Democratization by Association? Brazil's Social Policy Cooperation in Africa

Cambridge Review of International Affairs
ISSN: 0955-7571 (Print) 1474-449X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccam20
Democratization by association? Brazil’s social

policy cooperation in Africa
Adriana Erthal Abdenur & Danilo Marcondes
To cite this article: Adriana Erthal Abdenur & Danilo Marcondes (2016): Democratization by
association? Brazil’s social policy cooperation in Africa, Cambridge Review of International
Affairs
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2015.1118996
Published online: 06 Apr 2016.
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Download by: [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] Date: 06 April 2016, At: 13:01
Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 2016
http:/dx.doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2015.1118996
Democratization by association? Brazil’s social policy

cooperation in Africa
Adriana Erthal Abdenur

Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
Danilo Marcondes
University of Cambridge
Downloaded by [Orta Dogu Teknik Universitesi] at 13:01 06 April 2016
Abstract The field of international development has undergone major shifts as South–
South cooperation expands. New questions are being raised about the political implications
of this cooperation, including with respect to democracy and human rights. In this paper,
we analyse the role of Brazil, a democratic provider of South–South cooperation, in
fomenting these principles in Africa. We find that explicit democracy promotion makes up
a minority of Brazil’s cooperation with Africa. However, Brazil also engages in social policy
initiatives which, despite not being labelled as democracy and human rights promotion,
are inspired by Brazil’s own experiences with re-democratization—what we refer to as
“democratization by association”. We argue that these initiatives—mostly geared towards
institution-building in areas where Brazil seeks to promote itself as a hotbed of policy
innovation—are disembedded from the political context in which they arose in Brazil.
While this disembeddedness allows the Brazilian state to maintain its official discourse
of non-interference, it also makes the political impact of Brazilian cooperation in Africa
highly uncertain.
Although Brazil has a long history of ties to Africa, in 2003, when the country’s first
Workers Party-led government came to power, Brazil began giving unprecedented
attention to its African partners, as part of a broader focus on expanding relations
with the global South. Most of the scholarship on contemporary Brazil–Africa
relations has focused on their economic dimensions, especially the investments
made in African countries by Brazilian companies. In comparison, relatively little
research has been published on the political aspects of Brazil’s engagement in
Africa. The political dynamics of Brazil’s ties to Africa are particularly interesting
given Brazil’s identity as a democratic rising power that stresses its identity as a
developing country and brands itself as a source of innovative policy solutions
to challenges elsewhere in the developing world. This paper addresses the gap
by focusing on Brazil’s relevance to African democracy and human rights. More
specifically, we ask: to what extent, and how, have Brazil’s own experiences with
democracy shaped the country’s technical cooperation with Africa? Although
The article was inspired by a paper presented at the conference “Promoting Democracy: What Role for
the Emerging Powers?”, held on 15 and 16 October 2013 in Ottawa, Canada and organized by Gerd
Schonwalder from the German Development Institute. The authors thank Gerd Schonwalder and the
other conference participants for the comments and suggestions.
© 2016 Department of Politics and International Studies

2 A. E. Abdenur and D. Marcondes
Brazilian relations with Africa also entail the participation of the private sector and
large state companies such as Petrobras (the Brazilian national oil company), here
we focus on official technical cooperation—that is, the provision of capacity—and
institution-building cooperation by Brazilian state institutions to partners abroad.
The question is relevant for at least two key reasons. First, although Brazilian
foreign policy discourse stresses Brazil’s identity as a democratic developing
country, Brazil maintains diplomatic and cooperation ties to a vast gamut of
regimes, including ones frequently accused by non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and advanced countries of gross human rights violations. In addition,
under the Workers Party leadership, Brazilian foreign policy has stepped up
its emphasis on the principle of respect for national sovereignty. As a result,
Brazil has repeatedly stressed that its official development cooperation aims to
help improve socioeconomic conditions in partner states without meddling in
their political systems. The tensions created by these principles and practices
are particularly intriguing given recent efforts to make foreign policymaking in
Brazil more participatory: in early 2014, for instance, Brazil’s Ministry of External
Relations (MRE) held a series of consultative sessions with Brazilian civil society
designed to feed into the country’s first “white paper” on foreign policy, as will
be discussed further in the article. Such initiatives raise the question of whether
greater participation by Brazilian non-state actors in foreign policy debates,
including those pertaining to technical cooperation, will translate into greater
emphasis on democracy and human rights abroad.
Drawing on a combination of interviews with key informants and analysis
of official documents pertaining to cooperation in Africa, we find that Brazilian
technical cooperation initiatives explicitly labelled as democracy and human rights
promotion make up a small proportion of Brazil’s overall cooperation with Africa,
and that these efforts are implemented only under two types of circumstances:
when specific demands are voiced by partner governments, or when political
cooperation is requested via multilateral organizations such as the United Nations
(UN) or the Community of Portuguese-Language Countries (CPLP). These
initiatives do not differ radically from those implemented by advanced countries,
especially in that they focus on the formal (procedural) aspects of democracy.
However, some efforts are based on systems developed in Brazil to tackle some of
the social disparities in Brazilian society. For example, Brazil’s technical assistance
with electronic voting is based on its national electronic system, which was
designed to make the Brazilian electoral process more inclusive for illiterate or
disabled citizens. In these instances, Brazil’s democratic experience has served as
inspiration for cooperation initiatives implemented in Africa.
On the other hand, Brazil’s experiences with democracy and human rights
are also echoed—although in an incomplete manner—in certain cooperation
initiatives that are not openly labelled as efforts to promote democracy and human
rights. In particular, Brazilian cooperation in social policy areas like public health,
agriculture and income redistribution has entailed promoting abroad certain
domestic experiments that are widely (if not universally) perceived as relatively
successful, or even innovative.1 We argue that, although Brazilian social policy
cooperation in Africa has been built around certain elements of Brazil’s experiences
1 Al-Arief, 2014.
Democratization by association 3
consolidating its democracy after 21 years of military rule, including partnerships

