Science as foreign policy? Foreign policy and science and technology in Brazilian presidential government proposals (2010–2022) | Ciência como política externa? Política externa e ciência e tecnologia nas propostas de governo presidenciais brasileiras (2010–2022)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12957/rmi.2026.101206Keywords:
Brazilian foreign policy, Science diplomacy, Presidential electionsAbstract
This article investigates how foreign policy, and within it science and technology (S&T) as a vector of international insertion, appears in the government proposals filed by presidential candidates with the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court between 2010 and 2022. Drawing on a corpus of 42 proposals, we apply dictionary-based quantitative text analysis and measure the salience of each agenda and an S&T internationalization rate. Rather than searching for explicit mentions of science or innovation diplomacy, this rate captures the articulation between STI and foreign policy through the co-occurrence of the two fields in the text. The findings show that S&T gains salience while foreign policy remains marginal, and that almost all S&T mentions carry a domestic framing. This articulation proves virtually absent. We close by discussing what this suggests for 2026.
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