Powerful Leaders and Loud Opponents: Operational Code and the Beliefs of Two Brazilian Presidents

Pedro G. dos SantosUniversity of Kansas

Presented at International Studies Association- Midwest 2008Annual Meeting

Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark, St. Louis, MoNovember 7-9, 2008

Powerful Leaders and Loud Opponents: Operational Code and the Beliefs of Two Brazilian Presidents

How influential are leaders' beliefs in the foreign

policymaking process? While this is not a new question, the

literature focusing on this puzzle has grown considerably in the

past years, and with the increasing interest on the impact of

leaders' beliefs in foreign policy decision making the field has

also experienced an evolution of theoretical and methodological

approaches to this research agenda. Early works such as Leites’

(1951 and 1953) study of the Bolshevik revolution has helped

develop a field rich in theoretical assertions and methodological

approaches looking at leaders, their beliefs, and its impact on

foreign policy. Today, the development of techniques such as

leadership trait analysis (Dyson 2006), image theory (Holsti

1976), and operational code analysis (Schafer and Walker 2006)

have helped in the furthering of studies of personality and

decision making. But what is the impact of being a leader on the

beliefs of individuals?

Cognitive studies in foreign policy tend to argue that

leaders' beliefs are important in foreign policy decision making,

but that they are not the only factor that needs to be taken into

account. It is also important to note that, when studying foreign

policy behavior, the attention has been directed to the powerful

states and their leaders, especially the relationships between

the United States and Russia during the Cold War and contemporary

studies on the influence of beliefs in the foreign policymaking

of the United States and other European nations. In the specific

case of small and less powerful states, Jeanne Hey (2003: 192)

posits that while individual leaders tend to play an important

role in the decision making process, these leaders are still

heavily constricted by domestic and systemic constraints. The

study of small state foreign policymaking and of so-called

emerging nations has been lacking. In the specific case of

Brazil, Tollefson (2002: 299) argues that international relations

theory tends to have a Eurocentric bias. “Middle powers like

Brazil are poorly understood, especially at the internal level.”

Not only recent works on foreign policy making has focused

on major powers, but I argue that most works acknowledge that

there are certain institutional constraints present- even when

leaders are influential in foreign policymaking- without really

trying to understand how these constraints help shape foreign

policy behavior. More importantly, the impact of constraints on

leaders' beliefs has not been widely studied. This paper will try

to combine the study of a middle power state with the study of

leaders' beliefs and its relationship with institutional

constraints. In order to study this relationship I will look at

Brazil's current and former presidents and ask the question: Do

the beliefs of these leaders change depending on their position

in the government structure?

This work will focus on the political trajectory of former

Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and current

president Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. In order to measure

beliefs I will use operational code analysis to create an

ideological map of these two leaders, and compare their

operational code beliefs between the periods where they were the

head of government of the country with the operational code

beliefs of periods where they were not presidents of the country.

I plan to use an approach similar to the one used by Malici and

Malici (2006) in their study of the changes in the operational

code beliefs of Fidel Castro and King Jong-Il after the Cold War.

Just as Malici and Malici argue that the beliefs of these leaders

changed given the structural changes of the international system,

I argue that the institutional constraints of being a president

will also affect the beliefs of leaders.

This paper will help in the development of the foreign

policy literature in two ways. First, by looking at contemporary

Brazil this paper will examine the foreign policy behavior of a

country that, regardless of its growing importance in the

international system, has not seemed a considerable number of

studies looking at its own foreign policy behavior. Second, by

arguing that institutional constraints are important in shaping

leader's beliefs this paper will be adding to the literature on

cognitive behavior and in the development of a methodology that

can best explain how constraints help shape leader's beliefs. I

am, therefore, arguing that leaders' beliefs will have influence

on foreign policy behavior, but that we also need to understand

how these beliefs are shaped by the political environment.

