Power Gap Explains Why South American States Drift From the U.S. at the UN

This paper revisits Amorim Neto (2011)'s claim that Brazil's power explains its distancing from the United States and asks whether a power-based explanation holds across South America.

🔎 Question and Alternative Explanation

The original finding by Amorim Neto (2011) is that Brazil's power drove its divergence from a historical U.S. ally. An alternative explanation grounded in the realist literature in international relations is proposed and tested. The analysis also searches for independent variables that could explain a wider regional pattern: the increasing distancing from the United States in United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voting. The study explicitly engages the debate initiated by Amorim Neto (2011) and Schenoni (2012) to advance quantitative work on Brazilian foreign policy.

📊 Comparing Ten South American States (1970–2007)

• Sample: ten South American countries observed from 1970 to 2007.
• Outcome: alignment with the United States in UN General Assembly voting.
• Method: Panel Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) analysis to account for panel heteroskedasticity and contemporaneous correlation.

🔍 Key Findings

• Strong empirical support is found for a power-based pattern: the lower the power gap between a South American country and the United States, the lower that country's alignment with the U.S. in UNGA voting.
• This result extends the discussion beyond Brazil and suggests a regional dynamic consistent with realist expectations about power and alignment.

✳️ Why It Matters

The findings sharpen understanding of why South American states have distanced themselves from the United States at the UN, bolster power-gap explanations of alignment, and point toward avenues for further quantitative research on Brazilian and regional foreign policy behavior.