Interest by scholars of International Relations in global power transitions is perhaps as old as the discipline itself and has given rise to a rich body of literature. A recent line of enquiry in this literature has been whether the increasing international clout of non-Western states, including Brazil, China, and India, will lead to a strengthening or weakening of the existing international order. It is widely recognised in the literature that international law has been integral to the liberal

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... international order. However, little attention has been paid to how rising powers have engaged with international law in a way that considers the specific detail of the law and with what implications for the international political order. This dissertation argues that such an omission has resulted in analyses of rising powers that are at best incomplete, as they have tended to downplay the extent to which international law has been integral to the distribution of power in the liberal international order. They have therefore also paid insufficient attention to the ways in which changing interpretations of international law can affect the global distribution of power, and vice versa. Drawing on the Theory of International Law as Ideology as developed by Shirley Scott and using the case of Brazil, it demonstrates that the nature of a rising power's engagement with specific provisions embedded in international law can in fact serve as a useful indicator of whether it is effectively strengthening or undermining the international order. The dissertation employs a comparative and interpretative methodology to investigate the nature of Brazil's engagement with international law through the example of two of the country's most celebrated diplomatic initiatives: the United States – Subsidies on Upland Cotton dispute initiated in 2002 in the World Trade Organisation and the 'Responsibility while Protecting' proposal presented to the United Nations Security Council in 2011. Overall, the findings of this dissertation indicate that the [...]