This essay will be divided in five parts. First I will

explore Brazil's position in the international system and some

assumptions about the power Brazilian presidents have on foreign

policymaking. Then I will elaborate on the differences between

the last two presidents by providing brief biographical

information of the two leaders. Third, I will discuss some of the

theoretical assumptions of the literature on leaders' beliefs and

its relationship to this study. Fourth, I will bring in the

theoretical puzzle I plan to tackle in this research, together

with a methodological discussion regarding the use of operational

code analysis. Finally, I will discuss what are some of the

expected results we are anticipating to see when the research is

finished.

I. Brazil: A Middle Power With a Strong President

Brazil has been long seen as the “country of tomorrow”.

Given its enormous size and its abundance of natural resources,

analysts have predicted that it would be just a matter of time

for Brazil to move from its eternal label of emerging country

into the select group of bona fide superpowers. Current

discoveries of oil reserves, coupled with the stability of its

political system and the relative stability of its economic

structure has led analysts to argue that the next years may be

the years where we see the so-called sleeping giant finally wake

up (Economist 2008). Yet, the number of studies on foreign

policymaking in Brazil is quite limited.

But even considering the limitations on the literature we

are still able to make some assertions about Brazil's current

political system and its foreign policy behavior. Since

democratization, Brazil’s foreign policy has apparently become

more proactive, looking at the development of Brazil’s influence

not only in the region, with Mercosur and other trade agreements,

but also across the world, with a focus on Africa and other

developing countries. While the goal of regional integration

continues to be an important part of the country's foreign policy

agenda (Tollefson 2002), the partnerships and relationships that

will create this regional integration are a controversial topic,

especially when looking at the last two presidents.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) established during his

presidency a policy of cooperation among neighbor nations, but he

also looked at the United States and Europe as strategic

partners. While FHC saw Brazil as a member of the First World,

Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva (Lula) sees Brazil as an important

player in international relations, not as a developed nation but

as part of the “new South”, together with influential players

such as Russia, China, India, and South Africa. Lula has been

pushing for multilateral relationships that will advance and

benefit the countries of the South, creating a more balanced

system (Colin 2008, 14). FHC had a very different perspective of

Brazil's position in the world, and in numerous occasions the

former president “defended that he would rather be the last of

the First World's nations, than the first of the Third World”

(Pecequillo 2008, 6). The differences in foreign policy behavior

between the last two presidents have been an important topic of

debate in contemporary Brazilian foreign policy studies, and I

argue that the political background of both leaders' is an

influential factor in this difference of ideas. The political

background of FHC and Lula will be discussed in more detail in

the next section of this paper.

Regardless of the different perspectives on the “right”

place of Brazil in the international system, scholars are

assertive in arguing that Brazil is an influential player, and

that not only during the Cold War, but also in the post war

period, the realist explanations to foreign policy decision

making could not explain Brazil’s rather independent strategies

(Tollefson 2002, 288). Scholars also agree in one more important

characteristic of the Brazilian system: the power of the

president. Schugart and Carey (1992) classified the Brazilian

president as one of the most powerful in the world, with a number

of constitutional guarantees, including the ability to resort to

decree power (Pereira, Power, and Renno 2005). But what do these

institutional powers mean to foreign policymaking? Tollefson

(2002, 283) argues that “Brazil's foreign policy has been closely

associated with its leaders. The President of Brazil (...) has a

great amount of influence on foreign policy, even after Brazil

turned to democracy.”

Given the fact that Brazil is a middle power country that

has increased its influence in the international system,

especially in the past two decades, coupled with the assertion

that Brazilian presidents are highly influential in the foreign

decision making process of the country, I argue that a more

detailed look into the origin of leaders' beliefs in contemporary

Brazil is long overdue. While the study of the influence leaders'

beliefs have on foreign policy behavior needs to be expanded, in

this paper I will be looking at the reverse relationship in order

to explore the possibility that institutional factors help shape

the beliefs of individuals that occupy influential positions in

the Brazilian government. In the specific case of this study, I

will look at the last president of Brazil (FHC) as well as the

current one (Lula). The historical background of these two

individuals makes the analysis of beliefs even more important,

given the stark different social, economic, and political

upbringings between FHC and Lula.

