Brazilian International Development Cooperation and Public Opinion: Domestic Costs Faced by a Troubled Emerging Donor

In recent decades, Brazil has established itself as an important donor to underdeveloped countries. Although the country does not see itself as a traditional donor, its IDC policy, in the context of South-South Cooperation, has increased the country’s international profile as an influential actor in the IDC landscape. However, emerging states, generally classified as middle-income countries, continue to suffer from high levels of poverty, which leads to debate on whether resources used in international aid could not be better used at home. The supply of foreign aid is influenced by public opinion in democratic donor countries; generally speaking, foreign aid is unpopular relative to domestic programs. This article, by means of an experimental design, analyzes Brazilian public support for the country’s IDC policy and engages with the emerging literature on Brazilian public opinion and foreign policy issues. It thus contributes to the discussion about the domestic costs of Brazil becoming an emerging donor. Our findings, based on a national survey of 2276 people, show that most respondents believe the country should reduce or eliminate foreign aid spending. Moreover, support decreases even more when participants are presented with information on how that money could have been used in the domestic realm.

In recent decades, Brazil has established itself as an important donor to underdeveloped countries. Although the country does not see itself as a traditional donor, its IDC policy, in the context of South-South Cooperation, has increased the country's international profile as an influential actor in the IDC landscape. However, emerging states, generally classified as middle-income countries, continue to suffer from high levels of poverty, which leads to debate on whether resources used in international aid could not be better used at home. The supply of foreign aid is influenced by public opinion in democratic donor countries; generally speaking, foreign aid is unpopular relative to domestic programs. This article, by means of an experimental design, analyzes Brazilian public support for the country's IDC policy and engages with the emerging literature on Brazilian public opinion and foreign policy issues. It thus contributes to the discussion about the domestic costs of Brazil becoming an emerging donor. Our findings, based on a national survey of 2276 people, show that most respondents believe the country should reduce or eliminate foreign aid spending. Moreover, support decreases even more when participants are presented with information on how that money could have been used in the domestic realm. Keywords: Brazilian foreign policy; foreign aid; public opinion; survey experiment. or the first time, other global powers have begun to recognize Brazil as an influential actor in the international arena (SCHIRM, 2012). Despite its lack of military capabilities, the country has achieved unprecedented international status due to the role it plays in multilateral fora and its active participation in international cooperation initiatives (CERVO, 2010). In this regard, previous authors have analyzed how Brazil's increasing influence in international affairs can be explained by its focus on cooperation strategies, as well as its prioritization of South-South relations (CHRISTENSEN, 2013;DAUVERGNE and FARIAS, 2012;INOUE and VAZ, 2012).
Brazilian diplomats and academics generally agree with the idea that the country's engagement with international cooperation is an instrument of foreign policy (LEITE et al., 2014). The literature on Brazilian Cooperation points out that this effort was motivated by new international ambitions, which aimed to expand the country's presence in global negotiations, international regimes and multilateral organizations. Thus, among the reasons related to the provision of International Development Cooperation (IDC), the ones most commonly mentioned in the literature are the search for closer ties with developing countries (CERVO, 1994;PINO and LEITE, 2010;PUENTE, 2010;VALLER FILHO, 2007), the search for 'greater voice' in international organizations (APOLINÁRIO JÚNIOR, 2016;HARDT, MOURON, and APOLINÁRIO JÚNIOR, 2017;HIRST, 2011) the search for support for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, an objective that became a priority for Brazilian foreign policy during the Lula administration (HIRST, LIMA and PINHEIRO, 2010), and the search for new markets for its national companies and exports (SOUZA, 2012;WARNER, 2015).
Nevertheless, most of the aforementioned studies have only analyzed the effects of Brazil's IDC policy on the country's international standing, without considering its domestic implications. Therefore, our aim in this study is to examine the domestic costs of Brazilian IDC policy as an example of how public opinion on foreign policy is sensitive to framing, given that the supply of foreign aid to recipients is influenced by public opinion in democratic donor countries.
States are usually influenced by their citizens in determining the amount of foreign aid they disburse (MOSLEY, 1985). Aid budgets usually rise in parallel with F have consistent opinions on foreign aid activities. Their findings support predictions that attitudes toward aid are influenced by cultural and material factors such as religion, beliefs about the causes of poverty, awareness of international affairs and trust in people and institutions.
Earlier research suggests that the public have consistent attitudes about foreign aid and that these attitudes matter. The general population may constrain elites, and may reflect elite views. Milner and Tingley's (2013) findings support the view that partisan debates in the United States over the role of aid match the public's overall preferences. The act of giving aid thus seems to reflect public attitudes. Noel and Thérien (2002) argue that attitudes to international redistribution are not a simple projection of attitudes about the domestic situation.
They claim that in countries where domestic income redistribution is seen as an important priority, foreign aid is less popular. Where this is less so, there is more concern for the fate of the poor in the global South. Instead of believing that this finding reflects a lack of coherence in public opinion, they conclude that, although the commitment to redistribution is stronger at the domestic level, relationships of solidarity do not stop at national boundaries. The achievement of justice at home in fact sustains justice abroad.
