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Global Studies Quarterly (2023) 0 , 1–13
Embracing or Rebuffing “the International”? Populist Foreign Policy
and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America
DANIEL F. WAJNER
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
AND
LESLIE WEHNER
University of Bath, UK
Under what conditions do populists embrace or reject “the international”? Some scholars of populism argue that populist
leaders tend to neglect political (inter-)action in the international arena due to their stated preference for isolationist, na-
tionalistic, and protectionist stances. Meanwhile, others claim that through their promotion of performative encounters and
transnational solidarities between “People(s),” populists are actually more likely to engage with actors, ideas, styles, and agen-
das coming from abroad. This article explores this apparent contradiction, hypothesizing that three main elements influence
the “populist mindset” to narrate the external world and thus adopt or rather resist new contingencies originating interna-
tionally: legitimacy , support , and opportunity . To examine the combination of these behavioral patterns, we compare two populist
presidents who are paradigmatic of a fourth wave of populism in Latin America: Brazil’s Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Mexico’s An-
drés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). A comparative analysis of Bolsonaro’s and AMLO’s discursive responses to numerous
foreign policy issues reveals how these three mechanisms condition their engagement or apathy toward external developments
in bilateral frameworks of cooperation, regional integration schemes, multilateral organizations, and global governance insti-
tutions. The findings of this study can contribute to a greater understanding of populist foreign policies and their outcomes,
with a special emphasis on Latin America and the Global South, and more generally to the emerging research on populism in
international relations.
Dans quelles circonstances les leaders populistes adoptent-ils ou rejettent-ils « l’international »? Certain·es chercheur·euses
spécialisé·es sur le populisme avancent que ces leaders tendent à négliger les (inter)actions politiques de la sphère interna-
tionale du fait de leurs postures généralement isolationnistes, nationalistes et protectionnistes. Parallèlement, d’autres affir-
ment que, du fait de leur propension à mettre en scène des rencontres et des solidarités transnationales pour rassembler le(s)
« Peuple(s) », les populistes sont en réalité plus enclins à travailler avec des acteurs, idées, méthodes et programmes venant de
l’étranger. Cet article analyse cette contradiction apparente et avance l’hypothèse que trois principaux éléments sont suscep-
tibles d’influencer la manière dont l’« esprit populiste »décrit le monde extérieur et, par conséquent, adopte ou au contraire
rejette les nouvelles contingences de l’international : légitimité, soutien et opportunité. Afin d’analyser l’imbrication de ces
schémas comportementaux, nous comparons deux présidents populistes emblématiques d’une quatrième vague du populisme
en Amérique latine : Jair Messias Bolsonaro (Brésil) et Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexique). Une analyse comparative
des discours tenus par ces deux présidents face àde nombreux problèmes de politique étrangère illustre la manière dont ces
trois mécanismes conditionnent l’engagement ou l’inertie des leaders face àdes évolutions externes, que ce soit dans le cadre
d’accords de coopération bilatérale, de programmes d’intégration régionaux, d’organisations multilatérales ou d’institutions
de gouvernance mondiale. Les résultats de cette étude peuvent contribuer àune meilleure compréhension des politiques
étrangères de leaders populistes et de leurs conséquences, avec un axe particulier sur l’Amérique latine et les Suds, mais aussi,
plus généralement, contribuer àla recherche émergente sur le populisme dans les relations internationales.
