Foreign policy change as rhetorical politics: domestic-regional constellation of Global South states
| Author | Rafael D Villa,Sasikumar S Sundaram |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211052870 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211052870
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(3) 454 –479
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00471178211052870
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Foreign policy change as
rhetorical politics: domestic-
regional constellation of
Global South states
Rafael D Villa
University of São Paulo
Sasikumar S Sundaram
City, University of London
Abstract
Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly
improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp
understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link
between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional
and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining
whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or
implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining
whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors.
In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign
policy change – persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction – how it operates, and
the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument
is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties
of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We
illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy under the Lula
administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has
implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for
exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international
relations.
Corresponding author:
Sasikumar S Sundaram, City, University of London, D517, Rhind Building, Northampton Square, London
EC1V 0HB, UK.
Email: sasikumar.sundaram@city.ac.uk
1052870IRE0010.1177/00471178211052870International RelationsVilla and Sundaram
research-article2021
Article
Villa and Sundaram 455
Keywords
Brazil, foreign policy change, Global South, rhetoric
Introduction
One of the most important foreign policy changes of Brazil in the post-Cold War period
is a grand shift towards South-South strategy. Although, there is a protracted history of
Brazil’s shifting commitment to an automatic alignment with the United States1 and a
long diplomatic history of Brazil’s autonomous relations with the developing world,2 in
the post-Cold War period several political actors in Brazil have devoted an increasing
amount of attention to South-South as a grand foreign policy strategy. Beginning in slow
motion with Fernando Cardoso administration (1995–2002) and a splendid take-off dur-
ing the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration (2003–2010) and its controversial dis-
enchantment with Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), a strained engagement under the Michel
Temer administration (2016–2018) and a sullied displacement in the Jair Bolsonaro
administration (2019–present), the politics of South-South grand strategy defines Brazil’s
distinct engagement in international politics.
In assessing Brazilian foreign policy under the Lula administration, the Foreign
Minister Celso Amorim wrote, ‘At the crossroads of all the main guidelines of Brazilian
foreign policy is the effort to establish closer relations with other developing countries.
South-South cooperation is a diplomatic strategy that originates from an authentic desire
to exercise solidarity toward poorer countries’.3 Similarly, many others consider Brazil’s
South-South foreign policy as a grand strategic change to its prior automatic alignment
with the United States and as an example of a self-confident Brazilian way of reshaping the
international order.4 In this light, many analysts bemoan the Bolsonaro administration’s
rupture of Brazil’s South-South foreign policy in blindly bandwagoning with the United
States under the Donald Trump administration. The ways in which the debates over South-
South grand strategy are commonplace in Brazil’s foreign policy analysis – not merely in
terms of technical cooperation agreements and partnership with the developing countries5
– but South-South as a post-Cold War anchor in Brazil’s worldview is striking.
Thus, the question we want to answer is how to make sense of this paradigmatic
change from politics identifying the state within the Western-led order to reorienting the
foreign policy of the state in terms of South-South strategy? In other words, how does the
politics of Brazil’s South-South grand strategic change work in practice? How do we
make sense of the rise and fall of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy? At a general theo-
retical level, the principal question we focus on is: on how do we understand the politics
of foreign policy change?
One important way of understanding foreign policy change is the utilization and
deployment of rhetoric by political actors. Traditional accounts do not take rhetoric seri-
ously for the analysis of foreign policy change.6 However, recent advancements in criti-
cal constructivist International Relations (IR) scholarship emphasize the importance of
how strategic political actors deploy rhetoric to argue with opponents, outmaneuver them
and change boundaries of relations between actors.7 A focus on political rhetoric affirms
the idea that language is constitutive of political action.8 It offers opportunities to
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