Parliamentary Supervision of Brazilian Foreign Policy: An analysis of Approval of Authorities

This article seeks to address the question of how the Federal Senate acts in approving the appointment of authorities to lead diplomatic missions and to determine if the decision-making process on foreign policy is similar to the handling of other matters. It therefore aims to contribute to the debate about the action of lawmakers in the foreign policy decision-making process in Brazil and in the understanding of the elements that influence the approval process of authorities by the Federal Senate. To do so, it gathers statistics on the elements that influence the results of voting on authorities, measured in terms of the time taken for approval and the rate of favorable votes, and specifically the appointment of chiefs of permanent diplomatic missions. The article’s results point to a similar pattern of legislative supervision for foreign policy and other public policies. These corroborate the article’s filiation with legislative trends, according to which party rivalries set the tone for the relationships between Executive and Legislative Powers in Brazilian presidentialism. Although approval of diplomatic authorities displays specific characteristics, such as the presence of lengthy approval cases, they remained aligned with the pattern observed in other cases of senatorial deliberation.

Starting with the question 'how the Federal Senate acts in supervising the Presidency in its foreign policy decisions', an analysis of the approval process of diplomatic authorities from May 1998 to December 2014 then followed. Through a compilation of statistics on this process, a description of different variables on the results of senatorial deliberation was created. The hypothesis that guides the empirical analysis is that the decision-making process on foreign affairs issues in the Senate has a pattern that is similar to other matters. The approval of heads of permanent diplomatic missions is therefore affected by political party factors, similar to those that condition deliberation over other authorities, which would include presidential term and composition of the Senate. This similarity is noted in a first analysis by the elevated approval rate of all of the names submitted to the Senate for nomination.
The article was divided into six sections, including this introduction. The second section will address the relationship between Brazilian foreign policy, understood as public policy, and the National Congress, based on other studies on the subject. The third section addresses parliamentary supervision and is based on studies on the authority approval process in Brazil and worldwide. In the fourth section, the general pattern for approval of authorities is analyzed by category of appointment and the relationship between government and opposition. The fifth section presents an analysis of the appointment of heads of permanent diplomatic missions. Finally, the sixth section presents the article's conclusions

Brazilian foreign policy and the National Congress
Studying foreign policy implies an effort to understand the processes that result in a State's decision on a determined issue that has external effects. This is considered an arena of different competing interests. In this context, the Legislative Power deserves analytical attention, locating this field of study at the nexus of political science and international relations. However, such a multifaceted understanding of foreign policy is not a consensus, and some practitioners and scholars view foreign policy as the result of a process with few actors and predominant systemic elements.
Reflection on Brazilian foreign policy has been advancing toward recognition of its status as a public policy, as argued by Milani and Pinheiro (2013), due to its domestic distributional effects, especially in terms of national development, as presented by Spohr and Silva (2017). Foreign policy is therefore subject to the influence of other powers, especially by the Legislative. Even if the 1988 Constitution grants great prerogative to the Executive Power in the conduct of Brazilian foreign policy (BRAZIL, 2014), Congress has instruments of supervision and influence over the activities of the Presidency and of the MFA, which help shape the direction of foreign policy. As in the execution of other Federal Government activities, mechanisms of checks and balances must direct policies that serve the will of the Brazilian people, as manifested at the ballot box.
The framing of foreign policy as a public policy is not a phenomenon introduced by Brazilian literature. The topic has been gaining ground in research on political science and international relations through empirical and theoretical studies, such as those by Jozef Bátora (2010), Fred Kaiser (1977, Robert Putnam (1988), Thomas Risse-Kappen (1991), and James Rosenau (2006 and a thorough study on the legislative instruments is necessary to provide understanding on the behavioral pattern of the legislative on the subject. In Brazil, studies on the formulation and implementation of foreign policy have long been based on the idea of the insulated political bureaucracy of Itamaraty (FARIA, 2012). However, study on pluralization of actors involved in foreign policy has been advancing (FARIA, 2012;MILANI and PINHEIRO, 2013;SALOMON and PINHEIRO, 2013), be it through the recognition of its distributive effects or through greater reflection on the supervision and control over public policies. These two trends are aligned by the inclusion of more actors in the decision-making process of a policy that affects everyone, even if only to control the Executive. The need for more transparency of processes for directing foreign policy increases with the recent expansion of the discussion in the media and with the proliferation of higher education programs on the subject. Even if domestic policy remains predominant in public discussions, foreign policy deserves attention especially in terms of its formulation process, considering its distributive effects on the domestic environment. Lima and Santos (2001)  Therefore, the idea that foreign policy plays a role in political party disputes, just as in other matters, is here reaffirmed.