II. The Tale of Two Presidents

It is arguable that no other country experienced a change in

presidents as dramatic as Brazil in 2003. Not only did these two

presidents differed in terms of political leanings, where FHC was

a member of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) a

center-right party and Lula is a member of Brazil's Worker's

Party (PT), a left leaning party, but the personal background of

these two individuals could not be more different. In this

section I will first provide a brief history of FHC's life, then

I will discuss Lula's personal history, and finally I will

compare the two president's experience in foreign policymaking,

arguing that their views on the subject should be expected to be

quite different..

Born in 1931, Fernando Henrique Cardoso came from a family

that had long ties with the political process in Brazil. His

father and grandfather were both in the military, an institution

that has historically been strongly involved in politics in

Brazil. Coming from a middle class background, FHC was able to

live a relatively comfortable life, giving him the opportunity of

attending college and eventually pursuing graduate studies and a

career in academia. Throughout his academic career FHC held

important positions at the University of São Paulo and other

South American universities. He also published a number of

influential works on development in Latin America, with its most

influential book -Dependency and Development in Latin America (1968)-

being one of the seminal works in the development of the

Dependency Theory literature (Cardoso 2006).

Fernando Henrique Cardoso aspired to be a full professor at

the University of São Paulo, but the political environment of the

1970s in Brazil led him to become more involved in politics.

During the authoritarian years in Brazil, FHC believed that “as a

writer he could bring ideas to the public through the mass media;

as an intellectual with political skills he could help organize

an opposition political powers” (Goertzel 1999, 70). In the late

1970s and early 1980s he started his political career. In 1982 he

was elected Senator through the state of São Paulo. In 1985 he

ran for mayor of São Paulo, loosing a close election. In 1992 he

became Foreign Minister under the administration of Itamar

Franco, and shortly after that, in 1993 he became the Finance

Minster. As Finance Minister, FHC was responsible for developing

and implementing the Plano Real (Real Plan), a highly successful

stabilization plan that led to his rise in popularity and

consequent election as Brazilian president in 1994 (Goertzel

1999).

While FHC came from a stable environment that clearly

influenced his political career, Lula's life story comes from an

almost polar opposite background than that of the former

president. Born in 1945 in the Northeast region of Brazil in the

state of Pernambuco, Lula grew up in a extremely poor family.

Lula learned how to read at age 10, but in fourth grade he had to

drop out of school to help support his family. At age fourteen he

got his first job in a manufacturing plant, and due to the poor

work conditions he ended up loosing the little finger of his left

hand while working this job. Lula did not have direct contact

with labor unions for a long time, and it wasn't until 1972 that

he became directly involved with worker's movements. Even as a

union member, Lula says that he was “apolitical at the time, and

had very limited role as a union organizer” (Sader and

Silverstein 1991). As a charismatic union leader, Lula helped in

the creation of the Worker's Party (PT), and while he was an

elected member of the constitutional assembly in 1988, his main

goal was to make PT a strong political force. After his stunt as

a congressman, Lula ran for president, without success, in 1989,

1993, and 1997. Finally in 2001 Lula was elected president of

Brazil, the first president to come from the lower classes in

Brazil.

Based on the background of the two presidents, one would

expect FHC to be quite proactive in regards to foreign policy as

well as confident in his policymaking abilities, while Lula's

foreign policy should be expected to be much more timid than

FHC's policies. After FHC's eight years in power, many feared

that Lula's government was going to be a radical left leaning

government that was going to erase all the hard work of the last

president, especially in regards to Brazil's economic policy.

Lula has been remarkably pragmatic, and in some ways

conservative, in his approach to economic policies. Moreover,

Lula has been quite proactive in his approach to foreign policy.

