Oliveira, Rodrigo Regazonni de
(2011)
respeito da relação entre os congressistas e a produção da política externa brasileira de integração regional, em particular. Apesar de não ignorarmos o papel predominante do Poder Executivo na formulação e condução da política externa nacional, e nem a...
This study examines the positioning of members of Congress ahead with negotiations for the formation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), to focus his attention on the Senate, with occasional incursions by the Chamber of Deputies. The period defined by us include, respectively, the release of the proposal for continental integration, which occurred in the first Summit of the Americas, USA, in 1994, by the year 2005, which highlighted the paralysis of the negotiating process. Two factors encouraged us to perform this task. First, get to test the thesis, spread by common sense, that Parliament does not show interest in issues or international affairs. Second, provide a contribution to the scant literature available on the relationship between lawmakers and the production of Brazilian foreign policy of regional integration in particular. Altholgh we do not ignore the predominant role of the Executive in the formulation and conduct of national foreign policy, and neither proven lack of formal decision-making and participatory mechanisms available to Parliament to act on the different facets of this plan, we assess the extent to which parliamentary activity restricted or not, in practice, the exercise of approve or reject propositions about foreign policy, as pointed out by common sense. The controversial character of the negotiations and discussions that took place in Brazil on the establishment of the FTAA, for over a decade, has led us to wonder what would have been the positioning of Congress with respect to the subject, whether they had expressed interest to engage more intensively with the issue, or if allowed to discuss it only on occasion when it was submitted in the form of an agreement, at its discretion. The preparation of this work was guided by the desire to achieve answers to two questions for us: the absence of formal mechanisms of parliamentary participation in the FTAA negotiations would have reflected a supposed lack of interest among the senators question? To what extent this absence that would not have compelled the Parliament to seek to influence the process by other means, or even encouraged demands for expansion of its constitutional role in dealing with external? To help answer such questions, we use the shorthand especially Pickup pronouncements made by Senators, Congressmen prepared by the Propositions and Stenographic Notes and Minutes Public Hearings Commissions promoted by the National Congress....