic narratives, especially in recent decades, have been built around the idea of international organization and the regimes that stem from institutional cooperation. Being an inseparable aspect of middle power politics, it is now time to move to an examination of how global governance mechanisms were conceived of, and how these intermediate states have paved their way into such institutions.

Foreign Policy Grand Strategies

Brazilian foreign policy has undergone deep change in the past two decades. After the Cold War, Brazil is allegedly combining its prudent pacifist orientation with a more proactive behavior in world affairs. Under Presidents Cardoso (1995–2002) and Lula da Silva (2003–2010), Brazil has adopted a more prominent political profile, taking the lead of many initiatives regarding security and economic agendas, in both regional and world scales. Under many different aspects, the country fits into status-quo middle power diplomatic style.

From the 1990s on, there has been a brand-new emphasis on the processes of regional integration (with an undeclared but still noticeable quest for South American leadership) (Burges 2008). Besides, Brazil has become one of the leading actors in contesting hegemonic patterns of political authority within international institutions such as the WTO, the IMF, and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

When Lula da Silva and the Workers’ Party won the presidential race in November 2002, many sectors of the Brazilian society expected an unprepared president leading a left-wing government (Visentini 2011) in difficult times, at both home and abroad. Domestically, inflation was on the rise, economic growth was minimal, and President Cardoso was living his ‘lame duck’ days, with feeble political support and a deadlocked agenda (Couto and Abrucio 2003). Externally, the launching of the War on Terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks had diverted the global agenda away from trade and development issues, which were the backbone of Brazil’s foreign policy (Barbosa 2002). Moreover, the dramatically continuous downturn of the Argentine economy was worrisome for Brazilian interests, inasmuch as it put regional integration into jeopardy (Carranza 2003).

Foreign policy has therefore been used to creatively tackle some of the setbacks of the early 2000s. Combined with orthodox economic policies, it has helped boost Brazil’s foreign trade and investments and ultimately overcome mistrust toward the former metal worker and union leader. Moreover, in association with ambitious social programs and showing an unprecedented activism, diplomacy has been used to take Brazil to a whole new level in the world stage. ‘Change’ was, at least in foreign policy matters, the tone of the new administration (Vigevani and Cepaluni 2007). While Almeida (2004: 162) underlines that diplomacy is ‘the strand of government activity that better reflects the old proposals and the traditional guidelines of the Workers’ Party’ at the outset of Lula’s first term, Lima and Hirst (2006) add that ‘the inclusion of the social agenda as a major topic of foreign affairs’ was an important innovation that also reflected this unique political approach.

If it is true that some of the principles that guided President Lula’s foreign relations had already been evoked by his predecessor Cardoso some years before, they assumed a new face under the Workers’ Party government, with a whole new conceptual emphasis (Almeida 2004). The idea of diplomatic activism, transcending the rhetoric and symbolism behind Brazil’s reputation abroad and within international institutions, was introduced by Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, according to whom the country would not ‘shy away from an engaged protagonism, whenever there is need to defend the national interest and the values that inspire us’ (Amorim 2011a: 14).

Far more striking, however, was the weight given to the aim of making the international system ‘effectively democratic’, so that the country’s foreign relations could be used to improve the quality of life of the Brazilian people. The goal of promoting development through diplomacy was not new at all, and neither was the will to transform the system of states. Very similar versions of this discourse could be found in the ‘independent foreign policy’ of the late 1960s or in the ‘responsible pragmatism’ of the mid-1970s (Gonçalves 2011). Strategies were, nonetheless, different. First of all, it was necessary to ‘strengthen the elements of multipolarity of the international system’, toward which the forging of an alliance with emerging countries, as well as with African nations, was paramount. Secondly, it was indispensable to make South America—the administration’s declared priority—‘politically stable, socially just and economically prosperous’ (ibid.: 15). Finally, it was crucial to ‘[r]estore confidence in the United Nations’, a goal for which Brazilian foreign policy would ‘defend the enlargement of the Security Council with the inclusion of developing countries among its permanent members, so as to reinforce its legitimacy and representativeness’ (ibid.: 16).

But bringing democracy to the international system also involved making foreign policy more transparent, in consonance with popular expectations. This passage is particularly telling: ‘Foreign policy is not just a responsibility of Itamaraty, or even of the government. It involves the society as a whole. In order to define the national interest in every concrete situation, I will reinforce coordination with other governmental branches and with all social sectors – workers, businesspeople, intellectuals – as well as with entities of the civil society’ (ibid.: 13).

