Issue Area and Pluralization in Brazilian Foreign Policy: An Exploratory Study of Decision-Making Processes in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Government

Abstract

The idea of ‘pluralization’—a new configuration of decision-making processes, characterized by Itamaraty’s relative loss of influence and the participation of var-ious actors—became widespread in Brazilian foreign policy studies. Questioning the literature’s general framing of this transformation, we explore the hypothesis that pluralization varies depending on the issue area under analysis. We build upon a mechanism connecting domestic distributive effects to pluralization and apply process-tracing methods to analyze two “typical cases” associated with environmental and health issues: the Kyoto Protocol negotiations and the dispute on AIDS drug patents. We explore how issue areas interact with mechanisms affecting decision-unit dispersion and generate hypotheses to explain deviations from the model. The results contribute to discussing issue-area effects, a gap in the literature. Conceptualizing issue areas as subsystems, we identify relevant dimensions to think their relation to pluralization: technical knowledge, distribution and weight of power capabilities, expert communities, institutionalization, and past interactions within the subsystem.