In relation to cultural characteristics, Baker (2015) explores the cultural effects of public support for aid, especially in relation to race and paternalism.
Contradicting the previous literature that believes that white Americans are less enthusiastic about welfare for non-white than white recipients, they find that when it comes to foreign aid, white Americans are more favorable toward aid to poor non-whites than to poor white people. They argue that this relationship is due to an underlying racial paternalism. Their research is based on experimental data in which the race of hypothetical aid recipients was randomly manipulated.
However, Milner and Tingley (2013)  factors in driving attitudes toward aid will be best obtained from a sustained experimental agenda that includes survey experiments.
Following this trend, Hurst, Tidwell and Hawkins (2017), by means of a survey experiment, analyze whether framing effects can impact public views on foreign aid. Contrasting arguments in favor of and against foreign aid, they find that the way in which the supply of aid is presented to the public has an impact on support, especially in the case of arguments related to the cost of aid.
Although there is a consolidated literature that analyzes the relationship between public opinion and the provision of foreign aid by developed countries (BAKER, 2015;HURST, TIDWELL and HAWKINS, 2017;MILNER and TINGLEY, 2010;MOSLEY, 1985;NOEL and THÉRIEN, 2002;PAXTON and KNACK, 2012;STERN, 1998), work is in the pipeline that evaluates the domestic costs of the foreign aid provided by developing countries, generally referred to as South-South There is no consensus on the definition of SSC but it is generally used to designate a wide range of phenomena regarding relations between developing countries. However, the term can also refer to specific actions taken by a government to promote economic development in underdeveloped countries, such as technical and financial assistance (LEITE, 2012). 3 According to a study conducted by Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil in 2011, the Brazilian government provided more international aid than it received from other countries and multilateral agencies between 2005 and 2009 (ROSSI, 2011). However, Brazil continues to be a recipient of foreign aid at the international level, which is one of the reasons why the country seeks to distance itself from the official DAC/OECD terminology (MILANI, 2018). 4 This study uses this narrower conception of South-South Cooperation for Development, using the terms foreign aid and IDC to refer to the same phenomenon. 5 See the glossary of OECD statistical terms (OECD, 2019). However, the students had some difficulty in associating the term with the phenomenon we intended to analyze. It is worth remembering that there is no consensus on the concept of cooperation and it is generally used to designate a wide range of phenomena associated with relations between countries. In this sense, the expression refers to policies of exchange, dialog and rapprochement between countries, both bi-and multilaterally. Nonetheless, the term can be used in a more specific sense to designate the actions carried out by a government to promote economic development in another country. In this sense, the term resembles the traditional concept of foreign aid. Thus, it was found that students had a better sense of the phenomenon when we used the term 'foreign aid' rather than 'development cooperation'. Respondents were asked about the importance of 'helping people around the world who live in precarious situations', and, taking those answers as a reference, the authors created an indicator that ranged from zero to seven (zero = not at all important; seven = very important). Despite living in the least developed country in the sample, Brazilians, with an average of 6.23, most enthusiastically supported helping people in precarious situations (AZEVEDO et al., 2009, p. 353). This finding prompted some scholars to conclude that there is strong internal support for what they referred to as a 'humanistic' and 'solidarity-based' foreign policy 7 (FARIA and PARADIS, 2013). Notably, during the same years, significant domestic debate began to focus on the question of whether Brazil should play an active role as a foreign donor. This literature has addressed issues such as the desirability of regional leadership (ALMEIDA, ONUKI and CARNEIRO, 2014); Brazil playing an active role in scenarios of regional conflict and financial assistance to less developed countries ; public perceptions regarding the emerging Chinese-American rivalry (URDINEZ and RODRIGUES, 2017); regional leadership in material and institutional terms regarding regional issues such as economic integration, regime change and regional conflict ( However, in the updated survey report, support for leadership dropped to 27% (ALMEIDA et al., 2017). Onuki, Mouron and Urdinez (2016) found that most Brazilians reject the idea of Brazil playing an active role in scenarios of regional conflict and financial assistance to less developed countries. Guimarães, Fernandes and Maldonado (2019) found that when the Brazilian public is confronted with scenarios involving costly decisions, especially in terms of regime change and regional conflicts scenarios, the public tends to reject regional leadership, choosing instead options in which Brazil does not act as a leader. Almeida, Fernandes and Guimarães (2019) show that the Brazilian public opinion is more structured and stable than previously thought. Adding to the literature at a regional level, Onuki, Mouron and Urdinez (2016) found that the Argentinian public are sensitive to framing effects, especially concerning Brazilian leadership.
In general, these results indicate that the Brazilian public has a skeptical view of the concept of Brazil playing a more active role in international affairs, especially when material costs are involved, and it is more structured and stable than previously thought.
Therefore, dialoging with the literature on Brazilian public opinion and foreign policy issues, we ask whether Brazilians are truly so supportive of the country's foreign aid policy, and how critical discourses impact public opinion on this issue.