between state and civil society entities, these elements are “disembedded” from
the broader political and institutional context in which they were developed in
Brazil. Most notably, although civil society played a fundamental role in Brazil’s’
return to democracy and in the recognition of the provision of social rights by
the Brazilian state, non-state actors such as NGOs and labour unions have been
relegated to a largely secondary role in Brazilian cooperation in Africa. The
ensuing promotion of isolated social policy models suggests that the political
impact of Brazilian cooperation on African politics is uncertain at best, and that
it will vary according to how those initiatives interact with local institutions in
African partner states.
While this ambiguity is convenient to a foreign policy that stresses non-
interference and non-conditionality, it also shows the limits of trying to gently
nudge partner states towards democracy and human rights—what we call

“democratization by association”. Most notably, as we argue in this paper,
disembeddedness tends to limit the impact that Brazilian technical cooperation
has on partner state institutions, because the effectiveness of policies implemented
domestically in Brazil depends not only on the capacity of specific institutions
and programmes, but also on the complex interaction among a wide gamut of
institutions, typically including non-state actors.
The argument is developed in the following manner. In the next section, we
provide an overview of the role that democracy and human rights have played
in Brazilian foreign policy, particularly since the return to democratic rule in
the 1980s. We then analyse two aspects of Brazil–Africa cooperation in social
policies that draw inspiration from Brazil’s own experience with democratization:
promotion of democracy and human rights, and social policy cooperation. The
conclusion examines recent efforts by the Brazilian government to strengthen the
role of civil society in its foreign policy debates through the White Paper dialogues
and related initiatives. Finally, we indicate some directions for future research on
the political dimensions of South–South cooperation.
Democracy and human rights in Brazilian foreign policy

The international relations scholarship has analysed the political dimensions of
North–South aid, for instance examining how, and to what extent, this assistance
helps to promote or hinder democracy and human rights in the developing
world (Brown 2005). However, over the past ten years the field of development
has undergone major changes as South–South cooperation by rising powers
expanded—a trend magnified since the 2008 onset of the global financial crisis,
which temporarily shrank official development assistance (ODA) from advanced
economies and donor institutions (Mawdsley 2012; Greenhill, Prizzon and
Rogerson 2013). South–South cooperation, while far from uniform and undertaken
by democratic and non-democratic states alike, is generally accompanied by
government discourses that stress the principle of non-interference and that reject
the imposition of political conditionalities. These cooperation providers deeply
distrust those practices due to grievances that date back to the colonial era and
that continued during and after the Cold War. In addition, they suspect that the
emphasis placed by the donors of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation

and Development (OECD) on “good governance” serves to legitimize meddling in
the internal affairs of developing countries. As a result, South–South cooperation
providers have generally resisted efforts led by the OECD Development Assistance
Committee (DAC) to “harmonize” the principles of international assistance.
These broad shifts in the field of international development have prompted
new questions about the political impact of South–South development cooperation
on partner countries, particularly because South–South providers promote the
idea of “win–win” relations and cooperate with other states independently of
regime type. Previous scholarship has looked at the role of authoritarian emerging
powers (Bader et al 2010; Vanderhill 2013), and there is a burgeoning literature on
the role that democratic emerging powers play in fostering democracy and human
rights abroad (Schönwälder 2014). Scholars of democracy promotion and African
politics have begun to ask whether South–South cooperation fosters or hinders

democracy and human rights in Africa, and whether the cooperation provided by
democracies like Brazil and India offers any innovations for promoting political
values on the continent (Stuenkel 2013).
Despite Brazilian claims that the country’s South–South cooperation is non-
interventionist, previous research has shown that even its technical cooperation can
have a lasting impact on the way that local politics is conducted. For example, the
Brazilian government has promoted the participatory budgeting model developed
in Porto Alegre among African cities; while outcomes are not uniform, in some
instances they have fostered bottom-up community participation in municipal
decision-making (Wampler 2008). More recently, the ProSavana project, a large
agricultural development programme being implemented by Brazil in northern
Mozambique in partnership with the Japanese International Cooperation Agency
(JICA) and the Mozambican government, has triggered widespread contestation
by Mozambican and international civil society (Chichava et al 2013).
Far from a novelty, Brazil’s engagement with Africa has a long and complex
history dating back to the colonial era, when the transatlantic slave trade brought
roughly four million Africans to work as slaves on Brazilian plantations, mines
and households (Saraiva 2012; Dávila 2010). After the colonial period, there
were certain periods in which ties between Brazil and Africa intensified, even if
temporarily. Between 1961 and 1964, Brazil’s democratic government sought a
more independent foreign policy vis-à-vis the two Cold War blocs. This quest for
greater autonomy included a drive to diversify Brazil’s foreign relations within
the Third World, including by deepening ties with African states. After a 1964
coup d’état installed a military regime in Brazil, its foreign policy realigned with
that of the United States; it was only in the early 1970s that Brazil—under new
economic pressures exacerbated by the 1973 oil crisis—once again reversed course
and sought closer relations with Africa. The move was part of a broader pragmatic
effort to find new economic opportunities and political alignments among other
developing and newly independent countries. On issues of self-determination,
Brazil stopped supporting Portugal’s colonialist positions at the UN and began
backing former colonies as they sought and claimed independence, regardless of
political orientation. As a result, even though Brazil was still ruled by a right-
wing regime, in 1975 it became the first country to formally recognize the socialist
government of Angola (Pinheiro 2007). In 1983, Brazilian President João Batista
Figueiredo, the last of Brazil’s military presidents, visited Nigeria, Senegal, Cape
Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Algeria. Figueiredo was the first Brazilian head of state
to visit the African continent, giving new visibility to Brazil’s relations with Africa
(Presidência da República 1984).
Equally relevant to Brazil’s positions as a South–South cooperation provider
are its experiences as a recipient of Northern aid, especially assistance designed
to induce political change. During the military regime, Brazil received assistance
that was either explicitly or covertly meant to shape its internal politics. At times,
this aid was designed to foment democracy, while at others, it was intended to
strengthen the military regime. In the case of US assistance, barriers to technology
transfer and criticism of human rights violations in Brazil helped to foment
suspicion among Brazilian policy elites regarding donors’ intent in providing
aid, especially during the presidency of Ernesto Geisel (1974–1979) (Svartman
2011). The perception of US “meddling” in Latin American affairs also helped to
entrench Brazil’s position on non-interference—both in relation to its own politics,

