Brazil:Two Presidents, Two Paths- Why Conservatives Can’t Dictate Foreign Policy
Clarita Costa Maia is a Legislative Consultant at the Brazilian Federal Senate and Chair of the International Relations Committee of the Brazilian Bar Association, Federal District Section (OAB-DF).
Brazil’s Parliament was born debating the country’s place in the world. In the first sessions of the imperial General Assembly, lawmakers contested the treaties through which independence had been recognized — commitments widely regarded as detrimental to national interests — at a time when the Constitution of 1824 vested treaty-making almost entirely in the emperor. Debates over the Río de la Plata conflicts and the Paraguayan War extended that scrutiny to sovereignty, alliances, military expenditure and the limits of executive authority. That early assertiveness, however, never became a permanent feature of Brazilian parliamentary life. For most of the Republic, Congress has reacted to foreign policy rather than shaped it.
The Constitution of 1988 preserves that division of labor while arming the legislature with considerable instruments. Article 84, VII and VIII, entrusts the President of the Republic with maintaining relations with foreign states and concluding treaties, subject to the referendum of the National Congress, and Article 49, I, grants Congress exclusive authority to resolve definitively on treaties that entail burdensome charges or commitments to national assets. Article 49, II, requires congressional authorization to declare war or make peace. Article 52, IV and V, gives the Senate exclusive power to approve, by secret ballot after a closed-session hearing, the heads of permanent diplomatic missions, and to authorize external financial operations. Article 50 and Article 58, § 2, allow both chambers and their committees to summon ministers, hold public hearings and demand information. Article 4 sets out the principles governing Brazil’s international relations, and Article 5, § 3, grants human-rights treaties approved by a qualified majority the status of constitutional amendments.
In practice, treaties travel through the Foreign Relations and National Defense Committees — the CREDN in the Chamber of Deputies, under Article 32, XV, of its Internal Rules, and the CRE in the Senate, under Article 103 of the Senate’s Internal Rules — before being approved by legislative decree, most of them by consensus and with little debate. The asymmetry is structural. Itamaraty, the foreign ministry, commands technical expertise, institutional memory and diplomatic networks; Congress depends on committee staff and on lawmakers willing to invest political capital in issues whose consequences voters rarely perceive. Career diplomats seconded as advisers improve the technical quality of deliberations, but they raise the question of whether the legislature can form a view of its own rather than reproduce the executive’s.
The 2002 presidential election and Lula’s first administration brought foreign policy into party platforms and gave the committees new visibility in debates on regional integration, trade, human rights and security. Prestige, however, is not power. These committees attract lawmakers drawn to demanding subjects of international reach, but they hold no direct sway over budgets, taxation, infrastructure or the allocation of public funds. That is why a highly regarded committee may rank low when parties bargain over chairmanships — and why the composition of the next Congress does not settle who will lead it.
The 58th Legislature, which convenes in February 2027, reflects a marked strengthening of the right. In the Senate, the Liberal Party (PL) elected 28 senators, followed by the Workers’ Party (PT) with 9, the MDB with 8, the PP and União Brasil with 6 each, Republicanos and the PSD with 5, the PSB with 4 and Novo with 3, Podemos and PSDB with 2 each, PDT and Rede with 1 each, concluding with a Senator without a party. It would be tempting to infer that a conservative majority will produce a parliamentary diplomacy in its own image. That would be premature.
Article 58, § 1, of the Constitution requires committees to reflect, as far as possible, the proportional representation of parties and parliamentary blocs, a rule echoed in the Internal Rules of both chambers. Proportionality, however, governs seats, not chairmanships, which are elected by committee members by secret ballot under agreements negotiated beforehand by party leaders. Applied mechanically to the Senate’s 16 standing committees (seats × 16 ÷ 81), the arithmetic would give the PL 5.53 chairs, the PT 1.78, the MDB 1.58, the PP and União Brasil 1.19 each, Republicanos and the PSD about 0.99, the PSB 0.79 and Novo 0.59. No one can chair a fraction of a committee, and nothing obliges the outcome to mirror these figures; they merely frame a negotiation that bloc formation can reshape.
