Without Sticks or Carrots: Brazilian Leadership in South America During the Cardoso Era, 1992-2003*

Throughout the Fernando Henrique Cardoso presidency Brazil actively pursued a South American leadership project. The distinctive and central feature of this policy was its attempt to operate without the coercion or explicit payoffs often associated with ‘leading’ in mainstream international relations literature. Instead, efforts were devoted to constructing an inclusive project that sought extended and unconscious cooperation from other states through a transfer of ‘ownership’ of the continental project. An examination of three cases – the 1994 Summit of the Americas, interregionalism and South American infrastructure integration – is used to demonstrate the techniques employed by Brazil as well as to highlight the limitations implicit in the Brazilian leadership strategy.