and with respect to other developing countries.
Brazil’s redemocratization process also reshaped its foreign policy. This regime
change occurred through a gradual “distension” in which the military, under
pressure from civil society groups, incrementally ceded power. Because of the
important role that civil society entities such as labour unions, NGOs, professional
associations, universities and the media played in the return to democratic rule,
participatory mechanisms such as public policy councils were implemented at
several levels of government, from municipal to federal (Santoro 2012). Brazil’s
first civilian president since 1964 took over in 1985, and almost immediately the
political changes at home produced shifts in foreign policy. For instance, Brazil,
which under the military had maintained a certain degree of ambiguity towards
South Africa—with its navy hoping for closer ties while the MRE maintained
a more distant posture—began to implement stronger measures against the
Apartheid regime. In August 1985, a presidential decree prohibited the export of
oil and defence equipment, including arms, to South Africa, as well as well as
placing limits on social, cultural and sports-related activities.2 The decree noted
the incompatibility between Brazilian democracy and the Apartheid regime, and
the sanctions were inspired by international efforts against Apartheid, as well as
by activism by Brazilian civil society organizations, especially the Afro-Brazilian
movements and academic circles. These efforts culminated in the creation,
also in 1985, of a Brazilian Committee of Solidarity with the Peoples of South
Africa and Namibia, designed to mobilize Brazilian public opinion in favour of
Brazilian government policies that would support the peoples of South Africa and
Namibia (Braga 2011). These domestic pressures for government condemnation
of the Apartheid regime, combined with civil society criticism of Brazil’s own
racial issues, led to the inclusion, within the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, of the
rejection of racism as one of the principles that should guide Brazilian foreign
policy.3
Also as a result of civil society pressures, the new Constitution encoded the
importance of social rights to education, health services, work, housing, leisure,
security and social security. Many of these social rights have been updated since
2 The full text of the decree, in Portuguese, can be accessed at: <http://www2.camara.leg.br/
legin/fed/decret/1980-1987/decreto-91524-9-agosto-1985-441903-publicacaooriginal-1-pe.html>.
3 Ferderative Republic of Brazil, 1988.
the Constitution was first promulgated, and they are frequently invoked in Brazil’s
official technical cooperation discourse. For instance, Brazilian cooperation
in agriculture has been heavily influenced by the right to food, which was
incorporated into the Constitution as both an individual and a collective social
right in a 2010 amendment. This legal change, in turn, was made possible by civil
society mobilization during the 1990s and resulting policies implemented during
the 2000s (Leite et al 2013).
Since the end of the military regime, Brazil’s commitment to democracy and
human rights within its foreign policy has been reaffirmed through regional
agreements that promote these political values, such as the Organization
of American States (OAS) and CPLP. In other instances, Brazil has actively
championed the inclusion of democratic clauses in regional agreements, as in
the cases of Mercosur and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR)
(Santiso 2002; Carothers and Youngs 2011). Aside from these multilateral venues,
a discourse of democracy and human rights accompanies Brazil’s bilateral
relations, although it eschews the name-and-shame approach favoured by some
international NGOs and donors. Instead, Brazilian foreign policy discourse claims
to adopt a more subtle approach, “nudging” partners towards democracy through
engagement, dialogue and technical cooperation.4 While Brazil has repeatedly
condemned human rights abuses, including at the UN, it has been critical of what
it perceives to be selective and self-serving efforts by Western states to condemn
violations elsewhere. Rather, Brazilian diplomacy seems to promote a kind of
“democratization through association”, betting that the exposure of African
government officials and other interlocutors to Brazilian institutions and experts
will help induce small and incremental changes in institutional and political
cultures in partner states. This is illustrated by the case of Equatorial Guinea,
whose entry into the CPLP as a full member was backed by Brazil. This support
was based on the idea that engaging with Equatorial Guinea would draw the
country closer to shared CPLP values, such as democracy and respect for human
rights, and would be a better solution than simply condemning and isolating the
country.5
In the early 1990s, Brazil became more accepting of international scrutiny of
its own human rights record, for instance receiving its first Human Rights Watch
and Amnesty International missions (Macaulay 2010). Under President Fernando
Henrique Cardoso (1995–2002), the government created a Human Rights and
Social Issues division within the MRE and accepted the jurisdiction of the Inter-
American Court of Human Rights. At the same time, domestic institutions related
to democracy and human rights were also strengthened—for example, a National
Plan of Action for Human Rights was created in 1996 (Mackaulay 2010).
With respect to Africa, a rearrangement of Brazil’s diplomatic posts in the
1990s, prompted by budgetary restrictions, led to a reduction in the number of
Brazilian embassies and diplomats in the continent. This trend was then reversed
under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2010), whose government gave
South–South cooperation unprecedented weight within Brazilian foreign policy.
The resulting drive to deepen ties to Africa—part of a renewed effort to make
4 With respect to bilateral relations with Equatorial Guinea, for instance, officials presented the
sharing of good practices such as Bolsa Família as potentially leading to improvements in the partner
country.
5 Uchoa, 2010.
Brazilian foreign policy more autonomous—harkened back to the 1960s, when the
pre-coup government also opted to diversify Brazil’s foreign relations (Lima and
Hirst 2006). In order to boost ties with African states, Lula stepped up presidential
diplomacy efforts, opening or reopening 17 new embassies and personally visiting
a total of 23 African countries (Mendonça Jr. 2013).
Although Brazilian foreign policy discourse maintained the emphasis on
non-interference that it had defended since the Cold War, Brazil’s deepening
involvement with other developing countries prompted policy elites to temper this
stance by invoking the principle of “non-indifference” as a motivation for Brazilian
involvement in certain situations in the global South (Hermann 2011). According
to the principle, which was inspired by the African Union’s official discourse,
Brazil may become involved in certain situations abroad when policymakers
believe it may make a positive contribution, and only when invited to do so by the
partner state. Non-indifference was used to justify Brazil’s involvement with the
UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), whose military component has been led by
Brazil since 2004, and later to legitimize Brazil’s provision of humanitarian aid to
African and Asian states.6 However, the government failed to establish criteria for
the applicability of non-indifference, which means it has been applied in a highly
selective manner (Ekström and Alles 2012).
With respect to the role of human rights in foreign policy, the Lula administration
stressed the importance of supporting technical cooperation in countries that need
to improve their human rights situations through the creation of institutions and
mechanisms meant to promote social rights and political stability. These activities
may be interpreted as a process of “democratization by association”, whereby
partners are cautiously nudged towards democratization through interaction
with certain institutional models, practices and knowledge-building processes
rather than subjected to explicit democracy promotion efforts. This process is
implicit and, unlike many democracy promotion efforts, is not associated with
the imposition of political conditionalities. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq and the
recent measures related to “regime change” in Libya have prompted Brazilian
policymakers to differentiate Brazilian methods from the way in which Northern
actors promote democracy and human rights in the global South.7
Democratization by association has been a part of Brazil’s engagement with
several countries facing situations of high instability, including East Timor and
Haiti. In Africa, Brazil has carried out such activities not only bilaterally, but also
through the UN Peacebuilding Commission, where Brazil chairs the Guinea-Bissau
Country-Specific Configuration. However, Brazil’s development cooperation
with Africa has met with some criticism, for instance regarding its reluctance to
leverage its growing economic influence to push for democratization and human
rights (White 2013). Using voting records at the UN, Piccone (2011) argues that
Brazil, like other emerging democratic powers, has been an inconsistent advocate
for democracy and human rights abroad.
President Dilma Rousseff’s January 2011 inauguration generated high
expectations that Brazil would step up its commitment to democracy and human
rights abroad. Rousseff herself had fought the Brazilian military regime as a
6 An Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Humanitarian Action encompassing 11 ministries was

