Abstract
Brazil has been labeled an anchor country, a leading area, and a regional power. Yet, even before the crisis triggered by Operation ‘Car Wash’ began, several scholars had called into question Brazil’s driving role in regional integration, stressing political challenges and economic weaknesses that hindered closer relationships among the South American countries. More optimistic research tends to concentrate on initiatives and visions of Brazil’s regional leadership, with lesser focus on obstacles and implementation. We develop the concept of ‘geoeconomic nodality’ to assess Brazi’s impact on South America and shed light on the structural sources of economic fragmentation, namely geographical conditions and their interaction with public policies. A geoeconomic node is the core of economic networks in a geographically delimited system. The flows of the system’s units are focused on the node, enabling it to transfer impulses for development – and reflecting what the concepts on anchor countries, leading areas, and regional powers suggest. Our findings show that long distances, physical barriers, the maritime orientation of core zones of population and economic activity, and the poor state of transcontinental infrastructure reduce Brazil’s geoeconomic nodality. Resource nationalism, volatile public policies, and fluctuating exchange rates contribute to this structural mix, so that the prospects to overcome the obstacles imposed by geography appear dim.
Highlights
Brazil has been labeled an anchor country, a leading area, and a regional power
Rephrasing the conditions central to Cohen, our analysis focuses on four determinants of geoeconomic nodality: 01. location, distance, and physical barriers, as fundamental factors that provide a first indication of the extent to which a region can be tied to a geoeconomic node; 02. the distribution of the population and economic activity, which impinges on the cohesion of a region and on geoeconomic nodality; 03. infrastructure for energy and transport, which constitutes the key manmade, centripetal force that helps to overcome distance and physical barriers; and 04. public policies, which condition the impact of the aforementioned determinants by boosting or hampering geoeconomic nodality
This article dealt with Brazil’s role in South America, which we analyzed in the light of the concept of geoeconomic nodality
Summary
Argentina Bolivia Chile Colombia Ecuador Guyana Paraguay Peru Suriname Uruguay Venezuela. Note: Data is insufficient for Guyana and Suriname Providing another indicator of the low level of regional integration, exports to South America account for a very low share of the GDP of most South American countries, as Figure 04 shows. Zibechi (2012) argues that South America – especially Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay – were transformed into economies subordinated to Brazil, into stepping stones for the globalization of these sectoral champions Another key means of the BNDES to boost the regional standing of Brazilian companies is the scheme ‘BNDES Finem’ (BNDES, 2013a). We cannot enter into a debate on neoliberal versus state-driven development here, but the previous lines suggest that certain forms of state interventionism, arguably carried out for the sake of national development, work against Brazil’s geoeconomic nodality
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