The role of cultural heritage in the admission exams for the Brazilian diplomatic career between 1995-2015

Abstract The selection of new members to occupy positions in the Brazilian federal bureaucratic framework changed progressively during the second half of the 1990s. If the initial orientation was characterized by the quantitative resumption of federal public tenders (1995-2002), post-2003, this trend sought to attract a greater diversity of social sectors in public careers — and the selection of diplomats was not alien to this process. The qualitative analysis of primary sources (documents) and secondary sources (literature review) showed that, along with initiatives already recognized in the literature — increase in the number of vacancies and remuneration, exemption from registration, among others — the very modification of questions formulated in the exams applied between 1995 and 2015 can be understood as a measure toward the alteration of the profile of those entering the diplomatic career. Between 1995 and 2004, the test evaluated and selected the candidates through questions of “general culture,” which privileged a certain “cultural heritage” reputed as a sign of social distinction and associated with an allegedly sophisticated social profile. However, between 2004 and 2015, there seems to have been a standardization of the new questions, which, moving away from the tacit requirements of cultural refinement, gave preference to other candidate profiles.