created in 2006 to improve coordination. In 2006, Brazil provided humanitarian assistance to only two
countries; by 2008, that number stood at nearly 20 countries. Ministério das Relações Exteriores.
7 Murta, 2011.
militant, and after being arrested she was subjected to torture and imprisonment.
However, on this front Brazilian foreign policy seems to have mostly maintained
continuity with the prior administration. Although relations with Iran have cooled
off, Brazilian civil society organizations and opposition parties continue to criticize
the Brazilian government for supporting countries such as Cuba, Venezuela,
Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea, and for not properly disclosing information
regarding arms exports and electoral monitoring missions to countries in Africa.8
Under Rousseff, the government has taken tentative steps to foment a degree
of participation by Brazilian civil society in foreign policy discussions. In 2014, the
MRE organized a series of “dialogues” in which NGO representatives, academics,
the business community and other non-state actors had the opportunity to voice
their opinions on Brazilian foreign policy to an audience composed primarily of
career diplomats.9 While the dialogue agenda did not include a thematic session
on democracy and human rights, the inclusion of entities such as Conectas, one
of the most vocal critics of Brazilian human rights policy abroad, ensured that
these topics were covered during the discussions.10 Human rights and democracy
thus remain part of the Brazilian foreign policy agenda, although the reinforced
discourse on national sovereignty has made the country’s leadership more
reticent in addressing democracy and human rights issues, especially with respect
to Brazilian technical cooperation. In addition, there is a certain selection bias in
terms of which non-state actors the Brazilian government wishes to engage in
dialogue with, with the most critical organizations left out of the debate.
Brazil–Africa cooperation in social policy