In sum, we may posit that the new government’s aspiration was to drive the country toward a more prominent international role, so that it could become a ‘global player’ in world affairs. To achieve this, President Lula adopted a strategy of ‘autonomy through diversification’, through which the country would adhere to ‘international norms and principles by means of South-South alliances, including regional alliances, and through agreements with non-traditional partners (China, Asia-Pacific, Africa, Eastern Europe, Middle East, etc.), trying to reduce asymmetries in external relations with powerful countries’ (Vigevani and Cepaluni 2007: 1313). While this strategy did not preclude the one that had prevailed the decade before—the so-called autonomy through participation, oriented by values and toward the participation in international (liberal) regimes (cf. Vigevani et al. 2003)—the predominantly ‘Grotian’ approach to world politics was replaced by a more ‘realist’ one. It meant that economic pragmatism and political nationalism began playing a greater role than the Western and liberal values which had triumphed immediately after the Cold War. Such realism could be observed in at least three situations over the Lula administration: the forging of strong alliances in the developing world, especially with middle powers, such as the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Forum (Oliveira et al. 2006; Vieira and Alden 2011) or the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) initiative (Flemes 2010); the proactive role at the Doha Round of the WTO, using the G-20 coalition as a bargaining platform to further the country’s economic interests; and the strategic relationship with developed nations, most notably with the US, which reached unprecedented levels of importance and maturity (Pecequilo 2010).

The first situation represents what is commonly known as ‘South-South diplomacy’. It has a deep connection with previous attempts of Brazilian foreign policy at garnering political influence and support among ‘non-traditional’ partners in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Under Lula, South-South cooperation was taken to a new level, furthered by an intense presidential diplomacy. The President himself has paid no less than 31 official visits to African countries, and has been to nine Middle Eastern nations in his eight years in office (Ministry of External Relations 2010). In Africa, with a rhetoric based on an alleged ‘moral debt’ Brazil carried with the continent, Itamaraty decided to focus on regional development, on initiatives of bilateral or regional cooperation, and on Brazilian direct investments (both private and public) (Saraiva 2010). Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Angola, Mozambique, and Cape Verde, received special treatment for cultural but mainly strategic reasons. South Africa, on its part, has become a privileged partner in terms of technological, economic, and political cooperation. The trilateral partnership between South Africa, Brazil, and India—the IBSA initiative—was able to coordinate policies in strategic areas, such as trade and security, and was acknowledged by Western powers as an important bloc of regional leadership (Vieira and Alden 2011).

In the Middle East, Brazil has shown a two-pronged strategy. With countries such as Syria, Libya, and Iran, there was a clear intention to boost the political and economic potential they had to offer. Politically, they were understood as key partners—not only in terms of raising Brazil’s geopolitical stakes in the Middle East but also considering eventual support to a permanent seat in the UNSC. Economically, they were formidable emerging markets and a natural destination for Brazilian exports (Amorim 2011b). The second part of the strategy had to do with the long-standing regional conflicts and tensions. President Lula expressed many times his will to do his part in helping advance the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as it became clear in his trip to Middle East in March 2010. A couple months later, the President and Foreign Minister Amorim went to Tehran to broker, together with Turkey, a nuclear deal with Iran. While Brasilia and Ankara considered the agreement ‘a potential breakthrough’, the initiative was not well received worldwide, insofar as it frustrated a new round of sanctions against Iran at the UNSC (Vieira de Jesus 2011).

When it comes to China and Russia (especially to the former), Brazil has adopted a pragmatic discourse, founded on the prospects for increasing bilateral trade and on the political relevance of the emerging powers. Indeed, trade with China rose sharply during the Lula years, and China had become Brazil’s most important trade partner by the end of the decade (MDIC 2011). This was made possible mostly due to the recognition of the People’s Republic as a market economy in 2004. In political terms, due to its lack of material capabilities, Itamaraty has decided to invest in weak institutional strategies such as the BRIC group—now BRICS, with the inclusion of South Africa in late 2010—with the goal of reducing the maneuvering room of American foreign policy in global affairs. This soft balancing strategy was aimed at increasing, ‘if only by a margin, the degree of multipolarity in the world’, as Celso Amorim put it (Hurrell 2008).

