A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details PRIESTS, TECHNICIANS AND TRADERS: ACTORS, INTERESTS AND DISCURSIVE POLITICS IN BRAZIL’S AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION PROGRAMMES WITH MOZAMBIQUE LÍDIA VILELA CABRAL A dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies of the University of Sussex Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex 30 November 2016 iii UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX LÍDIA VILELA CABRAL PHD IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES PRIESTS, TECHNICIANS AND TRADERS: ACTORS, INTERESTS AND DISCURSIVE POLITICS IN BRAZIL’S AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION PROGRAMMES WITH MOZAMBIQUE SUMMARY This research is about Brazil’s international development cooperation in agriculture. I take two cooperation programmes carried out by the Brazilian government in Mozambique – ProSAVANA and More Food International (MFI) – to analyse the processes whereby cooperation policy is formed and transformed. I ask how Brazil’s domestic politics interact with international affairs to shape agricultural cooperation with Mozambique. I consider the ‘priests, technicians and traders’ of Brazilian cooperation, following a caricature used by one respondent to characterise disputes in ProSAVANA. This triadic portrayal captures the diversity of actors, interests and discourse of Brazilian cooperation. It is also analytically useful to investigate how actors relate to one another and how alliances, networks or coalitions, held together on the basis of convenience, shared beliefs or common narratives, emerge and evolve over time. My analytical approach places actors and interests in the context of institutional processes, but also against policy narratives that are the product of history, state- society interactions and class-based struggles in Brazil. The latter are, in turn, at the root of those institutional processes and actors’ identities. Narratives may be used to pursue certain agendas but they also construct the agendas and the identity of the actors that articulate them. My research also emphasises the inter-spatial or travelling dimension of cooperation policy, with flows of influence occurring forwards and backwards. Brazilian actors, interests and discourse travel from Brazil to Mozambique, get interpreted and absorbed selectively and this has repercussions back to the point of origin. Finally, I argue that Brazil’s development encounters in Mozambique proved harder to manage than suggested by the presumed affinities and claims about horizontal relations in Brazilian cooperation. The experiences of ProSAVANA and MFI illustrate the challenges facing the Brazilian cooperation narrative and its governing principles. I discuss implications for the Brazilian ‘model’ and for the South-South paradigm. iv To my late father, pelo seu mundo de estórias e palavras. v ‘O segredo da Verdade é o seguinte: não existem fatos, só existem histórias.’ (The secret of Truth is the following: there are no facts, only stories.) João Ubaldo Ribeiro, Viva o Povo Brasileiro vi Acknowledgements This research was carried out as part of the project ‘China and Brazil in African Agriculture’ (CBAA) (www.future-agricutures.org/research/cbaa), and was supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (grant: ES/J013420/1) under the Rising Powers and Interdependent Futures programme. I would like to especially thank all those who helped me during fieldwork in Brazil and in Mozambique by accepting being interviewed and generously offering me their time and trust and sharing their experiences and insights. Thank you to my supervisors, Ian Scoones and Alex Shankland, for giving me the opportunity to carry out this PhD at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) under the CBAA project and for their support and encouragement throughout this journey. I thank Ian for his conceptual and methodological guidance, for being a permanent reassuring presence and a role model of efficacy and reliability. And I thank Alex for his inspiring passion about Brazil and for his always-perceptive commentary and creative thinking. Thank you also to all my CBAA colleagues, including my supervisors, with whom I interacted during the course of my research and who were an indispensible source of information and ideas. Thank you to Arilson Favareto (Brazilian Centre of Analysis and Planning, Brazil), Kojo Amanor (University of Ghana) and Langton Mukwereza (Research for Development Trust, Zimbabwe) for co-authorship of an article on family farming that gave valuable input in developing one of my case studies on Brazilian cooperation. For several interactions on the topic, I would like to thank Sérgio Chichava (Institute of Economic and Social Studies, IESE, Mozambique), Euclides Gonçalves (Kaleidoscopio, Mozambique), Alcides Costa Vaz (University of Brasília, Brazil), Jing Gu (IDS), Henry Tugendhat (formerly at IDS), Lila Buckley and Seth Cook (International Institute of Environment and Development, UK), Li Xiaoyun, Xu Xiuli and colleagues at the China Agriculture University, and Dawit Alemu (Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research). Thanks also to Ollie Burch, Nathan Oxley and Beatrice Ouma for their support with the administration and dissemination of parts of my research. I would also like to express my gratitude to those who invited me to present my work at an early stage, giving me the opportunity to receive feedback and benefit from stimulating debate. I thank: Elísio Contini, Paulo Melo and Adriana Lombardo at the former Centre for Strategic Studies and Training in Tropical Agriculture (CECAT) at Embrapa in Brasília; Paulo Esteves, Paolo de Renzio and Jurek Seifert at the BRICS Policy Centre in Rio de Janeiro; Sérgio Chichava at IESE in Maputo; and Andrés Malamud at the Institute of Social Studies in Lisbon. I am also grateful to Iara Leite for her friendly support in Brasília and for thought-provoking conversations about Brazilian cooperation and politics and about life as an early career researcher in Brazil. I am also thankful to all IDS researchers, fellow PhD students and friends for attending my Research Outline Seminar (12/06/2013) and Work in Progress seminar (24/02/2015) and giving me feedback and advice. Thanks to Jeremy Allouche, Miniva Chibuye, Jennifer Constantine, John Gaventa, Mathilde Gengimbre, Jing Gu, Richard Longhurst, Rosie McGee, Lyla Mehta, Peter Newell, Márcio Pessoa, Giuliano Russo, Ricardo Santos, Hubert Schmitz, Patta Scott- Villiers, Shilpi Srivastava, Jim Sumberg, Katia Taela, Michaelle Tauson, John Thompson, Stephen Whitfield, Musab Younis and others whose names I may have missed. Thanks also for the presence of external participants Arilson Favareto, Carlos Tautz (Instituto Mais Democracia, Brazil) and Euclides Gonçalves. vii Thank you to Angela Dowman, for having done such a great job in supporting IDS PhDs in an always warm and generous manner. These have been exceptional years of my life, made possible with the support and understanding of my husband, son, mother and sister. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES ............................................................................................................... X LIST OF ACRONYMS .............................................................................................................................. XI CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. BRAZIL’S DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION AS A TOPICAL SUBJECT .............................................................................. 2 1.2. FIRST GENERATION OF STUDIES AND THEIR FOCI ................................................................................................. 4 1.3. MY RESEARCH FORMULATION AND ANALYTICAL SCOPE ........................................................................................ 8 1.4. PRIESTS, TECHNICIANS AND TRADERS AS GUIDING THREAD ................................................................................. 11 CHAPTER 2. THE DISCOURSE-POLITICS OF BRAZILIAN COOPERATION: THEORY AND METHODS .......... 14 2.1. CONCEPTUALISATIONS OF THE POLICY PROCESS ............................................................................................... 17 2.1.1 Conceptual remarks on studying the policy process ............................................................................. 17 2.1.2 Policy networks ..................................................................................................................................... 19 2.1.3 Advocacy and discourse coalitions ........................................................................................................ 21 2.1.4 Hegemony, social antagonism and power in discourse ........................................................................ 26 2.2. AN INTEGRATIVE ‘DISCOURSE-POLITICS’ FRAMEWORK ......................................................................................