¿Qué condiciones tienen lugar para que los populistas acepten o rechacen «lo internacional»? Algunos académicos espe-
cializados en populismo argumentan que los líderes populistas tienden a descuidar la (inter)acción política en el ámbito
internacional debido a sus propias preferencias declaradas hacia posturas aislacionistas, nacionalistas y proteccionistas. Por el
contrario, otros afirman que, mediante su promoción de encuentros performativos y de solidaridades transnacionales entre
«Pueblo(s)», los populistas son en realidad más propensos a comprometerse con agentes, ideas, estilos y agendas provenientes
del extranjero. Este artículo estudia esta aparente contradicción, planteando la hipótesis de que existen tres elementos prin-
cipales que influyen en la «mentalidad populista» para narrar el mundo exterior y, en consecuencia, adoptar o más bien
rechazar nuevas contingencias originadas internacionalmente: legitimidad, apoyo y oportunidad. Con el fin de examinar la
combinación de estos patrones de comportamiento, comparamos dos presidentes populistas que son ejemplos paradigmáticos
de una cuarta ola de populismo en América Latina: Jair Messias Bolsonaro de Brasil y Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO)
de México. Un análisis comparativo de las respuestas de los discursos de Bolsonaro y AMLO a numerosos temas de política
exterior revela cómo estos tres mecanismos condicionan su compromiso o su apatía hacia la evolución exterior de marcos
bilaterales de cooperación, esquemas de integración regional, organizaciones multilaterales e instituciones de gobernanza
global. Las conclusiones de este estudio pueden contribuir a una mayor comprensión de las políticas exteriores populistas y
de sus resultados, con un énfasis especial en América Latina y en el Sur Global, y, de una forma más general, pueden contribuir
a la investigación emergente sobre el populismo en las relaciones internacionales.
Wajne r, Daniel F. , and Leslie Wehner. (2023) Embracing or Rebuffing “the International”? Populist Foreign Policy and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America. Global Studies
Quarterly , https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksad026
©The Author(s) (2023). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
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2 Populist Foreign Policy and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America
Introduction
Research on the transnational dimensions of populism has
proliferated in recent years. Most specifically, the increas-
ing attention paid to populism in international relations
(IR) has allowed the development of a rich theoretical
understanding of the way populist governments tend to
formulate, plan, and implement their foreign policies (see,
e.g., Verbeek and Zaslove 2017 ; Chryssogelos 2018 ; Destradi
and Plagemann 2019 ; Stengel, MacDonald, and Nabers
2019 ). The empirical evidence is also vast and diverse in
terms of geographic diversity, including case studies from
North America ( Boucher and Thies 2019 ; Löfflmann 2019 ;
Skonieczny 2019 ; Drezner 2020 ; Lacatus and Meibauer
2021 ), Latin America ( Sagarzazu and Thies 2019 ; Wajner
2021 ; Lopes, Carvalho, and Santos 2022 ; Wehner 2022 ),
Western Europe ( Chryssogelos 2020 ; Giurlando 2021 ;
Homolar and Löfflmann 2021 ; Lequesne 2021 ), Eastern
Europe ( Jenne 2021 ; Cadier and Szulecki 2022 ; Subotic
2022 ), Southeast Asia ( Plagemann and Destradi 2018 ;
Wojczewski 2019 ), Africa ( Lacatus 2023 ), and the Middle
East ( Ta ¸s 2022 ).
That said, the accumulated knowledge on populist for-
eign policies still leaves us with a central puzzle about
how populists relate to “the international”: a notion that
those leaders often use in their narration of the outside
world, seeking to depict the kind of actors, ideas, styles,
and agendas that “come from abroad.” More specifically,
IR scholars debate whether populists diverge or converge
on “importing” what originated across national borders
toward its politicization. Indeed, it has been remarked that
populists reject regional and global agendas by claiming
their preference for isolationist, nation-centric, and protec-
tionist stances in terms of foreign policies, while reaffirming
popular sovereignty, undermining regionalist projects, and
backlashing against “globalist” elites (see Conniff 1999 ,
4–6; Mead 1999 , 5–29; Liang 2006 , 7–18). Yet, recent re-
search also reveals that contemporary populist governments
constantly embrace the international arena to carry out
their performative practices, through the strengthening
of transnational solidarities between “People(s)” and the
adoption of ideas, agendas, and styles coming from abroad
(see De la Torre 2017 ; Moffitt 2017 ; Chryssogelos 2018 , 14;
Söderbaum et al. 2021 , 12–13; De Cleen et al. 2021 ; Wajner
2022 , 416–18). These seemingly contradictory mechanisms
undermine current attempts at theorizing, questioning the
very possibility of a “populist foreign policy” and the ability
to achieve scientific progress in this direction.