If IBSA and BRICS are the political fronts of this strategy, both financial and trade G-20 groups represent, at the multilateral level, the economic side of Brazil’s rise (Oliveira 2005). The absence of permanent allies has even led Brazilian scholars and diplomats to devise a new concept that describes the country’s behavior abroad: the building of coalitions of variable geometry. While such groups have first appeared on the early WTO negotiations, they have grown in number and importance, crossing issue areas and institutional boundaries. The refusal to form broad coalitions, on the other hand, has been called a strategy of ‘minilateralism’ and historically opposes the huge political alignments assembled at the height of the North-South dialogue of the 1970s, such as the Group of 77 (G77). Even though there are already several studies that shed light on the Brazilian experience, one may find quite similar patterns of forming small coalitions among other middle powers, at both regional and multilateral spheres (Flemes 2007).

Evoking the Main Hypothesis

Let us recall the main hypothesis of this chapter: member states will pursue control over ‘global goods’ inside IOs in uncoordinated fashion. As a consequence, states will get into discursive and practical contradictions if they attempt to gain actual influence over decision-making processes at major IOs of both SF and BW. Contradictions are troubling for those states that rely heavily on reputational goods. There might be obstacles for countries such as Brazil in reaching discursive and practical coherence, as long as realist-biased SF and liberal-driven BW platforms profoundly diverge in their dynamics and pose diverse normative constraints. Table 4.1 describes such comparative trends over the past decades.

Table 4.1 Comparative evolution of Brazilian foreign policy
Full size table

Brazil with Regard to San Francisco (Security Issues)

Brazil is no longer the ‘gentle giant’ it used to be. There has been considerable increase in military expenditure during the past 20 years and a mounting interest for international politics among Brazilian presidents ever since Cardoso’s coming into power. But there are important nuances in this position. President Rousseff has reinforced Brazil’s commitment to the idea of ‘Responsibility while Protecting (RwP)’ rather than endorsing ‘Responsibility to Protect (R2P)’ doctrine (also known as ‘Ban Ki-moon doctrine’). Given that Brazilian foreign policy has always relied upon the long-standing principles of non-intervention and state sovereignty, it has underlined that the use of force on the grounds of humanitarian intervention undermines the very rationale of the UN system, since the UN Charter has not foreseen these actions as an exception that allows the use of force.

Upon the development of the ‘R2P doctrine’ after the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) was published and, chiefly, through its adoption by the 2005 World Summit and Resolution 60/1 of the UN General Assembly, Brazil has endeavored to limit its scope. It has also stressed the prevalence of non-coercive and diplomatic measures (R2P’s second pillar) and, thus, has drawn attention to the subsidiary and last-resource character of military intervention (R2P’s third pillar).

Brazil has pointed out, moreover, that the use of force based on R2P must be discharged in accordance with international humanitarian law, human rights law, and the rules regarding the use of force (jus ad bellum), since these actions should not worsen the conflicts and do harm to the civilian population. Consequently, the Brazilian reasoning has led to the development of the concept of RwP, which aims to show the importance of complying with a rather strict legal framework during these operations.

Brazil has set forth, likewise, the importance of reform in the structure of the UNSC so as to incorporate, as permanent members, developing states from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia. Pursuant to the Brazilian position, the role of the UNSC in the R2P issue is essential, inasmuch as it must authorize all actions and ensure accountability of those to whom authority is granted to resort to force in cases that they breach international law.

Besides, participating in the UN PKO in Haiti represents a shift in Brazilian foreign policy since it indicates that, although the principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention still play a central role in its foreign policy, Brazil has perceived that these international rules must be interpreted in a manner consistent with the idea of ‘non-indifference’ (Amorim 2010). This notion might be defined, from a Brazilian perspective, as the willingness to provide assistance, mainly in terms of diplomacy, when required, and when a state deems it pertinent, so as to settle a political or social crisis.

All in all, it means Brazil will neither simply bandwagon the efforts of traditional world powers (US, UK, France, Russia, China) nor emulate the positions taken by emerging military powers (Turkey, South Africa, India, etc.). Its position will be carefully crafted so as to sound authoritative and nationalistic rather than merely guided by the balance-of-power logic. Claims are that Brazil will avoid at all cost the label of ‘regional leader’ inasmuch as it can be wrongly taken for nurturing sub-imperialistic intentions toward its neighbors (Burges 2008). However, speeches often made by governmental officials emphasize Brazilian ‘natural candidacy’ to seizing a seat in the event of the UNSC expansion/reform. At a slow pace, Brazil is engaging in issues/regions that did not otherwise belong to its top foreign policy priorities (Central America and the Caribbean, Middle East, etc.).