Colin (2008, 4) argues that prior to the Lula government,

Brazil's foreign policy guidelines were based on three pillars:

“comply with the principle of non-intervention and peaceful

solution to conflicts; combat the economic origins of the

conflicts engendering security problems; and favor preventive

diplomacy and cooperation for development.” Not only has the

former government followed these rules, they also believed in a

strong alliance with the United States in order to create

economic and security stability to the region.

While a superficial analysis of Lula's biography may lead to

the assumption that the president is not well versed in foreign

policy issues, such assumption is proved erroneous as we look at

his presidential mandate. Today, Lula's proactive approach to

foreign policy with its open discussions regarding Brazil's goal

of obtaining a permanent seat in the Security Council, deployment

of troops to Haiti for peacekeeping missions, and his discussions

with other emerging countries, has shown that Lula does not shy

away from important decisions in the foreign policy arena (Bourne

2008). But how different are Lula's policies from what he

promised in his presidential campaigns? More importantly, how

have Lula's beliefs changed from his campaign years to his years

in presidency? How different are FHC's views of the

international system since the end of his presidency in 2002?

This paper will try to answer these questions by looking at the

operational code beliefs of these two leaders during their

respective presidencies, as well as in periods where they were

not the commander in chief of Brazil.

III. Leaders' Beliefs and Institutional Constraints

Studies on the role of leaders and their impact on foreign

policy behavior have been part of the foreign policy analysis

since the creation of the subfield. David Winter (1992: 79)

explains that it is a human tendency to simplify complex

situations and “attribute the cause of other people's behavior to

their internal dispositions rather than to their situations.” It

is with this idea in mind that researchers have started looking

at the beliefs of influential individuals in order to explain

some of the decisions made not only by these individuals but also

by the countries these influential individuals have led. It is

clear that just looking at someone's beliefs and looking at

certain policy outcomes does not meet theoretical and

methodological tests to be considered a sound approach to explain

political events. On the opposite side of this “naive view of

political outcomes as merely a projection of leaders'

personalities” (Winter 1992: 80) is the idea that leader's

beliefs will not have any influential effect on the outcome of

foreign policy at all.

The place of cognitive research is in between these two

extremes. This theoretical position is one that leads to a number

of debates regarding the real role of leaders' beliefs and the

role of institutions and situations in foreign policymaking.

Kaarbo (1997: 556) explains that studies looking at Prime

Minister leadership tend to look at structural determinants to

explain foreign policy behavior, but they still consider the

importance of the personalities of prime ministers. This lack of

theoretical consensus is present not only in the study of prime

ministers but in the field of foreign policy research as whole.

The rationalist paradigm is still dominant in most of the field

of International Relations, and even though great strides have

been made in the study of personalities in foreign policy

behavior, the debate is still wide open.

In regards to cognitive beliefs, a number of scholars have

long proposed that beliefs affect a leader's interpretation of

his environment, and consequentially also affects foreign

policymaking(see Axelrod 1976, Holsti 1967, Jervis 1976, Verba

1969). Margaret Hermann was one of the pioneers in the creation

of at-a-distance studies of leaders in order to understand their

belief systems (Winter 1992: 88). In Hermann's (1980: 10) work

she proposes that at-a-distance analysis of leaders can help in

understanding leaders' beliefs and motives, and they provide

leaders with a “map for charting their course.” This study of how

leaders’ belief influence foreign policy behavior has been

influential in the development of other techniques that follow

similar assumptions in regards to beliefs and motives. Works such

as the ones developed by Hermann, Holsti, George, and others have

all assumed that institutional factors are important in the

development of foreign policy behavior, but they also see the

role of beliefs and motives as an important tool to understanding

foreign policy behavior.

How do these constraints affect foreign policy behavior?

