THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BRAZILIAN FOREIGN POLICY: NUCLEAR ENERGY, TRADE, AND ITAIPU

This dissertation advances an analytical framework intended to account for the international strategies of semi-peripheral countries: those industrialized third World countries able to manufacture and export industrial goods. These countries tend to exhibit an unbalanced power resource configuration, which means that in some issue areas they may have the capability to act autonomously on the basis of internal choices, whereas in others their choices may be severely constrained. The countervailing pressures arising from the semi-periphery's multiplicity of goals and interests at stake in the international system and the unevenness of their existing capabilites account for the multiplicity of behavioral patterns in world affairs.;Using a collective good approach, a framework is developed encompassing the likely pattern of international behavior of semi-peripheral countries: unilateral action, a free-rider strategy, participation in a collective endeavor when private benefits accrue along with collective benefits and/or when coerced to do so, and dispensing positive incentives and using coercion to obtain an international regime with characteristics it favors.;The empirical validation of the proposed framework was assessed through five case studies of Brazil's conduct in the following issue areas: nuclear energy, trade, and hydroelectric development of the Parana River Basin. A free-rider strategy was observed in the case of the nonproliferation regime. The decision to attain nuclear self-sufficiency through the 1975 agreement with West Germany conforms to what was defined as unilateral behavior. Brazil's activism on behalf of Third World demands in North-South negotiations as they impinge upon trade matters was accounted for in terms of the existence of private gains accruing from participation in that collective endeavor. Compliance with a regime's rules resulting from the use or threat of use of coercion was observed in the case of multilateral trade negotiations. The last case study examines a pattern of behavior defined as hegemonic. In the development of a regime for the utilization of the Parana River Basin's hydroelectric potential, Brazil provided positive incentives to its junior partner (Paraguay) and negative inducements to the "uncooperative" partner (Argentina).