This paper unravels this apparent contradiction by an-
swering the following question: Under which conditions do pop-
ulist leaders embrace or neglect the international scenario through
their discourse? We hypothesize that several factors influence
the preference of populist leaders to embrace contingent
actors, ideas, styles, and agendas originated internationally
or to show their rejection to them through resistance, min-
imization, and indifference. These conditionings on how
leaders narrate the external world depart from the mindset
of the populist leader, with various rational, normative, and
emotional manifestations. First, populist leaders tend to
discursively embrace or neglect the “imported” issue to the
extent that its politicization is functional to increase the
legitimacy of “the people” (i.e., his coalition and himself) and
undermine the legitimacy of “the elites” (i.e., his competi-
tors). Therefore, populists act at the interplay of national
and international realities depending on whether in a par-
ticular context they prioritize the bond with “the people” or
whether they conclude that their goals are to be achieved
by targeting “the elite.” These two categories can either be
paired together or take form in a fragmented manner, de-
pending on the preferred narrative of the populist leaders
about the world. Second, the populists’ approach to inter-
national political (inter-)action is also influenced by the
“heritage” of previous non-populist governments at home
and thus the opportunity that embracing or rebuffing this
heritage represents for the populist leader. In this sense, the
direction of the politicization relies on utility calculations,
as engaging with or distancing from previous experiences to
differentiate the project is driven by the political gains and
costs that the leader perceives in “going abroad.” Third,
populist positions toward the external world tend to be
reactive, individual, and contingent upon the possibility
of securing support for his political project. Since populist
discourse often originates during conjunctural events, as
an ad hoc emotional response of the leader to external
pression, the perceived roles of “friends” and “enemies”
tend to be strongly conditioned by heuristics and by the
targeted audience of the populist message. Populists, we
therefore assert, tend to be ambiguous in their international
stances, and the direction of their selected stances usually
depends on the combination of these factors (legitimation,
opportunity, and support) in a specific context.
1
To examine these combined patterns of behavior and
their eventual influence on foreign policymaking, we draw
on evidence from two cases of populism in Latin Amer-
ica: Brazil’s president, Jair Messias Bolsonaro (2019–2022),
and Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador
(AMLO) (2018–present). These cases represent a new wave
of populist leaders in this region as both came to power si-
multaneously. They also present similarities to the cases of
contemporary populism that were then emerging around
the world and differences with previous populist experi-
ences in Latin America. Furthermore, both cases have been
less explored by the literature of populist foreign policy
(although with recent significant exceptions in the case
of Brazil, see de Sa´Guimara
˜
es and de Oliveira Gomes e
Silva 2021 ; Casarões and Farias 2022 ; Farias, Casarões, and
Magalhães 2022 ; Lopes, Carvalho, and Santos 2022 ; and
Wehner 2022 ). More importantly, the comparison between
Bolsonaro and AMLO has been almost ignored to date by
scholars, even though they are both considered paradig-
matic cases of the new left- and right-wing populism in Latin
America. Such an analysis will allow us to hypothesize about
broader similarities and differences in the approach to the
“international” between contemporary populists from the
left and the right. Consequently, it is worth embarking on
this endeavor of comparatively analyzing Bolsonaro’s and
AMLO’s narrative reactions to multiple international devel-
opments and their translation into foreign policy, includ-
ing the “engagement” with the US administration of Donald
Trump and other leaders in Europe and Asia, their “apathy”
toward the decaying integration processes in the region,
and the new global agenda on public goods such as health
(COVID-19). By providing some possible explanations as
to why populist narratives occasionally neglect the external
world while others engage with it, this study can contribute
to a greater understanding of populist decision-making pat-
terns in foreign policy within and from Latin America.
1
Certainly, these three patterns are also well known in (non-populist) for-
eign policy, but we will argue that they stand out in cases of populism due to
the inherent Manichean antagonism that leads populists to accuse foreign poli-
cies supported by the “traditional establishment” as impure, corrupt, and con-
spiring, while embracing the “common sense” of “the people” in defense of
(inter-)national interests.
