This dissertation is born out of the premise that the 2008 global financial crisis marked a watershed in the history of the international monetary system (IMS), where emerging market and developing countries (EMDs) would become permanently influential actors. In particular, it looks at the experience of Brazil in this context to evaluate this premise. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with current and former Brazilian policy-makers, this dissertation aims to explain the impact of external constraints on Brazilian economic policymaking from 1994 to 2014 and their role in determining Brazil’s position in the IMS. The puzzle is that Brazil has remained an unprivileged player in the power structures of the IMS while its economic power and position with regard to debt and trade varied over the period of analysis. For Brazil there was a particular hope that the aftermath of the 2008 crisis had fundamentally changed Brazil’s position in the IMS given the ease with which Brazil traversed the crisis. However, subsequent events have proven this view to be inaccurate, and that while the crisis generated circumstances in which Brazil appeared to have greater influence in the IMS, it did not precipitate any decisive structural change. Whilst Brazil did not change, it was nonetheless able to retain some of the political influence it acquired during the context of the crisis even when its domestic economic performance began to deteriorate substantially and some of the old external constraints re-emerged. The experience of Brazil thus serves to shed light on the understudied role of EMDs in the IMS and helps to better understand which factors can influence a country’s monetary power in a hierarchical system.