Parliamentary supervision and approval of authorities
Democratic regimes require different forms of supervision, control and accountability between society and its representatives and the different entities and powers of the State. These elements refer to the obligation of a democratic State to be accountable to its people, required by organs of civil society and by entities and structures of the State. Even if authors like O'Donnell (1998) and Smulovitz and Peruzzotti (2003) identify a weakness in the application of these instruments in Latin American democracies, they are very relevant for the consolidation of these regimes. It is crucial to understand them and their different aspects.
The three terms must be clearly delimited in order to adequately differentiate them and to enable their correct empirical application.
Generally, they can be considered as treating the relation between an actor and a forum from different perspectives and goals (BOVENS, 2006). Accountability has two dimensions: obligation to report activities and capacity to impose sanctions against violations (SCHEDLER, 1999). Control means having power over (BOVENS, 2006), and supervising, reviewing, monitoring and observing activities (KAISER, 1988 O'Donnell (1998) and in Smulovitz and Peruzzoti (2003)  According to Kaiser (1988), some variables in the form of supervision may be identified. Supervision may be overt or latent, official or not, direct or indirect, oppositional or collaborative, aimed to evaluate or control, and follow a 'model' or as a fire alarm (with a reactive pattern, triggered by certain processes).
In an analysis of the Brazilian scenario, Lemos (2005) likens the Senate's control to the police patrol pattern and the Chamber of Deputies' to the fire alarm pattern.
In the specific case of authority approvals by the Senate, the implications of the process are even more similar to the police patrol pattern.
The study on the authority approvals by the Legislative appears in many examples of US literature, especially regarding judicial authorities, including in Binder and Maltzman (2002), McCarty and Razaghian (1999), and Nixon and Bentley (2006). In the Brazilian scenario, the works of Lemos and Llanos (2008) and Lemos (2010) are noteworthy; this specifically addresses the approval of ambassadors. However, there is mainly attention to procedural timing of these appointments, with little reflection on other indicators.
The supervision and control process follows different patterns and interests, since Congress is neither a unified nor homogeneous actor. Three trends may be identified in the Brazilian legislative studies on the motivations for members of Congress' actions: distributional, informational and partisan motivations (LIMONGI, 1994). The first one focuses strictly on electoral aspects: the lawmaker would be a purely rational actor whose goal is to be reelected. Their To evaluate the appropriateness of the partisan hypothesis formulated within the reality of authority approvals, the weight of political-party variables in the deliberations of the Federal Senate will be investigated. Presidential terms and the composition of the Senate in terms of coalition of government and opposition will be analyzed, as done in previous studies to evaluate the legislative control of U.S. senators MALTZMAN, 2002, 2004;CALDEIRA, HOJNACKI and WRIGHT, 2000;McCARTY and RAZAGHIAN, 1999;NIXON and BENTLEY, 2006;SHIPAN and SHANNON;2003). It is therefore understood that the relationship between government and opposition, mediated by the composition of Senate seats over time and the pattern of relations established by each government, has had an important role in defining the approval of authorities, diplomatic or otherwise.

Senatorial deliberation on authorities
The present study aims to understand how the Federal Senate's appreciation of authorities appointed by the Executive Power varied according to the position filled, the presidential term, and the composition of the Senate. For the study to be effectively implemented, some adjustments were necessary. Firstly, the interest lies in the approval of heads of diplomatic mission. This is then compared to the approval of other authorities, which motivates the inclusion of all other authorities approved by the Senate into the analyzed universe. It is assumed that the selection of the candidate is preceded by reflection on the Senate's composition and on the weight in terms of result of possible nominations.
Thus, roadblocks would be anticipated, which would lead to high approval rates. Therefore, the instrument of evaluation which would indicate more intricate and controversial processes of appointment would be lengthy consideration periods.
Based on the analysis of U.S. authors, and on the comparative study by Lemos and Llanos (2008), it may be deduced that Brazilian, U.S. and Argentinian Senates tend to approve the vast majority of authorities. However, it is important to evaluate the occurrence of different results. Since the rejection of authorities is an extremely uncommon phenomenon -03 out of 1194 cases -, the result of deliberations will be understood as the percentage of favorable votes, which excludes cases of withdrawn 5 and impaired 6 appointments. Therefore, this study analyzes the processing time, from reading of the formal message until the deliberation, and the result of the deliberation process. The result focuses on the percentage of favorable votes, since successful appointments represent more than 99% of the analyzed cases (1155). In addition, more than 50% of these have received over 87% of favorable votes.