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DANIEL F. WAJNER AND LESLIE WEHNER 3
In the next section, we survey the different literature to
locate our contribution within the intellectual landscape
in the study of populism in IR. Here, we highlight the two
different paths that recent scholarship has taken in terms of
showing populist governments as anti-international, while
others focus on their proactive engagement with this level.
Second, we introduce our theoretical framework in which
we anchor our propositions. Third, we analyze the case
of Jair Bolsonaro. Fourth, we analyze the case of AMLO.
Finally, in our concluding section, we compare the two
cases and provide some possible ways to move the research
agenda on populist foreign policy forward.
Populist Foreign Policies and “the International”
Contemporary populist leaders increasingly use the interna-
tional politics of their state as another arena to promote the
benefits of their governments for the people and to target
the elite that is seen as detrimental to the full realization
of the populist ideal. Driven by this reality, several scholars
have recently paid attention to the varieties of populist
foreign policies informed by the “thick” or “thin” ideology
as companion to populism (e.g., Destradi and Plagemann
2019 ; Steele and Homolar 2019 ; Stengel, MacDonald,
and Nabers 2019 ), while others have analyzed the type of
rhetorical strategies and performative roles that populists
enact internationally (e.g., Löfflmann 2019 ; Soderbaum
et al. 2019; de Sa´Guimara
˜
es and de Oliveira Gomes e Silva
2021 ; Wehner and Thies 2021 ; Aiolfi 2022 ; Subotic 2022 ;
Wajner 2022 ).
Among this growing literature, Destradi and Plagemann
(2019) find out that populism brings a high level of per-
sonalization and centralization to the foreign policy of a
state as populist leaders not only pose themselves center
stage in this process, but have also managed to sideline the
bureaucratic apparatus. Foreign policy becomes highly per-
sonalized under populism, while the leader enjoys enough
latitude to bring his antagonistic depiction of the people
and elite to the international level, resulting in different
forms of foreign policy politicization (see also Destradi,
Plagemann, and Ta ¸s 2022 ). Chryssogelos (2020) argues that
this anti-global elite dimension is an essential component
of populism in international politics. The backlash against
a globalist establishment (or “blob”) follows the ideal of the
populist leader that any action of the government has the
purpose to protect or favor the people from the foreign
elite (see Löfflmann 2022 ; Subotic 2022 ). Yet, it is not only
“elites” who are inherently internationalized by contempo-
rary populism, but also “the people” who are strategically
projected transnationally. Current populist leaders take
advantage of the “two-level game” that links national and
international politics to legitimize their processes of power
accumulation and delegitimize their adversaries. To this
end, populists engage in legitimation strategies designed
to (re-)construct framings that would positively resonate
among external and internal audiences, including relaunch-
ing ad hoc regionalist projects, enhancing identity-based
solidarities, and fostering political networks of like-minded
supporters via national revenues ( Wajner 2022 ).
However, while all these works emphasize the nuances
of how the populist leader narrates the external world and
engages with its actors, ideas, styles, and agendas—what
we understand here as “the international”—they overlook
the fact that sometimes populists move from no interest
to a full engagement with the international arena (and
vice versa). On the one hand, sometimes they (re-)act in
a rather inert and apathic way toward foreign policy as
much as they avoid “importing” topics, bodies, and com-
mitments that cross national boundaries. That is, they opt
for politicizing what “comes from abroad,” but by diverging
from it. Rebuffing “the international” is then expressed
in the discursive articulation of different threats emerging
from cosmopolitan ideas ( Chryssogelos 2020 ; Jenne 2021 ;
Cadier and Szulecki 2022 ; Farias, Casarões, and Magalhães
2022 ), globalist bureaucracies ( Verbeek and Zaslove 2017 ;
Voeten 2020 ; Lequesne 2021 ), regional and interregional
projects ( Skonieczny 2019 ; Giurlando 2021 ; Blanc 2021 ),
and foreign populations ( Wojczewski 2019 ; Homolar and
Löfflmann 2021 ; Subotic 2022 ), and translated politically
into nation-centrism, isolationism, and protectionism in
terms of foreign policy stances ( Conniff 1999 ; Mead 1999 ;
