Contested Roles: Investigating Societal Framings of Foreign Policy in India, Brazil and South Africa

Abstract

One of the premises of this study is that foreign policy must necessarily rely on civil society to be effective. Civil society links on their own may close gaps in official relations independently of any government intervention. Also, a strong commitment of a government to a specific role may be weakened by a significant societal counter-weight that opposes this role or is indifferent, while favouring another role. It is therefore necessary to look into framings of foreign policy present at the societal level, and to extract the main areas of dissonance and consistency with the official framings. The analysis shows that in terms of societal discourse there are significant differences between the IBSA states in terms of the policy direction and intensity of the IBSA states’ global engagement. For example, the fading away, in official discourse at least, of the South–South frames in India and their growing salience in the case of Brazil not only constitute key shifts for IBSA’s future, they are also at the heart of important foreign policy debates beyond government. Such debates affect the degree of like-mindedness between the IBSA states, and by extension the potential for joint action.