Monika Sawicka - Böcker

In Brazil’s International Activism Monika Sawicka questions how Brazil’s deep-rooted craving for greatness has led to the quest for status in the twenty-first century and contends that the categorization of Brazil as an “emerging middle power” enriches the understanding of modern Brazilian foreign policy.Drawing on the rich vocabulary of role theory, Sawicka sets out to establish an original theoretical framework that comprises the structural (status), the behavioral (role), and the cognitive-ideational (identity) to assess whether Brazil has performed roles distinguishing a middle power and how the state has reconceptualized them. The model is applied to scrutinize how ideational and material drivers impacted Brazil’s engagement as an integrator in Latin America, donor in Africa, mediator in the Middle East, and coalition-builder of developing states in global fora. Despite recent criticism of the concept of “emerging middle powers”, Sawicka argues that Brazil’s international activism stands as a precise embodiment of such a power.With an aim of theory development and contributing to the debate on Brazil’s international standing, Brazil’s International Activism provides a much-required reinterpretation of Brazilian foreign policy which will be of interest to scholars and students of Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations and Latin-American Studies.

In Brazil’s International Activism Monika Sawicka questions how Brazil’s deep-rooted craving for greatness has led to the quest for status in the twenty-first century and contends that the categorization of Brazil as an “emerging middle power” enriches the understanding of modern Brazilian foreign policy.Drawing on the rich vocabulary of role theory, Sawicka sets out to establish an original theoretical framework that comprises the structural (status), the behavioral (role), and the cognitive-ideational (identity) to assess whether Brazil has performed roles distinguishing a middle power and how the state has reconceptualized them. The model is applied to scrutinize how ideational and material drivers impacted Brazil’s engagement as an integrator in Latin America, donor in Africa, mediator in the Middle East, and coalition-builder of developing states in global fora. Despite recent criticism of the concept of “emerging middle powers”, Sawicka argues that Brazil’s international activism stands as a precise embodiment of such a power.With an aim of theory development and contributing to the debate on Brazil’s international standing, Brazil’s International Activism provides a much-required reinterpretation of Brazilian foreign policy which will be of interest to scholars and students of Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations and Latin-American Studies.

This book explores democratic fragility, an underdeveloped concept in the analyses of contemporary political regimes. Diagnoses of fragility commonly occur when states are brought to the brink of the abyss. Democracy and Its Fragility: Mapping the Unstable Equilibrium builds on the premise that fragility is an inherent trait of democracy that expresses its exposure to disintegration yet does not foretell its death.Employing a novel conceptual lens that seeks to scrutinize the stability of contemporary democratic regimes across the world, the book offers a twofold contribution that provides new leverage for analysis. Theoretically, it refines the notion of fragility, making it a complementary variable to the latest research on robustness and resilience. Empirically, the volume engages with an overview of fragility indicators featured in indices mapping the quality of democracy and an assessment of their limitations. What follows are in-depth qualitative case studies zooming into the struggles for democratic regime maintenance and response to a variety of unfavourable conditions in 13 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Southern Europe and the Americas.Addressing issues that are both conceptually advanced and highly accessible, Democracy and Its Fragility: Mapping the Unstable Equilibrium will attract academics and students of democracy studies, politics and government, and comparative politics.