Liang 2006 ). On the other hand, more and more contempo-
rary populist leaders have been seen “importing” different
discursive and performative practices coming from abroad,
which often take the form of ideas, styles, and friends; that
is, they also prefer to politicize what emerges beyond bor-
ders, but by accepting it. Embracing “the international” is
thus translated politically into bilateral encounters of lead-
ers ( De la Torre 2017 ; Moffitt 2017 ; Wehner 2022 ), regional
and civilizational clubs ( Wajner and Roniger 2019 ; Ta ¸s 2022 ;
Yilmaz and Morieson 2023 ), ad hoc “à la carte” projects
( Söderbaum et al. 2021 ), and transnational movements that
promote shared solidarities ( Chryssogelos 2018 ; De Cleen
et al. 2021 ). Certainly, there are differences in terms of tar-
get: while right-wing populists tend to focus their rhetorical
rejection or adoption of the international sphere on struc-
tures and agencies linked to immigration, ethno-religious
identity, and judicial processes, left-wing populists more gen-
erally express their repudiation or cooptation of multina-
tional corporations, movements, and technocracies related
to the economy, finance, and trade ( Wajner 2022 , 425–27).
Yet, it remains unclear under which conditions populists of
both types opt for incorporating the external developments
or for resisting, minimizing, and evading them.
Furthermore, most of the revised works highlight the
strategic manifestations of the state under populism in the
international arena, but few works unveil the social psy-
chological characteristics that drive and inform the foreign
policymaking of populists as much as the patterns of behav-
ior it takes. Within these works, Skonieczny (2018) analyzes
the emotional aspects of populism in economic foreign pol-
icy during the electoral campaign of Trump and Sanders.
She finds out that the transpacific partnerships, a rather
abstract issue and domain of trade experts, got electoral
attention and mobilization as both Trump and Sanders were
relying on affective tags and appeals. Thiers and Wehner
(2022) study how certain personality traits of populist
leaders such as those of Trump and Chávez shape their
respective countries’ foreign policies. They conclude that
these leaders’ priority for relationships over tasks is key to
explaining and justifying actions that strengthen the bond
with the people of the project. Similarly, Drezner (2020)
analyzes different psychological characteristics of Donald
Trump to explain his erratic foreign policy behavior, while
Homolar and Löfflmann (2021) and Kinnvall and Svensson
(2022) explore the interplay of structures and emotions in
far-right populist projects relying on the analytical benefits
of ontological insecurity, fantasy narratives, emotional trig-
gers, and governance mechanisms. Wehner (2022) develops
a theoretical framework to understand populist foreign pol-
icy that departs from the mindset of the populist leader.
The leader holds images of the international that depart
from the people and elite. The image is cognitive as much
as evaluative and affective and thus informs the foreign
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4 Populist Foreign Policy and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America
policy role to play. Although these studies have provided a
substantial contribution, we argue that the malleability of
“the international” in the “populist mindset” has yet to be
analyzed ontologically and explored empirically.
More specifically, a social psychology approach can shed
light on different elements to understand populist leaders’
motivations and actions that depart from a specific con-
struction of and mobilization of the people of the populist
project against an elite that is perceived as detrimental to
the populist ideal. As the leader is the central figure in
a populist government, he/she presents him/herself to
the masses as both the fixer and the savior of the people
( Weyland 2001 , Weyland 2017 ). The leader filters the social
reality he experiences, and such cognitive element helps a
person to understand the world he/she is in. It also helps
the individual to depict options for action including how
the leader conceives and navigates through existing social
constraints composed of structures, contexts, and domestic
and international actors. Leaders filter social reality to
make sense of it and be able to articulate courses of action
and set of behaviors.
2 Moreover, the populist leader also
relies on emotional appeals and affective tags as well as
on promoting normative and strategic options for either
engaging with or rather disengaging from the international.
