The Tasks of Foreign Policy in the Brazilian Constitutional Order

public policy with permanent and conjunctural objectives

Abstract

The debate concerning the particular status of foreign policy in the realm of public action has generated numerous publications in Brazil, without reaching consensus. Scholars, diplomats, and commentators are divided in classifying that policy as “State policy”, “government policy”, or “public policy”, although they tend to choose the first option. In the light of it, the article seeks to advance in analytical terms with respect to the current understanding of what foreign policy is from a theorical point of view and of what tasks it performs. The article utilizes the distinction made between policy, politics, and polity (COUTO; ARANTES, 2006) in order to defend the exclusive use of the term “public policy” when defining the concept of foreign policy. This use has the merits of explicitly grounding foreign policy on the Brazilian constitutional order and thus makes it possible to attribute to it tasks linked to permanent objectives of the political community (polity) and to the conjunctural objectives of government that result from the political competition (politics).