Brazilian democracy promotion
Over the past two decades, Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa has
encompassed a wide gamut of areas, including public health, agriculture and
education. Far from being highly centralized, these initiatives are typically planned
and implemented by specific ministries, agencies and government divisions,
while the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), a division of the MRE, plays a
loose coordinating role, for instance channelling demands and linking potential
partners abroad with domestic institutions. As Abdenur (2014) has noted, this
organization is more capillary than centralized, in that those implementing
institutions tend to be the driving force in the provision of Brazilian South–South
technical cooperation.
On occasion, Brazil has offered South–South cooperation initiatives that are
openly labelled as promotion of democracy and human rights, especially in fellow
Portuguese-language countries. For instance, Brazil has cooperated with Guinea-
Bissau on legislation designed to strengthen the protection of both democracy and
8 Within civil society, one of the most vocal critics of Brazilian foreign policy has been the São
Paulo-based human rights NGO Conectas. <http://www.conectas.org/en/actions/foreign-policy>.
9 The corresponding author participated in the MRE Dialogues in March 2014, in Brasília.
More information is available on the MRE website: <http://diplomaciapublica.itamaraty.gov.br/
itamaraty/60-dialogos-sobre-politica-externa-um-debate-entre-governo-e-sociedade-sobre-o-papel-
do-brasil-no-mundo>.
10
Asano and Waisbich, 2014.
human rights (Abdenur and Souza Neto 2013). In another example, both Cape
Verde and Angola are part of a cooperation agreement involving legislative efforts
undertaken by the lower house (Câmara dos Deputados) of the Brazilian Congress.
Brazilian officials have described these initiatives as illustrating Brazil’s potential
for improving African democracy due to the interest of partner states in Brazilian
political institutions, including legislative advisory mechanisms (Câmara dos
Deputados 2010).
In addition, Brazil has hosted African government officials and sent delegations
of Brazilian experts to help organize elections and other aspects of procedural
democracy in African partner states. Some of these democracy promotion efforts
are inspired by Brazil’s home-grown experiments and innovations during the
redemocratization period. For instance, Brazil’s widespread promotion of electronic
voting technologies, including in Africa, draws on Brazil’s implementation
(starting in the late 1990s) of a national electronic voting system (Nicolau 2006).
This domestic-level effort was implemented in response to pressures by Brazilian
civil society groups for technologies that would expand the participation of
illiterate and disabled citizens in the electoral process while minimizing voting
frauds—a reflection of the broadening of participation and social rights during
Brazil’s return to democracy.11
However, unlike most Northern donors, Brazil resolutely limits its promotion
of democracy and human rights to states whose governments request such
cooperation. Moreover, in accordance to its long-standing position on non-
conditionalities, Brazil has not required the implementation of political measures
or reforms in exchange for the provision of South–South cooperation. This stance
may help to explain the Brazilian government’s scarce and cautious references to
its own promotion of democracy and human rights abroad; for instance, there are
scant references to human rights and democracy promotion on the ABC’s official
website.12
Brazil has also undertaken promotion of democracy and human rights through
partnerships with other South–South providers and Northern donors. In 2011,
Brazil and the United States jointly launched the Open Government Initiative
(OGI), a multilateral effort that seeks to secure commitments from governments
to promote transparency, fight corruption, empower citizens and develop new
technology to strengthen governance through activities such assistance with
elections, human rights projects and anti-corruption efforts. 13 Through the India
Brazil South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum—a loose coalition that has billed itself
as ‘a unique democratic alliance of the Global South’—Brazil has joined India
and South Africa in brainstorming ways to promote the grouping’s ‘democratic
branding’ (Ministry of External Affairs Institute of Social Science 2013). Although
IBSA’s development discussions and initiatives include efforts in Africa, the
ability to strengthen the forum’s democracy promotion may be hindered by
these countries’ membership in the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
(BRICS) grouping. Although the BRICS development agenda has also focused
11
Tribunal Regional Eleitoral do Rio Grande do Sul (2006) ‘Voto eletrônico: Edição comemorativa’
Porto Alegre.
12
<http://www.abc.gov.br/>.
13
US Department of State (2011) ‘Open government partnership: first high level meeting—fact
sheet’ Washington: 17 April 2012.
heavily on Africa, the inclusion of China and Russia within the grouping leaves
little room for discussions about international democracy promotion.
Brazilian cooperation in social policy

If a broader definition of “promotion of democracy and human rights” is adopted,
the political relevance of other modalities of Brazil’s social policy cooperation
with Africa should be considered, even if those initiatives are not primarily
intended to provoke political changes in partner countries. Since the 1970s, Brazil
has offered technical cooperation to other developing countries, promoting and
adapting abroad social policy models that were initially developed at home.
These cooperation efforts, which range from assisting African partners to build up
their public health systems to helping develop new cultivation techniques, draw
inspiration from Brazil’s broadening of social rights in the 1980s, as well as the
consolidation of democratic institutions beginning in the 1990s. These cooperation
efforts are not intended to provoke top-down wholesale sectoral reform in partner
states; rather, they are meant to catalyse incremental institutional changes that
could lead to broader shifts in practice, policymaking and (implicitly) political
culture abroad.
Among the social rights written in to Brazil’s 1988 Constitution are the rights
to universal health care, education and social security. In practice, implementation
of these rights in Brazil has been highly imperfect due to inadequate institutional
capacity, poor enforcement, corruption and lack of political will. However, their
inclusion within the Constitution represented a key step towards addressing the
sharp socioeconomic inequalities that mark Brazilian society (Cardoso Jr 2009).
In addition, however flawed the execution of these rights, this ambitious legal
framework has facilitated progressive policy experiments such as the conditional
cash transfer programme Bolsa Família, which began as a city-level experiment in
Brasília and was significantly expanded during Lula’s presidency (Ansell 2014).
Other measures meant to tackle hunger, promote food security, expand access
to public health and improve education were implemented as a result of these
constitutional rights. This focus on progressive social policy became a cornerstone
not only of Brazilian efforts to alleviate poverty and inequality domestically, but
also of cooperation efforts abroad (Santoro 2012; Hirst 2012). By promoting the
image of Brazil as an incubator of social policy innovations—many of them state-
led approaches that fly in the face of the free-market prescriptions often promoted
by established international organizations like the Bretton Woods institutions—
these state actors could also help legitimate these programmes domestically,
especially when those policies are contested.
Some of these dynamics are illustrated by Brazilian cooperation in public
health, including efforts to combat Human immunodeficiency virus infection and
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS). As previously mentioned,
the 1988 Constitution recognizes access to public health services as a right. Despite
opposition from the international community, including Northern states acting on
behalf of their pharmaceutical industries, in the 1990s the Brazilian government
invoked this constitutional right in order to broaden access to treatment for
HIV-positive Brazilians. The Brazilian state considered itself responsible for
providing free anti-retroviral (ARV) medication to Brazilians registered within
the country’s health system. This guarantee was made possible by domestic
mobilization by HIV-related civil society organizations, along with efforts
undertaken at the international level by Brazilian diplomats and health officials.
In implementing these policies and pressuring pharmaceutical companies,
based mostly in the global North, to lower the prices of ARV medication, Brazil
also enjoyed the support of other developing countries, including India, South
Africa and Thailand. This domestic and international mobilization later inspired
Brazilian state and government-affiliated agencies, especially the Oswaldo Cruz
Foundation (FIOCRUZ), a public health institution attached to the Ministry of
Health, to assist African countries in providing free access to ARV medication
(Mello e Souza 2012).
One of the most emblematic efforts in Brazil’s international cooperation
against HIV/AIDS in Africa has been the construction of a pharmaceutical
plant in Mozambique (Sociedade Moçambicana de Medicamentos). The factory, an