While the normative dimension departs from how the
leader filters the reality at hand (cognition) and takes
form in simplistic depictions of the social reality of world
politics (such as good–bad and/or dangerous–benign),
the affective dimension is about what certain social reality
triggers in the people and the populist leader such as anger,
anxiety, happiness, comfort, and contempt for example (see
Homolar and Löfflmann 2021 ; Wehner 2022 ). Through all
these feelings they evoke, populist leaderships try to shape
the affective perceptions of their personae in both domestic
and international audiences, thus triggering feelings of em-
pathy, striking a sense of collective identity, and bolstering
a relationship of mutual commitment and sacrifice ( Wajner
and Roniger 2022 , 122–3). These cognitive, affective, and
normative material that the populist “mindset” articulates
are key to understanding how populist leaders interact with
the international and its various locations.
Unpacking “the International” in the Populist Mindset
Following the nexus of the populist mindset and its behav-
ioral patterns, we hypothesize that several factors influence
the decision of populist leaders to actively incorporate the
external developments coming from abroad or to show
their rejection to them through resistance, minimization,
and indifference. We claim that whether “the international”
is portrayed as supporting or being detrimental to populists
mainly depends on whether it helps the leader’s normative
legitimation, whether it is functional to keep the popular
support for his political project, and whether it becomes an
opportunity or cost to differentiate the populist leadership
from past non-populist experiences of the country. In other
words, legitimacy, support, and opportunity constitute
behavioral expressions of the normative, cognitive, and
affective components of the populist mindset toward the
politicization of an “imported” issue. Populists, we assert,
2
On theoretical cognitive approaches on how leaders process and make sense
of different type of constraints see Winter (1987) , Walker (1990) , Keller (2005) ,
and Hermann (2003). On the application of cognitive leaders’ approaches to pop-
ulism in foreign policy and their take on domestic and international constraints,
see Özdamar and Ceydilek (2020) and Thiers and Wehner (2022) . See also the
work of Lopes, Carvalho, and Santos (2022) on domestic actors constraining and
enabling the foreign policy decision-making of populist leaders.
tend to be ambiguous, instrumental, and reactive about
their stances to external developments, and the direction
of their politicization usually depends on the combination
of these factors (legitimation, support, and opportunity)
in a specific context. The propositions presented below,
which cross the different dimensions of populism, are
to make sense of the sometimes consistent and some-
times ambivalent view of the international by the populist
leader.
First, if the issue, context, or pattern of interaction that is
“imported from abroad” is functional to legitimize “the peo-
ple” and delegitimize “the elite,” the populist leader will dis-
play a rather strategic, cherry-picking approach to “the inter-
national.” Indeed, legitimation is an agent-oriented process
of justification and refers to an actor’s or institution’s social
need for boosting normative acceptance of himself and/or
his actions ( Clark 2005 ; Hurd 2008 ; Tallberg and Zürn
2019 ). Also in the international stage, political actors con-
stantly use (de-)legitimation strategies to affect subjective
and intersubjective beliefs about the external approval of
their membership or behavior, through a multiplicity of nor-
mative, strategic, and emotional mechanisms ( Wajner 2019 ;
see also Hurrelman, Schneider, and Steffek 2007 ; Goddard
and Krebs 2015 ). Only recently has the growing knowledge
on international (de-)legitimation strategies been incorpo-
rated to further understand the central role of international
performances in populist phenomena ( Wajner and Roniger
2022 ). Populist narratives of the external world tend to be
reactive and contingent upon the possibility of securing
legitimation for their political project, generally originating
in an ad hoc response of the populist leader to international
pressures during conjunctural events. Thus, populists act
at the interplay of national and international realities,
depending on whether in a particular context populists will
benefit more from prioritizing the bond with “the people”
or whether their goals are to be achieved by targeting
“the elite.” Populist leaders tend to embrace or neglect
“imported” agendas to the extent that these international
affairs serve to increase the perceptions of legitimacy of
“the people” and illegitimacy of “the elites” as they discur-
sively articulate. These two categories can either be paired
together or take form in a fragmented manner, depending
on the preferred narrative of the populist leaders, that is,
how the leader explains world dynamics. Since populists
are more inclined to conceive “the international” in terms
of “friends” and “foes,” foreign policymaking is strongly
conditioned by heuristics. Moreover, subjects under discus-
sion that are critical, urgent, and uncertain are particularly
functional to populist leaders, who seek to divert criticism
from their regimes and their foreign policymaking.
