Description
This paper seeks to discuss the Brazilian diplomatic capacities and their influence on the foreign policy contents from a comparative perspective. The excellence of Brazilian diplomatic service is well known, a condition underlined both in academic texts and in political and diplomatic circles. In fact, Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) stands out for its quality and professionalization, bringing together all the conditions pointed out in the literature as characteristics of the concept of bureaucratic quality, namely: meritocracy, prediction, long-term careers, rules of inclusion and exclusion that prevent arbitrary substitutions, internal promotion, professionals able to act as experts or as generalists, professionals protected from external influences, control through legal and administrative rules. As underlined by the literature on state capacities, however, bureaucratic capacities are a process and their permanence in time is therefore variable. Likewise governments design different objectives - both domestic and foreign - for the state using their current capacities to implement them or trying to create new ones. Based on the debate on state capacities and on the premise of their transience as well as the transience of the objectives pursued by the state, this paper seeks to compare the reforms in Itamaraty organizational structure carried out during the Luiz Inácio “Lula”da Silva (2003-2010) and Dilma Roussef (2011-2016) governments with the ongoing Jair Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) and their association with the main foreign policy goals of each government.
