The aim of this paper is to analyze the institutional building process of the Brazilian foreign trade policy during the Cardoso government, focusing on the relationship between institutional change and the political bureaucratic dynamics of the the Executive Branch, evaluating the conditions that make the bureaucratic conflict an important variable in the process of institutional change. Since the foreign trade policy is a broad activity, we have chosen to analyze its coordination framework: the formation and reforms of the Foreign Trade Chamber (CAMEX). At the first part of the study, we developed an analytical framework based on a brief overview of what has been produced about the influence and implications of the involvement of the bureaucracy in the political game, from which we have derived our hypotheses. After, we analyzed the role played by the struggle between the executive agencies involved in the trade policy and what were the Presidency actions about that issue. Finally, we propose that the struggle between the executive agencies was a determining factor of the institutional instability during the Cardoso government and the consolidation of a sub-optimal institutional set, which has difficulty in fulfilling the coordination functions of the Brazilian foreign trade. From the proposition of a new theoretical framework which concatenate different debates about the bureaucratic politics, we derive the central proposition of the research that lies on the expectation of how the interactions between the political and bureaucratic actors within the Executive Branch affect the results of the decision-making processes of institutional change.
Trade Policy; Institutional Change; Bureaucratic Politcs; Bureaucratic Conflict
