Beyond the frontiers of Brazilian foreign policy. Social participation in the formulation of sub-national foreign policy: the case of Rio Grande do Sul
The objective of this work is to contribute to the theoretical debate on the role of subnational governments in the formulation of a foreign policy, understanding the set of constitutive elements of a subnational public policy of international scope based on processes of dialogue and social participation. This perspective is based on the assumption that the traditional approach to Brazilian foreign policy, which grants the National State the monopoly of foreign policy and values bureaucratic insulation as a form of protection of the national interest, fails to understand the role of subnational entities in the international sphere. The interest of this investigation lies in taking paradigmatic cases of subnational external action to explore the potential for dialogue between International Relations and Public Policies in the face of objects that reside on the border between these two fields. Therefore, it is proposed to debate the public policy character of foreign policy and the possibility of subnational entities constituting their own foreign policy, advancing a research agenda that has insisted on the potential for dialogue between these two areas. Concepts such as paradiplomacy, foreign policy, public policies and social participation will be central to understanding the case. Thus, when observing the case studies as paradigms for the formulation of a public policy that is of international scope, the traditional theories of both International Relations and Political Theory itself are put into question. It is a phenomenon that, for its understanding, will mobilize a theoretical contribution that has not yet been consolidated in the bibliography of the social sciences, thus becoming a work with a degree of hybridism intrinsic to the question itself, in which the research methodology combines theoretical analysis, through literature review, associated with case studies.