Filled positions
In order to better evaluate the specifics of foreign policy in the Federal Senate, it is necessary to establish a distinction among authorities nominated for appointments within the timeframe, in order to obtain a comparative analysis.
Therefore, an objective was to determine if there exists a difference in the appointment of Brazilian ambassadors and representatives to international organizations.
______________________________________________________________________________________________ 5 Withdrawals are cases of which the processing was interrupted at the request of the Executive -29 cases. 6 Impaired are cases of interruption due to legal changes, such as constitutional amendments that change the requirements to fill the position in question -07 cases. First, it is necessary to present the four categories according to which the analyzed cases were classified (Table 01) (Table 01).
However, attributing this longer time period to parliamentary disinterest must be reviewed. Firstly, among the cases with higher deliberation time, most were for ambassadors to accumulate Brazil's representation with more than one country -from the 12 cases that took over one year to be approved, 10 fit this situation.
Unlike the others, these appointments have less potential to paralyze diplomatic activity, as the ambassador may already perform their activities with the country that is primarily his responsibility. In case cumulative nominations were to be excluded, the average time would decrease to 68.6 days -a significative decrease if we consider less than one third of cases would be excluded (Table 01)

Presidency and government coalition
In the U.S. literature, a divided government is a recurrent theme (BINDER and MALTZMAN, 2002;McCARTY and RAZAGHIAN, 1999) -this is the case in which the White House does not control both houses of Congress, which is very relevant in the U.S., due to rivalry between the two major parties. In the Brazilian coalitional presidentialism system, presented by Abranches (1988) andLimongi (1999), the party which occupies the Presidency never controls the Congressional houses itself, due to the myriad of elected parties. Therefore, the Planalto (Executive Offices) must gather support from other parties and forms coalitions to advance their agenda in Congress. Different elements may be analyzed in the relationship between powers, such as ideologic coherence of coalitions (LIMONGI and FIGUEIREDO, 1995) or legislative discipline (AMORIM NETO, 2000). However, the partisan trend takes on a more prominent role in the performance of senators than its supposed objective of representing the states of the federation (NEIVA and SOARES, 2013). For this study, two elements are evaluated: who holds the Presidency and how the Senate is composed in terms of support and opposition to the government at times of reading and deliberation.
Favorable time averages and votes for each presidential term show that presidents faced different levels of difficulty in approving their appointed authorities (Table 02). These differences between terms may be the result of links between the president and senators, their respective popularity or ability to choose more accepted names, nuanced by some conjunctural factor. Both Lula's terms and Dilma's first term presented one case of rejection apiece. Lula's second term was the one with the lowest average of processing time, a bit lower than found in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso terms (Table 02).
The average time for approving diplomatic authorities was important in terms of the result observed in Lula's second government (Table 03). The highest average of favorable votes occurred in Cardoso's first term. Despite the small number of observed cases in this mandate, none had a favorable vote of less than 83%, and five cases of this mandate are among the six with 100% favorable votesthe sixth is from Cardoso's second term. The relationship between government and opposition is most clearly represented in the internal dynamics of the House of Representative and the Senate.

