Abstract This paper aims to: (i) investigate whether Republican legislatures were more inclined than Democratic ones to uphold laws of national sovereignty and whether Democratic legislatures were more likely than Republican ones to prioritise bills linked to the post-national perspective; (ii) assess the US migration laws by considering how state-level legal systems affect migrants’ lives. Using data from the National Conference of State Legislatures and Legiscan and techniques like clustering, statistical, and geospatial analysis, we found that bills sponsored by the Democratic Party are indeed more likely to belong to the post-national category than bills by the Republican Party.

Resumo O objetivo principal deste artigo é analisar até que ponto a orientação partidária (direita-esquerda) dos congressistas brasileiros influenciou o seu apoio discursivo à UNASUL no período de 2000 a 2020. Para atingir este objetivo, a primeira seção faz uma revisão da literatura acerca da relação entre iniciativas de integração regional e a orientação ideológica dos partidos políticos. A segunda parte do artigo apresenta os aspetos metodológicos e descreve os diferentes passos da análise de discurso. Finalmente, a última seção apresenta os resultados que, corroborando o argumento predominante na literatura existente, atestam que os partidos de esquerda tendem a falar de forma mais positiva acerca da integração regional, enquanto os partidos de direita tendem a falar menos, e de forma mais negativa, acerca do mesmo assunto.

Abstract The main goal of this article is to investigate whether the party orientation (right-left) of Brazilian Congressmen somehow influenced their discursive support to UNASUR from 2000 to 2020. To achieve this, the first section performs a literature review about the relation between regional integration initiatives and the ideological orientation of political parties. The second part of the article exposes its methodological aspects and discriminates all the steps taken to do the discourse analysis. Finally, the last session presents the results which, corroborating the majoritarian argument of the existing literature, attest that left-wing parties tend to speak more positively about regional integration, while right-wing parties tend to speak less and more negatively about the same object.

Resumo Neste artigo, analisamos o conteúdo dos discursos proferidos por Presidentes, Chanceleres e Embaixadores brasileiros nas Sessões Ordinárias anuais da Assembleia Geral das Nações Unidas entre 1946 e 2019. O objetivo principal é descobrir com que frequência e em que circunstâncias os diplomatas brasileiros fizeram menção ao regionalismo americano, seja em relação a projetos específicos, seja em conceitos abstratos de integração e cooperação regional. Com base nessa análise, destacamos a grande importância dada ao MERCOSUL (e, em menor medida, à UNASUL) em detrimento de outros regionalismos, bem como a preferência dos diplomatas brasileiros por uma abordagem discursiva flexível, discreta, abstrata e de baixo custo. Em suma, a cooperação e a integração têm sido frequentemente discutidas, mas pouca atenção tem sido dada aos limites e possibilidades de cada projeto em construção.

Abstract In this article, we analyse the content of the speeches delivered by Brazilian Presidents, Foreign Ministers and Ambassadors at annual Ordinary Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly in the period between 1946 and 2019. Our primary objective is to find out how often and under what circumstances Brazilian diplomats mentioned the subject of American regionalism and whether the mention was made in reference to specific projects or to abstract concepts of regional integration and cooperation. Based on this analysis, we highlight the great deal of importance that was given to MERCOSUR – and, to a lesser extent, UNASUR – to the detriment of other regional integration projects, as well as the preference, by Brazilian diplomats, for a flexible, low-profile, abstract and low-cost discursive approach. In short, we found that cooperation and integration have frequently been discussed, although little attention has been devoted to the limits and possibilities of each project under construction.

By analyzing the content of 6,523 pronouncements by Brazilian decision-makers, this paper aims to present some quantitative evidence to answer the following questions: 01. How did Brazilian Foreign Policy decision-makers employ the concepts of Latin America and South America from 1995 to 2014? 02. Were South American terms prioritized over Latin American terms? 03. Did the diplomacy of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) invoke the idea of South America more than that of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) and Dilma Vana Rousseff (Dilma)? The principal conclusions we have reached are that South America was indeed more cited than Latin America and that this reached its peak during the Lula years. These results are significant because they corroborate the main conclusions of historians and qualitative analysts on this matter, through using a different approach based on quantitative methods.