Brazilian public opinion revisited
Are Brazilians in favor of helping poor countries?
The public, through approval or disapproval, influences the actions of policy-makers (BURSTEIN, 2003). Members of the Executive and Legislative branches are aware that they are accountable, and therefore try to respond to -or anticipate -public opinion as a way to remain in power and/or win elections (HOLSTI, 1992;TINGLEY 2010, 2013). With respect to foreign aid initiatives, previous studies in developed countries have shown that taxpayer opinion helps determine the quantity and quality of the aid disbursed (MOSLEY, 1985). In other words, countries with higher levels of public support for aid tend to spend more on helping developing nations (STERN, 1998 and KATZ, 2000), as was the case in the aforementioned study.
Therefore, we expect that if participants are asked to give an opinion about Brazilian foreign aid itself, instead of a personal statement on whether they agree with helping others, support for spending money on foreign aid will be lower (H1).

A tool used in the domestic debate
It is widely understood that domestic and foreign policy are intrinsically related. Since Putnam (1988) showed that national leaders think about both national and international outcomes while ratifying an international agreement, many studies have sought to analyze the interaction between the two spheres. In general, both incumbents and opposition candidates appear to spend time and effort campaigning on foreign and defense policies only when they believe this can bring them electoral benefits (ALDRICH, SULLIVAN and BORGIDA, 1989 Brazilian support for cooperation initiatives will diminish when the participants are given information on how money currently used for foreign aid could be otherwise applied to domestic social policies (H3).

Analyzing public opinion in detail
Finally, previous studies that addressed the question of Brazilian support for foreign aid dismissed the fact that support for foreign aid is not homogeneous but rather influenced by political and socioeconomic variables. Taking these studies into account, we analyze whether these socioeconomic and political variables affect Brazilians' perceptions of foreign aid.