From Presidents Cardoso to Rousseff, Brazil displays a prudent, pacifist diplomacy, reliant on the idea of ‘consensual hegemony’ over South America, with a grain of light revisionism toward international security institutions. Its low military potentials combine with a persistent bid for UNSC reform (even if it comes with no veto power), as long as it should contemplate Brazil. One could also cite as an important aspect of Brazilian foreign policy nowadays its half-hearted advocacy for human rights (especially after Cardoso’s government).

Brazil Toward Bretton Woods (Economic Issues)

In the wake of the 1990s, the BW system was in high demand. In the year the Maastricht Treaty turned the European communities into a European Union, the IMF and the WB started fostering transition from real socialism to utopian liberalism in post-Wall Iron Curtain region. Those organs were also responsible for husbanding the aftermath of Latin America’s 1980s crash (after the 1987 Brady Plan), including Brazil, which defaulted not only once, but twice during the decade. BW’s organs even indulged in post-conflict reconstruction (what ‘An Agenda for Peace’ tentatively called ‘peacebuilding’) elsewhere (Gama 2009). By 1994, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT’s) Uruguay round gave way to a WTO undreamed of since WWII (1948’s International Trade Organization succumbed to Cold War vicissitudes). The newborn IO would from its inception bear sanctioning power on member states. That was an IO, therefore, ‘with teeth’, somehow closer to the UNSC than to loose arrangements such as GATT.

The WTO’s position gradually eroded as a result of the massive anti-globalization protest activity surrounding its Ministerial Conference at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in Seattle, Washington, in December 1999. UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) X, the tenth session of the Conference held in Bangkok in February 2000, proved a good opportunity to make a conceptual contribution to the ‘post-Seattle scenario’ and the re-establishment of the developing countries’ confidence in the multilateral trading system. UNCTAD’s contribution eventually helped pave the way for launching a new WTO round of negotiations in Doha in November 2001, whose specific goal was to address the issues of developing countries in a so-called Development Agenda for Trade Negotiations. However, circumstances had dramatically changed as a result of the terrorist attacks on the US on 11 September. While politics and economics were mutually reinforcing, trade barriers were being rebuilt. Wars were fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and dangerous confrontations took place around the globe, almost all of them involving the US and its Western allies. It is against the background of this shift in international security and its strong impact on international trade and development opportunities that one can accurately apprehend the case of Brazil.

Talks on a ‘new global financial architecture’ have spread from the 2000s on, especially after the events that led to the ongoing financial crisis in Europe and the US. They have drawn Brazil’s attention and fueled its ambitions to revising the world order in a way it would benefit from its economic coming of age. After all, in a scenario where old powerhouses failed to deliver prosperity and a glimmer of hope, the rising powers—BRICS countries and others—have filled this gap, allowing the economy not to stall, and then claiming their institutional rewards (e.g., a revision of the IMF quota system that would acknowledge developing countries’ growing importance for the world economy). Brazil, once a borrower, suddenly became a lender to the IMF, during the second presidential mandate of Lula da Silva. That comes wrapped in a new discourse that celebrates the virtues of ‘democratization’ and ‘pluralization’ among the nations, not to mention the Brazilian government’s stance for developmental economics, making the country a ‘state capitalism’ ideologue according to some critics (cf. The Economist, ‘The rise of state capitalism’, 21/01/2012).

This call for revisionism on Bretton Woods’ apparatuses has its most concrete manifestation inside the WTO, at the level of the Dispute Settlement Mechanism. This is the place where Brazil and many developing countries (like India and Argentina) voice out their concerns and reclaim their rights, whenever a country does not play by the rules of international commerce. Brazil is a major user of WTO Dispute Settlement system and an arbitration champion, both as complainant and as respondent. Informally, Brazil is a political leader in trade negotiations—heading, alongside China and India, the financial G-20 (a group of states with convergent interests in world commerce). In addition, it can be stated that Brazil, India, and China have replaced Japan and Canada as the most important developing states to prevent a stalemate in WTO Doha Round. Together with the US and the European Union, they are some of the world trade regime’s centerpieces today. Besides, Brazil’s expertise on WTO issues has more than once accredited Brazilian candidates to run for office at WTO. The latest bet is Ambassador Roberto Azevedo, a Brazilian diplomat whose knowledge of WTO bureaucracy and world trade made him a winning card to succeed Pascal Lamy.

Conclusion

As emphasized in the previous sections, middle powers will find it difficult to reconcile their foreign policy strategies toward both SF and BW global governance apparatuses. This is neither due to a lack of expertise on any of those realms nor due to the continuous resistance on the part of those powers of old responsible for the current institutional framework of international relations. Rather, middle powers in general—and Brazil in special—fall prey to their rise in a multifaceted international system.

