Politicization, Foreign Policy and Nuclear Diplomacy

Abstract

According to the current literature, since the redemocratization, Brazilian foreign policy has been marked by a process of politicization. This article’s main objective is to verify the relation between administrative shifts and Brazilian nuclear diplomacy. Accordingly, the question dealt with in the article is: since Brazil joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), have administration variations interfered with the formulation of Brazilian nuclear diplomacy? This article argues that Brazilian nuclear diplomacy has been an exception to this trend. No matter how innovative some administrations have been in foreign policy, nuclear diplomacy has been insulated from governmental changes, having consolidated a coherent and stable rhetoric internationally. The research was carried out by analyzing the Brazilian rhetoric between 1998 and 2019 in the NPT Review Conferences and Preparatory Committees, vis-à-vis different administrations, through the method of substantive content analysis. The result was the verification that the majority of the rhetorical issues used were present in all studied administrations, indicating the absence of correlation between administration shifts and the Brazilian stance in the Global Nonproliferation Regime.

Keywords

• Brazilian foreign policy
• Politicization
• Nuclear Diplomacy