Goldmann (1989: 113) argues that “political action, even when

international-political, is affected by ideological and domestic-

strategic considerations.” The relevance of ideology and domestic

strategic considerations varies across decision making moments,

making one more important than the other depending on the

situation. It is important to understand when beliefs may be more

influential than institutional constraints and vice versa. Winter

(1992: 80) explains that a leader's personality will most likely

play an important factor under four specific circumstances:

“when the actor occupies a strategic location, when the situation

is ambiguous or unstable, when there are no clear precedents or

routine role requirements, and when spontaneous or especially

effortful behavior is required.” This assertion is shared in one

way or another by other scholars looking at cognitive behavior

(such as Schafer and Walker 2006), and it is important because it

delineates what are the best cases to study the role of beliefs

and motives in the foreign policymaking process. But what effect

do these constraints have on beliefs and motives?

The literature on this reverse effect is somewhat limited,

and it is the objective of this research to focus on this little

studied relationship. One important assumption of this research

is that leaders are working under their own beliefs but also

taking in consideration their surroundings and options. In

accordance to the assumptions of bounded rationality1 used by a

number of authors in the literature, I argue that the

institutional relationships, both domestic and international,

will help shape and change leaders' beliefs in certain aspects of

their belief system while having little impact in other certain

sets of beliefs. To be more specific, beliefs that are considered

1 When discussing the theoretical debate between rational choice and cognitive behavior scholars, Schafer (2003: 172) proposes it is necessary to find a middle ground within the debate, where it is acknowledged that “actors may strive for rationality and may, within the bounds of their own mental limitations, think they are acting rationally.” It is based on arguments such as the one posed by Schafer above that I plan to explore in this essay.

mainly philosophical (or core beliefs) will experience limited

changes, while beliefs that are related to the nature of the

political system (its structures, institutions, and influential

actors) will change more sharply when the leaders are exposed to

different institutional arrangements.

In other words, president will have their beliefs influenced

by their own capacity to influence the political system, but

their core beliefs will most likely remain unchanged or the

change will be quite modest. In the case of the presidents being

studied in this research, FHC will have a different perspective

of the world after his tenure as president, especially in regards

to beliefs that are directly related to the bureaucratic process

of being part of the executive in Brazil. In the case of Lula,

his beliefs will change slightly after becoming president in

matters related to the Brazilian political system, but his core

beliefs will remains mostly unchanged. In order to explore how

these beliefs have changed I will use operational code analysis

as the methodological approach.

IV. Operational Code and the Presidents

So far in this paper I have discussed the role of leaders'

beliefs in foreign policymaking and the impact of constraints in

shaping these beliefs. The goal of this research is to determine

the impact of the institutional environment in shaping the

beliefs of leaders. In order to explore this puzzle I will use an

approach similar to the one used by Malici and Malici (2006) in

their study of the beliefs of Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il in the

10 years after the end of the Cold War. The authors use

operational code analysis in order to study the belief system of

these two leaders.

Operational code analysis is one of many approaches to

measuring the belief system of individuals. According to Walker

and Schafer (2008:1), operational code “describes an alliance of

attribution and schema theories from psychology and game theory

from economics applied to the domain of politics.” This approach

was first used by Nathan Leites (1951 and 1953) in his study of

the Bolshevik revolution. Schafer and Walker (2006: 7) provide a

good review of Leites's work:

“Leites emphasized the influence of motivated biases in Lenin’s personality and norms from the cultural milieu of the intelligentsia and revolutionary underground in Russia in the turn of the 20th century. This combination of psychological and cultural sources created an “operational code” of conceptions about strategy for the Soviet elite, which internalized Lenin’s motivated biases stemmingfrom a high need for power and a fear of annihilation along with norms from a cultural milieu of political autocracy and social repression.”

In other words, Leites established that there were certain

characteristics of Lenin's beliefs that highly influenced the

direction of strategy the Bolsheviks developed during the early

years of the revolution. Adding to Leites work, Alexander George

(1969) argued that the “operational code” of leaders should be

seen a belief system that filtered information from the

environment and influenced the preferences of individuals for

different ends and means (in Schafer and Walker 2006: 7). George

developed a set of ten questions that, if answered, would allow

researchers to understand individual operational codes. Table 1

shows the ten questions elaborated by George that are used in

the study of operational code.

