The emerging state we write: a critical perspective on Brazilian foreign policy studies

I argue that, beyond the adaptation of specific traits from U.S. and European Foreign Policy Analysis and IR literature and the production of Latin American “hybrids”, the work of Brazilian Foreign Policy analysts also had another thing in common with many of their North-Atlantic counterparts: their work is inserted in a context in which mechanisms of power operate with the aim to dominate a system of "truth" on the formulation and the operation of international relations issues, in this case Brazilian foreign policy. I develop that academic works on Brazilian Foreign Policy helped to stabilize the sovereignty of the Brazilian state through the development of notions of external threats against which Brazil was placed and the creation of consistency and coherence in Brazilian objectives, actions and identities, such as in the notion of "continuity" of Brazilian foreign policy, the rise and fall of “paradigms” that brought guidelines for foreign policy action, the insulation of the Foreign Ministry and the subsequent pluralization of Brazilian foreign policy making. The in-depth look of this investigation also shows contradictions and omissions in those arguments and indicates that many notions created and reproduced by academics in Brazilian Foreign Policy studies – Brazilian and non-Brazilian – did not always correspond to facts.