Abstract
This chapter will focus, within the context of its relations with Latin America and more specifically Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur), on the EU relations with Brazil. Bilateral cooperation, in this case group-to-country cooperation between the EU and Brazil was institutionalised at the Lisbon Summit of July 2007 culminating in the EU-Brazil strategic partnership. This partnership is an indication of the EU’s recognition of the position Brazil today occupies in the international system. On the other hand, it lays bare the EU’s limited success with Mercosur. This shift from an interregional approach with Mercosur to one of bilateral engagement with Brazil leads to the question why after so many years of efforts made to develop group-to-group relations with Mercosur, has the EU shifted to direct bilateral relations with Brazil? In answering this question, a dual-causal framework highlighting basic characteristics of two theoretical paradigms in international relations, neorealism and liberalism, will be applied.
I am very grateful to Yuan-Juhn Chiao, Michael Franke, André van Loon, Jan Rothacher and Stefan Schirm for their helpful input, comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter. The research for this chapter has been possible due to the generous assistance provided by the Ruhr-University Bochum ‘Programm zur Unterstützung besonderer Aktivitäten von Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden’.
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Notes
- 1.
For more information on first, second and third generation agreements see Bretherton and Vogler (2006).
- 2.
Krapohl et al. define regional powers as ‘states that decidedly exceed other regional states in terms of population, economic development and market size’ (2014: 879).
- 3.
The FTAA negotiations included all countries on the Western Hemisphere, from Alaska until Tierra del Fuego, except Cuba.
- 4.
It should be noted here though that this so-called competing regionalism (Hettne 2005: 284; Schott 2009: 16; Woolcock 2007: 258) however does no longer only take place between the EU and the US. Since the emergence of China as a major player in international trade, it has increasingly become an equal important trade actor in Latin America (Gallagher and Porzecanski 2010; The Economist 2009).
- 5.
At the time of writing in November–December 2014.
- 6.
Schirm defines ‘leadership’ ‘as the ability to make others follow goals and positions which these others did not previously share and/or to make others support an increase in status and power of the emerging power’ (Schirm 2010: 200).
- 7.
The last two trade agreements have not yet entered into force.
- 8.
The societal approach, resting on theories of domestic politics such as the liberal theory of international politics, is developed further focusing on material interests, and value-based ideas (Schirm 2009b, 2011, 2013) and domestic institutional arrangements (Schirm 2014) as independent variables shaping governmental policy positions (Schirm 2014: 2–3). Due to space constraints this chapter only highlights the first of these independent variables.
- 9.
With the exception of Paraguay.
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van Loon, A. (2015). From Interregionalism to Bilateralism: Power and Interests in EU-Brazil Trade Cooperation. In: Rewizorski, M. (eds) The European Union and the BRICS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19099-0_9
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