Operational code analysis is just one of many ways of

explaining individual beliefs. Another influential approach is

leadership trait analysis (LTA). Developed by Margaret G. Herman

(1980), LTA also looks at texts of speeches and press

conferences of leaders in order to create a “map” of leader's

traits and characteristics. While LTA is a similar approach to

operational code I decided to use operational code because I

believe the ten questions developed by George provide us with a

more detailed picture of what are the personal beliefs of

individuals being analyzed. Another reason why I favored

operational code analysis over other techniques is the fact that

I believe that operational code allows researchers to look at

different time periods and determine the difference of beliefs

between the same individual in a more objective way than other

research strategies. A third, and extremely important, reason to

use operational code in this study is the fact that operational

code has a strong distinction between philosophical beliefs and

instrumental beliefs, which will be greatly related to core

beliefs that will remain mostly unchanged and beliefs that are

directly connected to the institutional structure actors must

abide by to “play the game” of foreign policy in Brazil.

Table 1. Philosophical and Instrumental Beliefs of an

Operational Code

Philosophical Beliefs Instrumental BeliefsP-1. What is the “essential”

nature of political life? Is thepolitical universe essentiallyone of harmony or of conflict?

What is the fundamental characterof one's political opponents?

I-1. What is the best approachfor selecting goals or objectives

for political action?

P-2. What are the prospects forthe eventual realization of one’s

fundamental values andaspirations? Can one be

optimistic, or must one bepessimistic on this score; and in

I-2. How are the goals of actionpursued most effectively?

what respects the one and/or theother?

P-3. Is the political futurepredictable? In what sense and to

what extent?

I.3. How are the risks ofpolitical action calculated,controlled, and accepted?

P-4. How much “control” or“mastery” can one have over

historical development?

I-4. What is the best “timing” ofaction to advance one’s

interests?P-5. What is the role of “chance”

in human affairs and inhistorical developments?

I-5. What is the utility and roleof different means for advancing

one’s interest?

In order to answer the questions in Table 1, operational

code analysis uses speeches, interviews, and any other event

where the subjects of study have showed their opinion verbally.

The goal of this research is to use the Verbs in Context System

(VICS) to perform the content analysis of these speeches,

interviews, press conferences, and similar events available in

order to determine a individual's operational code. The primary

goal of this research is to look at the beliefs of the FHC and

Lula as presidents in a comparative perspective. Therefore the

first part of this research will focus on transcripts for

speeches and press conferences available for both FHC and Lula

in during their tenure as presidents2, as well as speeches

available for Lula before he was elected president, but during

FHC's presidency, and speeches and interviews done by FHC since

the end of his presidency. While I will be using both speeches

and interviews, it is important to note that speeches can pose a

methodological problem when the intent of the research is to

determine the beliefs of a certain individual. Hermann (1980:

15) argues that “the researcher content analyzing these

materials (speeches) will learn what the ghost writer is like or

what the image is which the political leader would like to

reflect.” While I acknowledge this limitation on the reliability

of speeches I believe that even if speeches are written by ghost

writers they will still underline the president's beliefs and

what he wants to convey to the population.

The first part of this research will, therefore, separate

2 It is also important to note that this research will focus on speeches and press conferences that have as main themes issues of foreign policy. Therefore we may be coding only a small section of a certain speech that focuses on foreign policy issues, since the main goal of the research is todetermine the operational code beliefs of these leaders in relation to foreign policymaking decisions.

each president into two specific time periods. For FHC, the

research will first look at documents available for his tenure

as president (1994-2002) and code those as one specific

operational code. Then I will use the period after FHC's

presidency (2003-present) to measure the changes in beliefs the

former president. For Lula, I will look at documents available

since his election as president (2003-present) as well as

documents available for the period before his elections as

president. In the case of Lula, I will only look at documents

between 1994 and 2002 for his pre-presidency period. I believe

that by limiting Lula's pre-presidency operational code this

research will be able to better explain the differences between

the two presidents, while at the same maintaining a similar time

frame for both presidents. Table 2 provides a brief explanation

of the time periods as well as the sources to be used during

each period.

