In this research we assess the legislation on the basis of the horizontalization process, or horizontal decentralization, undergone by foreign policy decision making within the realm of the Brazilian federal Executive Power. This process entails a new institutional arrangement among the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other domestic ministries, the dynamics of which will be scrutinized in a future research. While such horizontal decentralization is manifest from a normative standpoint, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs apparently seeks to regain the nuclear position it once enjoyed in foreign policy making in Brazil by specializing and increasing complexity of its bureaucratic structure - the consequences thereof being its own decentralization.