Regional powers / Working Paper
Brazil in the Americas: a regional peace broker?
01/04/2007 By Susanne Gratius
Emerging powers such as Brazil, India, and South Africa are beginning to assume an important role in the international and regional agenda.
Nevertheless, none of these three countries has voice or vote in the main international fora, including the Security Council, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Group of Eight (G-8).
Their status in the international hierarchy of states remains unclear: they meet the quantitative criteria for great powers, but they are either unwilling or unable to act as such, probably due to lack of either resources or political will. The latter is the case of Brazil, which sees itself as a middle power acting with soft power instruments.
At the same time, Brazil presents itself as a South American power with definitional and regional stabilisation capacities.
After analysing the country’s position in the international hierarchy of states, this working paper focuses on Brazil’s internal factors and the material resources (military, geographical and demographic, economic, technological, and cultural capacity) it has to act as a regional power.
Given that due to its great social and internal security challenges Brazil is not considered a consolidated state, there are doubts over its capacity to be a pivotal state in terms of stability and political mediation in its neighbourhood.
A brief analysis of the available data leads to the conclusion that although internal difficulties do limit Brazilian regional leadership, they do not prevent it.
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Publishing groups
IBSA: India, Brazil, South AfricaKeywords
Brazil Failed states Latin America & Caribbean Multipolarity Regional powersRelated publications
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Bio author: Susanne Gratius
PhD in Political Science by the University of Hamburg. Prior to joining FRIDE, Susanne Gratius worked as a Researcher at the Department of the Americas at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin and at the Iberoamerican Studies Institute (IIK) in Hamburg. Until 1999, she was Coordinator at the European-Latin American Relations Institute (IRELA) in Madrid.
