South-South Cooperation Under Analysis: Toward a New Pattern of International Relations?

If till the mid 1990s, the North-South International Cooperation (NSIC) model, based on an idealized notion of progress and legitimized by the incontestable technical superiority of Central countries, remained hegemonic, after the end of the Cold War it would change. The increasing financial pressures over the traditional donors, their failure to assure the development of the underdeveloped countries associated to the consolidation of the New Economically Emerging Countries (NEEC), such as Brazil, India, Russia, China and South Africa,  were factors that contributed to the consolidation of a South-South International Cooperation (SSIC) model. Characterized by: noninterference in internal affairs; respect for national sovereignty; absence of externally imposed conditionalities on the country for receiving aid, as well as respect for its historical and cultural singularities, the SSIC modality, whose origins lies in the Bandung Conference (1955) and to the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (1978), is gaining space between the  NEEC also as a foreign policy strategy to help them to gain  political status in the international scene. But despite being presented as a “benefit”, contention persists regarding the symmetry in the relations between these new donors and those receiving aid. The present article examines to which extent the implementation of a Technical Cooperation Agreement established between Brazil,  an emerging economic power, and Cape Verde, deemed as a peripheral country, in order to set up a Masters Program of Public Administration, in this latter country, has met the theoretical guidelines assigned to the South-South modality of International Cooperation.