Foreign policy and transnational partisanship in Brazil

Abstract

There is a visible increase in the intensity with which parties and politicians have aligned with ideological allies across borders. In Brazil’s case, the transnational organization of political movements challenges well-established truths about the nexus between foreign policy and domestic politics. Brazilian foreign policy has traditionally been considered a matter of statespersons, being formulated in the halls of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidential palace. What we witness today in Brazil is something different: political movements and parties, left and right, are crossing national boundaries in order to form global networks that help them shape their own narratives at home. In this article, we analyze the Brazilian case to understand how transnational politico-ideological strategies function. Our argument is that, while out of power, both the Workers’ Party (PT) and Bolsonarismo began to establish transnational connections with the dual purpose of (1) continuing the agendas pursued by their respective governments and (2) consolidating support and narratives that could enable their return to the presidency. To this end, we will analyze the development and evolution of the transnational alliances built by the PT between 2016 and 2022 and by Bolsonarismo between 2023 and 2024. We conclude that transnationalism is an essential dimension of these movements’ political success during the periods analyzed.