2022-01-24, Schenoni, Luis, Braniff, Sean, Battaglino, Jorge

¿Cómo se explica la Guerra de Malvinas? En este artículo revisitamos este episodio a través de un análisis contrafáctico utilizando nueva evidencia documental. Estas fuentes ponen en duda la tesis de la guerra de distracción y la tesis del error de cálculo. La evidencia sugiere que dinámicas de poder de largo plazo y sesgos psicológicos afectando a los miembros de la Junta militar argentina explican de mejor manera las decisiones que llevaron a la guerra.

2021-04, Schenoni, Luis

2021, Albertoni, Nicolás, Schenoni, Luis

2020-09-08, Merke, Federico, Reynoso, Diego, Schenoni, Luis

This article examines patterns of change and continuity in Latin American foreign policies. It asks two interrelated questions: How can we conceptually and empirically account for foreign policy change? And why do states change their foreign policies in Latin America? To answer these questions, we used the results of a new expert survey on foreign policy preferences in the region between 1980 and 2014. The results we obtained using both linear and nonparametric specifications are very clear and consistent: presidential ideology is what matters the most. Simply put, a change in the ideology of the president produces a change in foreign policy that is almost equivalent in magnitude, all other theoretically relevant factors set to their means.

2022-01-10, Schenoni, Luis, Ribeiro, Pedro Feliú, Lopes, Dawisson Belém, Casarões, Guilherme

In this article, we provide a framework to analyze the foreign policy overstretch of middle powers, that is, their recent tendency to expand foreign policy goals and ambitions beyond their capabilities. We propose that overstretch results from the interaction of permissive international environments and the collusion of domestic actors to produce foreign policy myths. These myths, in turn, justify unsustainable swelling of foreign policy expenditures until they are shattered. After laying out our theory, we test it against the case of twenty-first-century Brazil. First, we document how interest groups logrolled to foster and capitalize on a “myth of multipolarity,” which, once entrenched in elite discourse and public opinion, resulted in a tangible overgrowth of foreign policy. Second, we show the extent of overstretch across four indicators—number of embassies, participation in peacekeeping operations, membership in international organizations, and aid projects overseas—using the synthetic control method to compare Brazil with a plausible counterfactual.

2021, Moscuzza, Pierfrancesco, Schenoni, Luis

This chapter analyzes the latter period of hegemonic regime change in Latin America: the US role after 1945. To do so, it focuses on each and every breakdown of democracy that took place during the period to see how the United States influenced and reacted to it. Democratic breakdowns are key moments to determine the disposition of hegemons to influence regime change, and act as a window to the interest hegemons have and the method they employ to influence the outcome. This chapter's conclusions suggest that the role of the United States in promoting authoritarianism and democracy in Latin America has been very complex and mostly determined by Washington's perception of extra-hemispheric threats. While in general opposed to democratic collapse, the United States favored coups here and there, when it thought strategic interests were endangered.

2021, Inácio, Magna Maria, Chasquetti, Daniel, Welp, Yanina, Campos, Milagros, Lopez Garcia, Ana Isabel, Schenoni, Luis, Santana, Luciana, Mendes Da Rocha, Marta, Tumelero, Aglaé

Esta sección analiza las respuestas gubernamentales a la pandemia de COVID-19 en cinco países de América Latina: Argentina, Brasil, Perú, México y Uruguay. Los artículos abordan la evolución de la pandemia y la construcción de políticas de emergencia en estos países, con énfasis en las dinámicas de cooperación y conflicto entre presidentes, congresos, burocracias y gobiernos subnacionales. En conjunto, los artículos apuntan a factores que contribuyeron a diversos grados de gobernanza de la crisis, desde el liderazgo presidencial hasta los límites estructurales de la acción gubernamental. En particular, los estudios permiten una evaluación más exhaustiva de las respuestas de los presidentes, que varían entre la inacción presidencial, la retórica populista y la toma de decisiones políticamente costosa.

2022, Nolte, Detlef, Schenoni, Luis

Recent trends demonstrate that states with sufficient capabilities to be granted regional power status by its peers (primarily other states within their region) can nonetheless renounce regional leadership. This article analyzes the puzzling behavior of these detached or reluctant regional powers. We argue that resorting to an approach grounded in neoclassical realism is helpful to explain why regional powers might not exercise leadership. In this article regional leadership is conceptualized as an auxiliary goal within the grand strategy of a regional power. This goal will be pursued in the absence of certain structural and domestic constraints. Great power competition determines the incentives for regional leadership at the structural level. Capacity to extract and mobilize resources for foreign policy affects the decision to pursue leadership at the domestic level. We apply the analytical framework to analyze Brazil’s detachment from South America after the Cardoso and Lula presidencies.

2021, Shiraef, Mary A., Hirst, Cora, Weiss, Mark A., Naseer, Sarah, Lazar, Nikolas, Beling, Elizabeth, Straight, Erin, Feddern, Lukas, Taylor, Noah Rusk, Schenoni, Luis

Quantifying the timing and content of policy changes affecting international travel and immigration is key to ongoing research on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the socioeconomic impacts of border closures. The COVID Border Accountability Project (COBAP) provides a hand-coded dataset of >1000 policies systematized to reflect a complete timeline of country-level restrictions on movement across international borders during 2020. Trained research assistants used pre-set definitions to source, categorize and verify for each new border policy: start and end dates, whether the closure is "complete" or "partial", which exceptions are made, which countries are banned, and which air/land/sea borders were closed. COBAP verified the database through internal and external audits from public health experts. For purposes of further verification and future data mining efforts of pandemic research, the full text of each policy was archived. The structure of the COBAP dataset is designed for use by social and biomedical scientists. For broad accessibility to policymakers and the public, our website depicts the data in an interactive, user-friendly, time-based map.

2021, Schenoni, Luis, Leiva, Diego

Although Brazil remains a relatively small state in the Western Hemisphere it has recently developed notable international ambitions, and even challenged the US-led international order in key aspects. In this chapter, we develop the concept of dual hegemony to understand this puzzle. We propose that states firmly under the umbrella of a hegemon and insufficiently powerful to challenge a hierarchical order can develop a pretense to autonomy when true challengers like China create an alternative hierarchy. These dual hegemonies produce contradictory policies that subaltern governments have incentives to portray as a manifestation of their own agency, when in reality the bi-directional pull is largely beyond their control. These boundaries of autonomy and agency become manifest in key episodes when the subaltern state clearly tries to align fully either with hegemon or challenger, and finds it impossible to do. We illustrate this by account to three decades of Brazilian foreign policy. While the divergence from Washington during the Cardoso and Lula eras has been usually depicted as a successful quest for autonomy, we show the rise of China was the real structural condition undergirding those policies and an equally plausible explanation for five key foreign policy episodes. We then turn to another five diplomatic crises during the more recent Temer and Bolsonaro governments to show that even when Brazil wanted to bandwagon with the US, the global power transition continued to constrain its foreign policy. Dual hegemonies might be a necessary consequence of hegemonic transitions.