Deliberation on diplomatic authorities
Based on the general considerations regarding the approval of authorities, the behavior patterns of senators in the deliberation of appointments by the Presidency to head permanent diplomatic missions can be evaluated. In this section, some considerations on the general elements when restricted to diplomatic authorities and on the particularities of these cases are presented. The analysis of presidential terms for the case of diplomatic authorities showed interesting results (   According to Law Nº 11,400 (BRAZIL, 2006), three different diplomatic classes can head missions: first-class ministers, second-class ministers and advisors. According to the hierarchical pattern, some candidates are better prepared for the role. In addition, the law exceptionally allows natural-born Brazilians who are not ______________________________________________________________________________________________ diplomats, over age 35, with recognized merit and relevant services provided to the country to exercise the function of head of permanent diplomatic mission.
The averages of processing time and favorable votes for the appointment of each category of the diplomatic career did not show a trend that indicates greater ease for one particular class (Table 05). The number of cases for each category is uneven -first-class ministers represent 64% of the nominees. Although they have a higher average of favorable votes than others, the advisors (the lowest position able to lead a diplomatic mission) showed a higher processing time average than others.
However, the randomness resulting from the low number of advisor cases, hinders a consideration of a pattern of senatorial action in this case. The analysis of deliberation on individuals who are not career diplomats who were nominated to lead diplomatic posts showed interesting results, although this population is small. These had an approval rate 6.9 p.p. lower than diplomats' average. Although they showed lower senatorial approval, these nominees were evaluated more swiftly by senators -in 43% of the time taken to deliberate on diplomats. These trends demonstrate greater controversy for approval of diplomatic mission heads who are not career diplomats, which, although displaying lower approval rates, show faster deliberation rates.
Finally, one last element to be considered is the type of post. During the analyzed period, there were no great disparities among the number of appointments for each class, even if posts C and D represent almost 63% of the total analyzed nominations. However, no significant post hierarchy or senatorial deliberation trends were observed. As shown in Table 05, the main finding of this analysis was the longer time required for approval of C and D posts, on average 50% longer than for A and B posts. This pattern is exemplified by the presence of ten appointments for C and D posts out of the 12 longest cases (over one year), while seven out of the fourteen fastest deliberations (less than ten days) were of A posts. Among the cases with the lowest approval rates (70% or less), five are for D posts and two for C posts. Countries whose relations with Brazil involved more internal debate during the mandates of PT, Bolivia and Venezuela -C and D postsare among the cases with the lowest approval rates -58% and 63%, respectively.

Conclusions
The aim of this article was to present aspects of the process of the Senate's supervision over decisions related to foreign policy made by the Executive Power.
Given the need for greater knowledge and debate on the processes that guide Brazil's foreign strategy, the mechanisms available to the National Congress must be studied and understood. Through this study, the objective was to demonstrate how different elements influence the outcome of senatorial deliberations on appointments.
The process of approval of authorities was considered as the Legislative As for the dynamics between the Executive and the Legislative Power, differences are observed among presidential terms. Lula's first term had the worst averages. The size of the coalition had a low correlation index, although it presented correlation in the expected ways -positive for favorable votes and negative for deliberation time. When restricted to the central goal of this study, presidential term and government coalition deepen their impact. Diplomatic appointments, therefore, despite their specificities, follow similar patterns to the average of appointments.
This reinforces the idea that common variables of parliamentary action influence decisions on foreign policy, in agreement with the party trends in legislative studies.
Regarding specific elements, they hardly affect the results of senators' decisions. The most important effect was regarding individuals who are not career diplomats. The resistance to them was displayed in terms of fewer favorable votes as well as shorter deliberation times, which points to the existence of greater controversy in these appointments. In classification of the posts, only C and D showed longer deliberation times, with no significant difference of favorable votes.
The analysis of the authority approval process by the Senate enabled the understanding that this mechanism of parliamentary supervision over the Executive is less uncontested than it is considered. The variability in time and favorable votes enabled the analysis of the elements that influence the process. Although cases of heads of permanent diplomatic missions have their specificities and differences in comparison to other authorities (which also show specificities among themselves), foreign policy is not a subject relegated to the background one lacking in discussion. The exploratory empirical analysis supported the hypothesis that subjects related to foreign affairs do not significantly differ from other objects of parliamentary supervision. Different elements affected all nominations in similar ways. Despite their specificities, the appointment of diplomatic authorities also polarized senators in the deliberation process. Advances in this debate must come from the analysis of other supervisory instruments and from studying patterns of action and interest among members of Congress. In fact, this research agenda could bring Brazilian foreign policy closer to the population, considering the importance of expanding educated debate on this subject in society.