Table 2. Operational Code and the Presidents

President

Period Documents

FHC Presidency (1995-2002)

Speeches, Press Conferences,Interviews, Debates

FHC Post-Presidency(2003-2008)

Speeches, Interviews

Lula Pre Presidency(1995-2002)

Speeches, Interviews, DebateTranscripts

Lula Presidency (2003-2008)

Speeches, Press Conferences,Interviews, Debates

The second part of this research will try to look at the

operational code beliefs of these two presidents beyond the time

period established in the first research approach. Because FHC

has held other influential political positions in the Brazilian

political system it will be interesting to see if there are any

differences in beliefs depending on the political position.

Therefore I will look at FHC's speeches, interviews, and press

conferences that happened before the time period established in

Table 2. In the case of Lula, while he did hold a position in

the constituent assembly that helped write the 1988 constitution

(Bourne 2008), the majority of his political career prior to

becoming president has involved his candidacies. Nevertheless,

the many years working as a professional presidential candidate

could have helped to change Lula's original ideology, especially

in regards to the international system. Therefore, looking at

Lula's operational code in his early days as a union leader can

also provide us with some interesting insights regarding changes

in beliefs across time. For the second part of this research we

will also look at Lula's speeches, interviews, and press

conferences that happened before the period established in the

first part of this research proposal. Table 3 provides a brief

explanation of the time periods being analyzed.

Table 3. Looking Beyond the Presidencies

President PeriodFHC Pre Presidency

(1982-1994)Lula Pre Presidency

(1982-1994)

The threshold date of 1982 has been selected for two

reasons. First, 1982 is the year that FHC was elected first

Senator for the state of São Paulo (Goertzel 1999). Second, 1982

can be considered the beginning of the Diretas Já movement in

Brazil, the political and social movement that demanded direct

presidential elections. While in 1982 Brazil is still under an

authoritarian regime, the censorship has diminished

significantly, especially when compared to the late 1960 and

1970s (Cardoso 2006). Also, it was during the Diretas Já movement

that Lula started to become known nationally, making the

possibility of obtaining speeches and interviews from that

period, both by FHC and Lula, more probable.

One of the problems that we may encounter when looking at

periods before the 1990s is the fact that the availability of

transcripts for speeches, press conference, and interviews on the

internet is highly diminished in comparison to the availability

for the same documents since FHC's first term as president.

Because of this possibility, I believe that separating the

research into two separate stages is the most optimal approach to

finish this work. The first stage will look at the primary goal

of this research, looking strictly at the resources available

through the internet in the period between 1995 and 2008. The

second stage will look at other resources, including archival

records of speech and press conference transcripts, as well as

print interviews, for the period between 1982 and 1994.

Therefore, the initial plan for this research is to finish

the first stage using available resources in a timely manner in

order to generate some preliminary results, then in the near

future look at the resources available to continue the research

and finish the second stage. I predict that the first stage can

be finished in six to eight months, given that most information

is available on the internet. In regards to the second stage, the

timeline to finish it would depend on the availability of

resources and time to finish the research. Therefore, at this

point in time it is not possible to determine a specific time

period for finishing the second stage of this research. Given

these limitations, this research proposal will focus on the

expected results of the first stage of research.

While the sources of data are different depending on the

time period, I believe these sources will provide important

information regarding the operational code of both FHC and Lula.

If the data permits, I also plan on separating the operational

code analysis between speeches and other more improvised styles

of conversation. The clear division between debates and

interviews must provide the best source to determine the

operational code of these leaders, given the need for

improvisation in these types of communication.