example of Brazil’s structuring cooperation, (Almeida et al. 2010) was meant to
be the first publicly owned drug manufacturing facility in Africa. Implicitly, the
factory was also designed as a showcase of the rights-based approach to health
that was developed in Brazil during the redemocratization process—which,
promoted abroad, could be interpreted as a case of democracy by association.
As a FIOCRUZ official working on the project has noted, ‘The factory belongs
to the Mozambican people and should be defended by the Mozambican people’
(FIOCRUZ 2012).
An additional motivation behind the factory project was the desire to enable
the Mozambican state to develop a degree of autonomy in addressing HIV/AIDS
and other diseases, as opposed to depending on medicine imports or donations
from Northern donors. FIOCRUZ officials responsible for the factory have stressed
that, since the Mozambican people are the true owners of the factory, it is up to the
Mozambican state to guarantee the plant’s capacity to provide medication for the
population needing treatment.14
Although the factory is being undertaken as a state-to-state project, the
policy model behind it was the product of widespread civil society mobilization
to pressure the Brazilian state to provide ARV medication to the affected
population. This mobilization was part of a strong popular movement during
Brazil’s redemocratization process, in which the recognition of public health
as a constitutional right became a central demand of civil society. Despite these
origins, the official discourse of Brazilian health cooperation abroad, including
in Mozambique, is heavily state-centric, with little acknowledgement of the
radically different political and institutional context. Because Mozambique
lacks the production chains, distribution channels, prevention mechanisms
and broader policies that made the system work in Brazil, the factory project
is politically disembedded—and its potential impact is highly uncertain at
best.15
14
Interview conducted by the authors with FIOCRUZ technician serving at the factory in the
Maputo province. Maputo, Mozambique, November 2013.
15
The factory’s impact on Mozambique’s approach to HIV/AIDS is also limited by competing
views by donors on how to address the epidemic. Interview by Danilo Marcondes with FIOCRUZ staff
member in Brasília, December 2014.
The political disembeddedness of Brazil’s technical cooperation

The ARV factory project departs from the typical technical cooperation in health
offered by Brazil in that it has entailed a physical plant; in Mozambique alone,
FIOCRUZ has also focused on institution building for national health schools
and programmes and has implemented a well-regarded breast milk bank project,
among other initiatives. Nevertheless, the factory project illustrates some of the
contradictions between Brazilian social policy innovations and their promotion
abroad through Brazil’s official South–South cooperation. Despite the highly
participatory manner in which many of Brazil’s social rights and policies developed
at home, the ministries and other government divisions engaged in South–South
cooperation tend to gloss over the complex socio-political trajectories of those
innovations. In other words, Brazilian cooperation in social policy, including
projects carried out in Africa, is disembedded from the political and institutional
context, including the participatory processes, in which they first originated and
in which they continue to function domestically.
Part of this disembeddedness has to do with the limited role that civil society
entities such as NGOs, labour unions, professional associations and universities play
in Brazilian technical cooperation. This applies not only to Brazilian civil society, but
also to local entities in partner states. On the Brazilian side, some NGOs, professional
associations and other non-state entities sometimes partner with Brazilian state
organizations as implementing agencies in technical cooperation. For instance, the
Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Industrial (SENAI), a Brazilian private non-profit
institution dedicated to professional and vocational training, is ABC’s biggest non-
state implementing institution in Africa. SENAI has helped to create training centres in
Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and it is currently working on projects in São
Tomé and Príncipe and Mozambique (Agência Brasileira de Cooperação n.d.). In other
instances, Brazilian civil society has played a reactive role, for instance when Brazilian
NGOs coordinate with African counterparts to challenge projects implemented
abroad by Brazilian state actors. The Rio de Janeiro-based NGO Federação de Órgãos
para Assistência Social e Educacional (FASE), which lists the promotion of human rights
among its main goals, has partnered with Mozambican civil society to question the
ProSavana project on the grounds that it favours export-oriented monoculture over
family agriculture, with negative local impacts (Mello 2012, 2013).
On the side of partner states in Africa, the inclusion of civil society entities
in technical cooperation projects has been rare, in democracies as well as
authoritarian states. In Mozambique, for instance, despite efforts by local NGOs
to band together in the fight against HIV/AIDS, the government has made only
sporadic efforts to integrate local NGOs in state-led efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
At any rate, the lack of resources in the tertiary sector further constrains NGOs’
ability to shape initiatives and policy in this area. Brazil’s cooperation, in the
meantime, has focused on supporting state institutions and training civil servants,
with no direct connection to local civil society organizations (All Africa 2010). As
observed by Cabral et al (2014) in the health sector,
The Brazilian approach largely bypasses local civil society and other development
agents, such as local and international NGOs and health professional councils,
whose participation in identifying priorities and needs with regard to national
development processes may be crucial to ensuring domestic ownership of the
initiatives implemented and their sustainability. (2014, 193)
The reluctance of Brazilian technical cooperation to include provisions for

