A Comparative Analysis of Brazil's Foreign Policy Drivers Towards the USA: Comment on Amorim Neto (2011)

This paper looks at the main finding by Amorim Neto (2011), namely that Brazil's power explains why it distanced itself from the country that had once been its great ally in the first half of the last century. We propose an alternative explanation grounded on the realist literature in IR. Ultimately, we seek to determine whether the variable has behaved in the same way for other South American countries, searching for independent variables that could help us explain a visible pattern in the region: the increasing distancing from the United States (USA) at the United Nations General Assembly. We want to contribute to the debate initiated by Amorim Neto (2011) and Schenoni (2012) for future research in the recent field of quantitative analysis of Brazilian Foreign Policy. Using Panel Corrected Standard Error analysis in ten South American countries from 1970 to 2007 we empirically prove that the lower the power gap between a South American country and the U.S., the lower its alignment with the USA in the UN General Assembly voting.

本研究聚焦Amorim Neto（2011）提出的核心论点，即巴西的国家实力是其在上世纪上半叶与曾为亲密盟友的国家渐行渐远的原因。我们提出一种基于国际关系（International Relations，简称IR）领域现实主义理论的替代性解释。本研究最终旨在验证该变量是否在其他南美国家中呈现相同的变化趋势，并探寻能够解释该区域显著现象的自变量：即南美国家在联合国大会（UN General Assembly）中与美国（United States，简称USA）的疏离程度日益加深。我们希望为Amorim Neto（2011）与Schenoni（2012）发起的相关学术辩论做出贡献，以期推动巴西外交政策定量分析这一新兴领域的后续研究。本研究针对1970年至2007年间的10个南美国家采用面板校正标准误（Panel Corrected Standard Error）分析方法，实证证明：南美国家与美国的实力差距越小，其在联合国大会投票中与美国的投票一致性就越低。