Measuring International Engagement: Systemic and Domestic Factors in Brazilian Foreign Policy from 1998 to 2014

FPI describes the relations of a reference country –Brazil in our case—with respect to its international peers. The FPI index can be defined as a measure of political engagement with a certain country at a certain time, both in the multilateral and bilateral arena, expressing the relative degree of the interaction between a reference country and its peer compared to other peers in time t, and also to that peer in other years. Insofar, the pattern of interactions with a country “x” can be looked relatively to the interactions observed with other countries (i.e. “y”, “z”), and can be used in empirical research as a proxy of the foreign policy agenda-priorities of the reference country. FPI takes into account data on: (a) the presidential international trips; (b) the similarity of the pattern of voting between Brazil and the country of reference in the United Nations General Assembly; (c) the existence of a Brazilian embassy in the country; (d) the number of signed and existing bilateral agreements, by country and year; (e) the conventions signed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; (f) the country's participation in regional integration mechanisms (MERCOSUR, UNASUR, CELAC, ACTO, LAIA); (h) the country's participation in inter-regional mechanisms (BRICS, CPLP, IBAS, Africa-South America Summit, Summit of South American-Arab Countries); (i) the degree of congruence between the country's positions and Brazil’s in international financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization; and (j) Annual Brazilian exports to each country.