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.

本研究聚焦阿莫里姆·内托（Amorim Neto）2011年提出的核心结论：巴西的实力足以解释其为何与这个曾在上世纪上半叶堪称其重要盟友的国家渐行渐远。我们基于国际关系（International Relations, IR）现实主义理论提出了一种替代性解释。最终，我们旨在验证该变量在其他南美国家是否呈现一致的变化规律，并搜寻能够解释该区域显著趋势的自变量：即联合国大会（United Nations General Assembly）投票中，南美国家与美国（United States, USA）的疏离程度持续加剧。我们希望为阿莫里姆·内托（2011）与申奥尼（2012）发起的相关学术辩论提供补充，以期推动巴西外交政策定量分析这一新兴研究领域的后续探索。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, PCSE）分析法开展实证检验，最终证明：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程度就越低。