Interests or ideas? Explaining Brazil’s surge in peacekeeping and peacebuilding

Brazil is one of several rising powers that assumed greater protagonism in advancing peace on the global stage and in the Global South beginning in the early 2000s. In places like Haiti, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique, it expanded its peacekeeping deployments and exercised leadership on peacebuilding issues. What explains this notably increased activity on peace-related issues? In this article, I test four core theories of international relations – realism, liberalism, constructivism and post-colonial theory – to explain the rise and content of these policies in that country. Brazil has been vocal in its non-traditional approaches to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and this study examines its rhetorical claims through theoretical lenses. It aspires to bring systematic theoretical thinking to a case whose empirics have been used to support each of the four main theoretical approaches. I argue that interest-based theories such as realism and liberalism best account for the emergence of Brazil’s increased peacekeeping and peacebuilding initiatives in the early 2000s. However, idea-based constructivist and post-colonial approaches are necessary to account for the content of these approaches that reflect national identity and social and culturally historic experiences.