V. Expected Results and Conclusion

The goal of this research is to determine if institutional

constraints will have a direct effect on the belief system of two

Brazilian presidents. I expect that personal beliefs will change

for these two leaders depending on whether they are holding the

presidential office. Given the predicted institutional

constraints, I expect that the operational code of Lula and FHC

will move in a similar direction in the years they are president

and move in opposite directions when they are not holding the

position. In other words, Lula's pre-presidency beliefs will be

different from his beliefs during his presidency, and his ideas

and beliefs will be more pragmatic and conservative during his

tenure as president, and FHC's beliefs after his presidential

tenure will be different from his beliefs as president. But not

all operational code questions will experience a significant

change in certain circumstances. Table 4 provides an overview of

the speculated relationships among all belief sets of George's

operational code system.

It is important to note that the predictions on Table 4 are

highly speculative. These predictions are based on the analysis

of some of the personality traits that can be assumed given the

presidents' political background and their role when not in

power. The instrumental beliefs will be much more likely to

present a more relevant shift in beliefs given their

institutional nature. Philosophical beliefs will be more

connected to the long established convictions of the candidates,

and will have a lower level of change regardless of position in

power.

If most of my predictions hold true, I believe that this

study will provide a great contribution for the cognitive

behavior literature. The idea of bounded rationality is implied

in the study of cognitive behavior, more specifically, in the

operational code approach. But this bounded rationality approach

has focused on characteristics of the environment, without

directly looking at the constraints that accompany certain

political positions. The president of Brazil will be limited both

by internal and external constraints, and if these constraints

influence beliefs it is important to determine what specific

constraints will affect the operational code belief system of

leaders.

Table 4. Predicted Philosophical and Instrumental Beliefs3

Code

Question FHC (1994-

FHC (2002-

Lula (1994-

Lula (2002-

3 Adapted from Malici and Malici (2006).

2002) 2008) 2002) 2008)P-1 Nature of Political

Universe (Image of Others)

Friendly Friendly(less than 1994-2002)

Friendly Friendly(less than 1994-2002)

P-2 Realization of Political Values (Optimism/Pessimism)

Optimism Pessimism

Pessimism

Optimism

P-3 Political Future (Predictability of Others tactics)

Predictable

Uncertain

Uncertain

Predictable

P-4 Historical Development (Locus of Control)

High SelfControl

Low SelfControl

Low SelfControl

High Self Control

P-5 Role of Chance (Absence of Control)

High Role High Role (less than 1994-2002)

High Role

High Role (less than 1994-2002)

I-1 Approach to Goals (Direction of Strategy)

High Cooperation

High Conflict

High Cooperation

High Cooperation (higher than 1994-2002)

I-2 Pursuit of Goals(Intensity of Tactics)

High Cooperation

High Cooperation

High Cooperation

High Cooperation

I-3 Risk Orientation ( Risk Risk Risk Risk

Predictability of Tactics)

Averse Averse Acceptant

Averse

I-4 Timing of Action (Flexibility of Tactics)

Low ShiftPropensity

High Shift Propensity

High Shift Propensity

High Shift Propensity (lessthan 1994-2002)

I-5 Utility of Means (Exercise of Power)

Very Frequent

Infrequent

Infrequent

Very frequent

The study of leaders' beliefs is an important area of

foreign policy analysis that has benefited greatly from the

development of quantitative approaches such as operational code.

Operational code analysis, as a methodological tool to understand

leaders' beliefs and its relationship with foreign policy, has

yet to reach its full potential both in the development of

exploratory and explanatory variables in the study of leaders'

beliefs in foreign policy. The goal of this research is to use

this operational code as a tool to help in the development of

foreign policy analysis and cognitive studies, and expand this

research beyond the usual study of the United States and European

countries. Brazil's role in the international structure has

increased in the last few decades, and a study combining

cognitive studies and the study of Brazilian foreign policy can

prove to be quite helpful in the development of the discipline.

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