Methodology
Our data come from an online survey experiment conducted between July 28 and August 10, 2016, using a Brazilian national representative sample. To ______________________________________________________________________________________________ 13 It is worth noting that the BNDES does not directly finance projects abroad. What the Bank finances is the export of Brazilian engineering goods and services (BNDES, 2018).  Regarding the effects of framing, the results of the cross-tab analysis showed that the treatment groups, control group and dependent variable are associated (Table   04 -Annexes), and the results are statistically significant22. However, it is important to note that the direction of the effect differed depending on the type of information with which the respondent was stimulated. If the framing was in absolute terms, the effect relative to the control group was positive. In this situation, the respondent was more likely to answer that he/she preferred to 'Maintain' or 'Increase' the policy. In contrast, when the respondent was given the 'trade-off' information, the effect became negative, and the person was more likely to answer that the country should 'Reduce' or 'Eliminate' foreign aid. Figure 01 illustrates the effects of framing on Brazilian public opinion on foreign aid. As a robustness check, we ran logistic models including the control variables (Table 02). The cross-tabulation analysis was made comparing the four groups and shows a difference between the behavior of participants depending in each group there were assigned. These differences of behavior were statistically tested by a chi-square test of the cross-tabulation (Table  05 -Annexes), which indicates that there is enough evidence to suggest that these differences are statically significant.  These results confirmed the cross-tab findings (Table 04 -Annexes) and provided new information. The results of models 03 and 04 indicated that the act of assigning a participant to a treatment or the control group affected the person's perceptions on this issue, even when controlling for socioeconomic and political variables.
Additionally, the variables that were statistically significant in explaining public support for foreign aid, when including treatments effects, are as follows: This methodological approach emphasizes the importance of public debates and framing effects in designing public policies.
______________________________________________________________________________________________ 23 Although the results for Brazil's image and its relevance were significant, we do not discuss them in the next section. These two questions occurred prior to the treatments and discussing their answers is beyond the scope of this article. achieve this objective, the country increased its number of embassies, pursued an assertive diplomatic strategy in multilateral organizations, and expanded its cooperation initiatives to ultimately become a foreign aid donor. However, now that the country is enduring a severe economic and political crisis, the feasibility of this assertive foreign policy is being questioned (CERVO and LESSA, 2014;MALAMUD, 2017).  2016a, 2016b). Available at ˂http://ultimosegundo.ig.com.br/politica/2016-06-16/brasil-estuda-deixar-34-organizacoesinternacionais-para-reduzir-custos.html˃ and ˂http://economia.ig.com.br/2016-04-15/brasildeve-r-32-bilhoes-a-120-orgaos-internacionais-como-onu-e-oms.html˃. Moreover, our findings suggest that subgroups of the Brazilian population, such as older people and those living in the South, tend to have a more negative view of foreign aid. These results could be exploited by candidates able to address the concerns of these specific groups.
Second, our article provides insight into emerging countries' cooperation initiatives. Although each case has its own particularities, Brazil is one of a group of developing countries that have expanded their foreign aid policies in recent years (RENZIO and SEIFERT, 2014). One commonality among these nations is the fact that they strengthened their foreign aid policies as their economies were growing and it was projected that their progress toward development would not suffer major setbacks. However, this situation has radically changed for many countries in the last few years. Given the European crisis and the Chinese economic slowdown, most of these developing countries are now going through economic crises that necessarily impact their ability to pursue an active foreign aid policy. Hence, our results can be extrapolated to other developing countries, especially those democracies in which public opinion constrains foreign policy formulation.
Finally, from a more general perspective, our results are relevant to scholars who are interested in how foreign issues can be used by politicians to gain advantage at the national level. It is common for opposition candidates to use foreign policy topics to criticize incumbent candidates. For example, British politicians who supported 'Brexit' successfully framed the money paid to the European Union by contrasting how that funding could be used in the public health service 27 . Our findings suggest that, if skillfully deployed, criticisms regarding the amount of money spent on foreign aid can be utilized to gain votes from a significant portion of the electorate. In another sense, understanding the determinants of support for foreign aid can help the policy makers conceive better arguments in favor of aid, and help them design policies more consistent with public preferences. d) Party identification "Abaixo você vê uma lista dos partidos políticos que participaram da última eleição presidencial. Marque qual deles recebeu seu voto no primeiro turno" Below, you will see a list of the political parties that participated in the last presidential election. Indicate which of them received your vote in the first round:

Revised by Fraser Robinson
The list included all the political parties that received at least 0.5% of the votes, together with the options "Other", "I did not vote" and "I do not remember". e) Political ideology "Pensando na sua orientação política, onde você se aloca na seguinte escala, na qual 0 significa "politicamente de esquerda" e 10 "politicamente de direita"?" Thinking about your political orientation, where do you place yourself on the following scale, with 0 meaning "politically left" and 10 "politically right"? A scale with the options 0 to 10 was presented. 07.