Description
This proposal seeks to connect the debate on the role of interest groups in participatory democracy with the analysis of foreign policy on health. To pursue this objective, the study focuses on a specific participatory institution: the Executive Group of the Health Industrial Complex (GECEIS), in Brazil. Created by the president Lula administration at the outset of its third term in 2023, GECEIS embodies a developmentalist strategy aimed at advancing the industrialization of the Brazilian pharmaceutical sector. GECEIS brings together government agencies, public institutions, civil society associations, and private-sector organizations. Its main goals are to reduce Brazil’s dependence on imported pharmaceutical products, to foster international cooperation in health, to attract investment, and to design supportive public policies. I seek to analyze how the trajectory of neo-developmentalist policies in the pharmaceutical sector has shaped the role of participatory institutions in health foreign policy. Using historical institutionalism, I investigate how earlier health policies influenced the creation of new institutions and associations and how the government now seeks to coordinate their interests through GECEIS. The study also explores whether this historical trajectory affects GECEIS’s ability to both manage these diverse interests and to contribute to a foreign policy that supports the national pharmaceutical industry. Methodologically, I will employ process tracing, drawing on evidence from regulations, technical and diplomatic notes, reports, meeting records, and official statements issued by government agencies and GECEIS members.
