Cogs in the Machineries of Governance? Think Tanks, Knowledge Networks and Informal Diplomacy in the European Union-Brazil Security Dialogue

National, international and supranational bureaucracies have increasingly interacted with a wide range of non-state actors in different spheres of policymaking. Non-governmental organizations, human rights watchdogs, lobbyists and private companies, among several other actors, have actively inserted themselves into the policy process to set the agenda, provide input to policy formulation, and help implement and evaluate policies addressing contemporary global challenges. A large body of research has regarded this phenomenon as a shift from “government” to “governance”, whereby power, authority, and credibility have been progressively fragmented among political actors other than state institutions. Even in foreign and security policy issues, where states and international organizations remain primary actors, heterarchical networks, ad hoc coalitions or public-private partnerships have complemented state-centric frameworks of action — thus sparkling the debate on the notion of “security governance”. Yet the governance of a given policy issue can only start once a problem is defined as an issue and put on the agenda. As other knowledge actors in policy advice systems, think tanks have increasingly dealt with this task: they have sought to shape policymaking either by managing expert discourse (creating and distributing policy knowledge and advice), or by cultivating relationships (networking) with a diverse set of both state and non-state actors. Over the past fifteen years, European and Brazilian non-state actors have established a complementary venue for transnational exchanges on foreign and security policy issues: the “Forte de Copacabana International Security Conferences”, held since 2004 in Rio de Janeiro. The German party-affiliated political foundation Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) and Brazil’s leading foreign policy think tank, the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), have been the main drivers behind the initiative, which has also counted with the support of the EU Delegation to Brazil. Apart from the annual “Forte de Copacabana Conferences”, these organizations, together with a network of other state and non-state partners, have progressively added new layers of communication between Brazilian and European civil and military officials, politicians, defence industry executives, experts and civil society groups through preparatory meetings for the conferences, closed-door workshops, or policy-oriented symposiums on regional and global security. The role of networked knowledge organizations and their strategies to inform policy processes remain a much overlooked field of study in general – EU’s relations to its strategic partners, among them Brazil, are no exception. The paper presents preliminary findings of our ongoing doctoral research, whose specific focus is to examine how and why has the transnational network of knowledge and policy actors around the “Forte de Copacabana Conferences” attempted to inform the dialogue on foreign and security policy issues between the EU, its Member States, and Brazil. Besides, it aims to investigate whether the initiatives carried out by European and Brazilian think tanks and other knowledge actors have served as venues for informal diplomacy, complementary mechanisms for cooperation, and an illustration of a new form of transnational security governance. In doing so, it also aims to understand what are the actors, interests, and narratives at stake in decisive political spaces beyond official diplomatic channels.