local NGO participation is in part a reflection of the very limited way in which
civil society entities have been included in Brazil’s own foreign policymaking
process. Brazilian foreign policy circles have long resisted popular participation
and efforts to promote transparency, even though the MRE, often referred to as
a “black box”, no longer has a monopoly on foreign policymaking—in addition
to other government divisions, there are now presidential advisors and non-
state actors, including political parties, that regularly influence Brazil’s foreign
policymaking (Cason and Power 2009). Nonetheless, the Ministry has remained
resistant to sharing decision-making in foreign policy.
Adding to this aloofness is the relative lack of interest in foreign affairs,
including international cooperation, on the part of the Brazilian public and
by other government divisions, including the Congress (Diniz and Ribeiro
2008). Even when members of the government opposition questioned the

Lula government’s warm ties to autocratic regimes in Africa, such as Libya
under Muammar Ghaddafi, no concrete measures were taken to stop Brazil’s
cooperation with those regimes. Although a handful of NGOs and think tanks,
including Conectas, follow foreign policy closely, most Brazilian civil society
entities focus on domestic issues.
As a result of these different factors, the role of Brazilian civil society in Brazil’s
cooperation in Africa has not reflected its domestic function of broadening social
and political rights, even when the government provides incentives for greater
participation in cooperation. In 2012, for instance, the MRE allocated resources to
finance greater participation by Brazilian civil society organizations in international
debates and initiatives for food and nutritional security—signalling a greater
willingness by the Brazilian government to incorporate Brazilian civil society
entities as partners within certain niches of its official international cooperation
(Waisbich and Asano 2015). However, such efforts are incipient and will depend
in part on the capacity and willingness of Brazilian civil society organizations to
participate in technical cooperation. Even when Brazilian civil society entities do
participate in cooperation initiatives, their limited presence on the ground limits
the potential of collaborating in a sustained manner with local African civil society
organizations.
Finally, many Brazilian civil society organizations, including many that took
part in the redemocratization process, rely heavily on government funding, which
tends to curtail their political autonomy. As a result of the widespread alignment
of some Brazilian NGOs and the Workers Party, those involved in cooperation
with Africa tend to criticize individual projects, such as the previously mentioned
ProSavana initiative, but are reluctant to directly criticize the Workers Party-
led government. In addition, there are also entities linked to the foreign policy
legacy left by former President Lula. For instance, the Instituto Lula (Lula
Institute), headquartered in São Paulo, has become one of the key Brazilian non-
governmental institutions involved with Brazil-Africa relations, branding itself as
a ‘meeting-point between Brazil and Africa’.16 Former President Lula has travelled
extensively to African countries (visiting seven countries in 2013 alone) to promote
Brazilian business interests and social programmes in Africa, and the Institute’s
16
<http://www.institutolula.org/um-ponto-de-encontro-entre-o-brasil-e-a-africa/#.UxyeSD9_uuI>.
stance on Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa has been unfalteringly positive.

In addition, the Institute has been a key advocate with the Rousseff administration
for the need to keep Africa as a Brazilian foreign policy priority by stressing the
commitments made by her predecessor.
On the part of the MRE, the ministry claims that it wishes to proactively
open up communication channels with Brazilian civil society. In addition to the
aforementioned “dialogues” meant to provide input into Brazil’s first White Paper on
foreign policy, there are ongoing discussions between the government and organized
civil society entities in Brazil regarding the possibility of creating a National Foreign
Policy Council that would enhance civil society participation in foreign policy
debates. However, these moves have been met with scepticism by those who argue
that, rather than a truly institutionalized channel for dialogue, the initiative is meant
to appease critics and legitimate the Brazilian foreign policymaking process without
enhancing de facto participation and plurality in the area.17

As a result of the hermetic nature of Brazil’s foreign policymaking process,
some government divisions and agencies have, in essence, appropriated social
policy innovations that began as civil society-led initiatives. On the one hand, this
appropriation allows those organizations to legitimize the policies implemented
within the domestic sphere (Hirst 2012). On the other, it also facilitates the
disembedding of initiatives from their complex, frequently combative domestic
context. For example, the Sociedade Moçambicana de Medicamentos could benefit from
greater engagement not only from certain sectors of the Mozambican government,
but also from closer cooperation with local civil society organizations addressing
HIV/AIDS in the Mozambican context. This would echo the efforts undertaken
within Brazil related to the provision of ARVs, which have counted on political
will on the part of state actors, widespread mobilization of health institutions
anchored in a national health system, and active engagement by Brazilian civil
society organizations.
Brazil’s provision of technical cooperation in Africa thus resonates with Grimm
and Leininger’s concept of indirect democracy promotion, which includes efforts
that ‘improve basic conditions to create a favourable context for the transition to and
the survival of democracy’ (2012, 396). However, the political disembeddedness
of Brazilian cooperation points to the limits of Brazilian “democratization by
association”: although most Brazilian cooperation efforts may not be explicitly
geared at fomenting democracy and human rights, the incremental exposure
of government officials and other interlocutors to Brazilian programmes and
practices may foster political development in partner institutions and states
(Freyburg 2012; Leite et al 2013). Yet political disembeddedness suggests that
many Brazilian technical cooperation efforts in Africa are unlikely to have a deep,
consistent or lasting impact on African political culture and institutions.
The limitations of “democratization by association”