The harder contest is over which committees each party takes. The Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Committee (CCJ), which scrutinizes constitutional amendments and, in the Senate, nominations to the Supreme Federal Court and the office of Prosecutor General, and the Economic Affairs Committee (CAE), with its reach over financial and tax matters, will be the most coveted, followed by Infrastructure, Agriculture, Public Security and Regional Development. Foreign Affairs and Human Rights are no less important constitutionally, but they offer thinner electoral returns: a road or a budget amendment can be shown to voters, whereas treaty oversight and diplomatic hearings produce diffuse, long-term effects.
How chairmanships are shared out in 2027–2031 will therefore depend not only on caucus size but on who wins the presidency. The same Congress may order its priorities differently under a fourth Lula administration or a first Flávio Bolsonaro administration — and nowhere more visibly than in the Foreign Affairs and Human Rights committees.
A re-elected Lula would preserve a diplomacy grounded in multilateralism, South–South cooperation and an anti-United States and anti-Israel bias, while facing a strengthened conservative bloc. The opposition might well claim the Foreign Affairs committees of both chambers to scrutinize Itamaraty. Yet a chairmanship carries an opportunity cost, and a numerically stronger opposition might prefer panels with greater domestic resonance, leaving foreign policy and human rights to smaller parties, including those in the governing coalition.
A Flávio Bolsonaro victory, pairing a conservative executive committed to a markedly new foreign-policy direction with a conservative-leaning Congress, would invert the incentives. For minority parties, these committees would become platforms for hearings, the summoning of ministers under Article 50 and the scrutiny of diplomatic commitments, valued for their visibility at home and abroad rather than for budgetary leverage. The Middle East is the clearest test. The Bolsonarist camp’s affinity with Israel contrasts with sections of the left that champion Palestinian claims and criticize Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. Neither camp is uniform, but the divide is sharp enough to make the Israeli–Palestinian question the centerpiece of an opposition agenda on alignments, multilateral bodies and human rights.
Several caveats apply in either scenario. Committees do not supplant the President in the conduct of foreign relations, and chairs cannot impose decisions on their members: their power lies in setting the agenda, designating rapporteurs and giving controversies institutional prominence — real, but bounded by the Internal Rules and the committee’s balance of forces.
Minority parties will not win these chairs merely by wanting them; a stronger PL and its allies may claim them or trade them for higher priorities. Nor does a conservative majority speak with one voice on trade, regional integration, defense, or relations with the United States, China, the European Union and the Middle East.
Timing matters too. Senate committee chairs serve two-year terms, renewed at the start of the first and third legislative sessions, while the Chamber elects its chairs annually. The 2027 arrangement can thus be reopened in 2028, 2029 and 2030 in the Chamber and in 2029 in the Senate, and a diplomatic crisis can turn an unattractive committee into a national stage overnight.
There is, then, no necessary correspondence between a conservative majority, control of the committees and the direction of parliamentary diplomacy.
The paradox of the new legislature may be that the majority will shape the allocation of posts, only to discover that those it deemed secondary generate the most visible clashes.
Beyond committees, the Senate’s vote on ambassadors, congressional review of treaties, parliamentary friendship groups and interparliamentary delegations give Parliament concrete means of influencing Brazil’s international engagement.
Using them requires political will, technical knowledge and organization — and a readiness to treat foreign policy as a matter of national interest rather than another arena in which to support or oppose the government.
The imperial Parliament showed that the legislature can contest the executive’s international commitments; the Constitution of 1988 supplies the instruments for that role to be more than ceremonial.
The right may command a majority of the votes. That does not necessarily mean it will control Parliament’s international agenda. In parliamentary diplomacy, as in so much of politics, winning at the ballot box is only the beginning of the contest and of the political calculus.
Source: Clarita Costa Maia
