Brazilian Political Science Review

12

Authors: Haroldo Ramanzini Júnior, Vinicius Rodrigues Vieira

Does the regional environment shape a state's international socialization and, thus, its perception on external affairs? If this is the case, how does such a process happen and what are the consequences for a state's global foreign policy? We tackle both questions by elaborating an analytical framework that accounts for spatial-temporal interactions in foreign policy. We accomplish such a task by reporting the preliminary findings of a comparison of Brazil's and India's views on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Through the method of difference, we conclude that those emerging powers' approaches to the NPT derive from the regional dynamic of power in which they are embedded. Brazil solved sensitive security issues in South America with its main regional rival, Argentina, institutionalizing regional relationships in the 1990s, whereas India continued to face enduring tensions in South Asia with its neighbors, particularly Pakistan. Brazilian policymakers thus perceived the post-Cold War international society through more benign lenses than their Indian counterparts, having signed the NPT in 1998. In that same year, India became a nuclear power. Other issue-areas — namely the environment, human rights, and trade — shall be analyzed in the future using the same framework.

26

Authors: Rafael Martins de Souza, Luís Felipe Guedes da Graça, Ralph dos Santos Silva

The use of social media has become increasingly widespread among citizens and politicians in Brazil. This means of communication served as a key arena for debate and propaganda during the 2014 legislative and presidential elections, when a very polarized political scenario emerged. New approaches have been developed that use information from the social network structure constructed by political actors on social media platforms, such as Twitter, in order to calculate ideal points. Can data from the decision to 'follow' a profile on Twitter be used to estimate politicians' ideological positions? Can approaches like this show the variance of political positions even within a very fragmented legislative body, such as the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies? This article presents and analyzes the successful application of a Bayesian spatial model developed by Barberá (2015), using data from Brazil. This method allowed to capture differences between parties and political actors similar to those found by means of roll call votes. It also makes possible to calculate ideal points for actors who participate in the public debate, but are not professional politicians.

31

Authors: Eduardo Viola, Jean Santos Lima

Although integration has been a part of South American discourse for decades, the level at which it is actually promoted remains far from that which is observed in dynamic production and trading centers. Given transformations in global trade, the phenomenon of global value chains is, in fact, very regionalized. We ask whether the trading pattern of Mercosur countries is aligned with approaches based on regional value chain, and if not, how it differs and why. In our evidence and analysis, we primarily use traditional gross trade data and Trade in Value Added (TiVA) indicators, and we look more at countries' profiles. We show that there has been a decrease in Brazilian trade with Mercosur, with manufactured exports being the main reason for the decline. We indicate that, in addition to the effect of China in the 2000s, there has been a structural movement of Mercosur economies, mainly regarding Brazil, which supports a hypothesis of primarization or deindustrialization. Our results show that Brazil and Argentina are both relatively closed to foreign trade, as well as global and regional value chains, which makes them even more poorly integrated with one another. This reinforces what we call Mercosur's 'introspective' model of integration, making it less outward-oriented, which is divergent with what is observed when regional value chains are encouraged.