This paper has analysed Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa, focusing on
recent initiatives in social policy. Although Brazilian government divisions,
including the Ministry of External Relations, promote policy innovations that
came out of Brazil’s own experiences with redemocratization after 21 years of
17
Interview with Brazilian diplomat, conducted by Adriana Erthal Abdenur, Brasília, May 2014.
military rule, those cooperation initiatives are “disembedded” from the political
contexts in which they first emerged and in which they continue to operate.
This applies not only to small- and medium-scale projects that make up most of
Brazilian technical cooperation in social policy, but also to the structural projects
(projetos estruturantes)—larger projects that are designed to trigger incremental but
broader, even sectoral, change through strategic institution building.
Brazilian officials insist that the country’s official technical cooperation is
strictly demand driven; as one senior diplomat has put it, ‘We don’t have pre-
packaged solutions on the shelf; rather, we design projects from scratch depending
on the specific requests made by partner states and institutions.’18 This insistence
on the demand-driven character of Brazilian technical cooperation, however,
is sometimes used in a highly selective manner to deny interference in partner
states’ internal affairs and to gloss over the political disembeddedness of projects
that are implemented abroad.

Brazil’s approach is purportedly designed to “nudge” partner states towards
democracy and human rights by implementing technical cooperation projects that
improve people’s lives in concrete aspects. According to this rationale, Brazilian
technical cooperation in Africa enables economic growth and socioeconomic
development, therefore stimulating (albeit in an indirect manner) pressures for
democracy and respect for human rights. However, the impact of this approach on
local politics in Africa is highly uncertain, in part because this incremental support
can also help prevent challenges to non-democratic regimes by providing effective
solutions for grievances (Freyburg 2012). Even if Brazilian technical cooperation
has the potential to socialize actors in partner states, familiarizing civil servants
and institutions with policies and legislation from Brazil, this cooperation fails to
reflect its original political ethos. In the case of Brazil’s social policy innovations
in Africa, technical cooperation initiatives overlook the complex dynamics
between state and non-state actors that make those experiences possible in Brazil
in the first place. In turn, this political disembeddedness imposes constraints
on the effectiveness of technical cooperation efforts, since—when implemented
abroad—they are carried out within a vastly different ecology of institutions and
actors. Disembeddedness also confounds the impact that these initiatives have on
democracy and human rights in Africa, making Brazilian technical cooperation
unpredictable in terms of its effects on local politics.
Brazil’s political impact in Africa is also made uncertain by recent changes
in the Brazilian government, including in foreign policy. Under the Rousseff
administration, the MRE has been described as experiencing a reduction in
importance, reflected in the relatively narrow foreign policy agenda promoted by
the President’s office and magnified by government budget cuts that directly affect
South–South cooperation projects (Stuenkel 2014). Yet another factor rendering the
impact of Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa highly uncertain is the lack of
monitoring and accountability of projects and programmes being implemented.
The ABC’s overseas presence is limited, and providing follow-up on the medium-
and long-term effects of projects remains a key challenge.
More broadly, the political impetus to boost Brazil’s promotion of democracy
and human rights abroad remains weak. Apart from isolated instances in which
18
Remarks by a senior Brazilian diplomat at workshop held in Rio de Janeiro under Chatham
House rule in February 2015.
Brazilian civil society entities engage with counterparts in partner countries,

there are currently few domestic incentives in Brazil to advance a democracy
promotion agenda as part of the country’s relations with Africa. Other Brazilian
actors carrying out cooperation in African states, such as Brazilian multinationals
operating in the mining and construction sectors, have privileged regime stability
over political change. Even ministries and other government agencies, operating
under the discourse of non-interference, find it convenient to remain aloof from
the political dimensions of South–South cooperation. As a result, the principle of
non-indifference has done little to alter the ambiguity of Brazil’s commitments
to democracy and human rights as expressed through its technical cooperation.
Further research on the political dimension of Brazil’s South–South cooperation
should investigate local civil society perceptions of Brazilian cooperation as well
as the effects that the recent economic downturn has had on the country’s technical
cooperation efforts abroad.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Adriana Erthal Abdenur (PhD Princeton; AB Harvard) is a professor at the
Institute of International Relations at the Pontifical Catholic University in Rio
de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and a Senior Researcher at the BRICS Policy Center. Email:
Abdenur@bricspolicycenter.org
Danilo Marcondes is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and

International Studies at the University of Cambridge, and the holder of a CAPES-
Cambridge Trust Scholarship.
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ISSN: 0955-7571 (Print) 1474-449X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccam20

Democratization by association? Brazil’s social

Adriana Erthal Abdenur & Danilo Marcondes

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Democratization by association? Brazil’s social policy

Adriana Erthal Abdenur

© 2016 Department of Politics and International Studies

consolidating its democracy after 21 years of military rule, including partnerships

nudge partner states towards democracy and human rights—what we call

Democracy and human rights in Brazilian foreign policy

emphasis placed by the donors of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation

politics have begun to ask whether South–South cooperation fosters or hinders

entrench Brazil’s position on non-interference—both in relation to its own politics,

6 An Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Humanitarian Action encompassing 11 ministries was

Brazil–Africa cooperation in social policy

Brazilian cooperation in social policy

plant in Mozambique (Sociedade Moçambicana de Medicamentos). The factory, an

The political disembeddedness of Brazil’s technical cooperation

The reluctance of Brazilian technical cooperation to include provisions for

2008). Even when members of the government opposition questioned the

stance on Brazilian technical cooperation in Africa has been unfalteringly positive.

enhancing de facto participation and plurality in the area.17

The limitations of “democratization by association”

that are implemented abroad.

Brazilian civil society entities engage with counterparts in partner countries,

cooperation efforts abroad.

Danilo Marcondes is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics and

Development Policy Review, 32:2, 179–202

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