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

The literature on Latin American Foreign Policy Analysis has long called for more empirical and theoretical rigor. Because foreign policy making is a multifaceted concept, there is a wide array of outcomes that scholars use interchangeably to proxy it, thus leading to unclear results on its main determinants. Using Brazil as a case study, we offer a methodological tool that, we believe, can contribute to further close this gap. We developed an index that quantifies the level of foreign policy engagement taking into account the decisions made by different governmental actors for 192 country dyads along 16 years.