The first apparent reason for that is middle powers’ relative lack of material capabilities (a realist assumption), what will then turn them much more reliant on reputational goods and discursive techniques (where ‘coherence’ plays a major role in terms of speech and practice) to efficiently pursue its international goals. Brazil’s relentless push for reform and pluralism in international institutions often clashes with its continuous dependence on a recognized identity as a reliable, moderate partner in current institutional machineries. After the Cold War, what used to be seen as a coherent trajectory by a typical status-quo middle power goes under review. Incoherence, as such, is much less dramatic, in realist terms, for great powers.

Second, there’s the institutional bias factor, that is, different governance platforms such as BW and SF will induce different—and sometimes contradictory—approaches to international politics. The rise of Brazil and emerging countries impacts current institutional structures—but with divergent, often clashing, outcomes. Pluralism has different appeals for the UN system and the Bretton Woods organizations. Multilateralism in security issues and in economic issues are often conducive to incompatible policies. By keeping high stakes in both fields all at once, Brazil incurs attrition costs.

Third, the label ‘foreign policy’ usually encompasses a broad set of branches related to one state’s international public policies and official statements—ranging from security and military to economic and environmental agendas. It is hard for great and middle powers alike to find a masterplan that fits all—or the majority—of interests at stake at any given time. Comparatively, in a realist sense, middle powers face the task with (much) less resources than great ones. Such constraints raise pressures even on sophisticated diplomatic machineries.

Fourth and last, by virtue of the need to balance efficiency and legitimacy in their foreign policies, middle power states are led to bear at the same time aristocratic/restrictive and democratic/liberalizing premises (the reliance on one or the other will vary according to the forum or the issue at stake). One can call it ‘doublethink’ or ‘forum shopping’. Anyhow, it is quite probable that, while attempting to exert control or influence over decision making about relevant international issues, states will not enunciate coherent positions over time or across themes. Once again, by contrast with great powers, middle powers as Brazil will be much more sensitive to such effects.

An important concept often employed by liberal scholars to convey a situation of ‘collective-action problem’ within the context of international regimes is that of ‘the tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin 1968; Drezner 2010). By the oft-cited concept it is meant that, because we live after all in an anarchic global society, coordination arrangements will inevitably fail in delivering the ‘common goods’ we are so much in need, bringing about tragic conflict as the only possible outcome.

The problematique we shed light on in the chapter is not exactly analogous to the one we just mentioned above; however, it can be thought of as a ‘vertical’ version of it. In other words, the tragedy of the commons is best understood as the unintended consequences triggered by poor coordination among states, driving them into a collision route. The question we look through here is how the lack of coordination inside (or between two diplomatic agendas) of a state—namely Brazil—can be detrimental to its own campaigns for ascension in international ‘institutional rankings’.

Brazil currently strives to build consensus among the parties to grab a seat for itself in the eventual reform/enlargement of the UNSC. To achieve it, Brazil committed with a sort of ‘great-power’ agenda by increasing the military budget and taking part in humanitarian missions all around the world (what includes the leadership of a UN PKO in Haiti for the first time in its history, not to mention the increasing interest in Middle Eastern affairs). Nevertheless, when it comes to financial and commercial matters, Brazil was the first one to evoke the values of democratization and/or liberalization of world politics.

In this sense, institutions constitute a strategic choice for Brazil, accommodating the pursuit of its interests in an often hostile environment which it aspires to decisively influence. As we focus on Brazil, there are side effects associated with coping with institutions. Such contradictions abound in the guise of a long-lasting, traditional respect for the rules of the game on the part of Brazilian diplomacy (either in presidential diplomacy or in the fine-tuned expertise machinery of the Ministry of External Relations)—which made Brazil an early entrant in the great majority of current international institutions—countered by a relentless pursuit/advocacy of ‘change in terms of equality’ manifested in world forums, based on Brazil’s ‘natural’ credentials to world prominence. Brazil seems poised to a larger share of the pie, but with some tragic undertones.

Brazil is an exemplary case of the tragedy of middle power politics within international institutions, as long as it cannot deliver a coherent discourse/behavior in foreign policy (something it will be charged for) because it falls prey to its own contradictions, which are seemingly inevitable, given Brazil’s profile in IR and, particularly, those steep contradictions between SF and BW platforms for global governance. On the other hand, it does not gather enough power assets to fill a ‘great-power’ identity and, therefore, to renounce to following the norms and rules defined by the existing global governance platforms in the world today.