Second, the more a populist leader needs to secure
bonds with his supportive audience(s), the more inclined
he/she will be to use affective tags toward the international.
Indeed, the populist mindset and its strategic behavior
for politicization also need a public. In fact, Holsti (1976)
argues that a political discourse has always an intention to
persuade, threaten, put pressure, or attract sympathy from
and overall influence a targeted audience. The audience
has a key role in the populist project as the international
conduct of the leader is justified in relation to the antag-
onist depiction of the people versus the elite. While the
audience of populism is based on a notion hold by the
leader, it takes a relational form through the identification
of the people with a certain type of foreign policy initiatives,
locations such as regional and multilateral institutions, and
actions that can maximize the benefit for the people. At the
same time, the audience becomes an active recipient of the
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DANIEL F. WAJNER AND LESLIE WEHNER 5
leader’s foreign policy since his actions (and inactions) are
contested by a set of domestic and international actors, and
regional and multilateral institutions. As recently demon-
strated by Lopes, Carvalho, and Santos (2022 , 2–4), both
local and external constituencies often restrict the room for
maneuver of populist leaders in pluralistic societies to carry
out their desired policies. Audiences provide feedback and
communicate to the leader what is possible and acceptable
as part of the process of how the leader filters and processes
information cognitively, and then how she/he navigates
existing social realities. The means of it is how the leader
narrates the domestic and international and how his/her
framings resonate among the target audiences. In fact, the
populist leader relies on a communication style that is direct
and shows decisiveness to attract followers ( Bos and Brants
2014 ). Certainly, political support is intertwined to legiti-
mation as the more endorsement an individual or project
receives, the more likely it will be accepted and recognized
as legitimate. However, this “diffuse support” (see Easton
1975 ) is specific to how individuals of a political system feel
those on power deliver their promise in terms of outputs
and evaluate the performance of the authorities. The
populist leader deploys emotional actions when needed
to secure bonds with its base to keep political support.
Hence, the discursive style of the populist leader is based on
exaggeration, agitations, and spectacular acts as well as on
calculated provocations to the rivals of the project. Likewise,
the populist leader’s rhetoric is usually full of stereotyping
elements and affective tags to provoke the desired effects
on the followers ( Heinisch 2003 ; Wehner 2022 ).
Third, the more the foreign policymaking of a country is
locally perceived as that of the elite and its global partners,
the more the populist leader will distance him/herself
from the foreign policy heritage, and political channels of
previous governments. Indeed, the populists’ approach to
international interactions is influenced by the “heritage”
of previous non-populist governments at home and the
political opportunity that this heritage represents for the
populist leader—an opportunity to fill the need of dif-
ferentiation from the foreign policy elite and achieve a
further bond with the people. Opportunity refers to seizing
the moment when a policy window space opens as well
as when disengaging from the issue is more convenient.
Hence, the decision of the populist leadership to engage
with or distance him/herself from external developments is
driven by whether a specific issue at the international level
is perceived as an opportunity or cost to differentiate the
project from previous governments and their elites. This
approach to politicization builds on the assumption that
some of the actions that are made “abroad” are intended
to favor the people and target the elite “at home.” The
resultant views of what the external world means for the
populist leader are multifaceted, complex, and sometimes
look in contradiction to the predicament of the populist
project. The reason for these complex and sometimes
contradictory views of “the international” depends on what
a particular policy and bilateral or multilateral relation-
ship brings to the audience of populism and thus to the
populist project along the antagonist view of people/elite.
Certainly, these perceptions are enhanced unless these
“old” patterns of political (inter-)action can be used to
benefit the people and undermine the elite, as assert the
previous hypotheses. Moreover, the strategy of distancing
from previous leaders is well known in foreign policy, but
we argue that this pattern in populism is due to its inherent
Manichean antagonism that leads populists to accuse for-
eign affairs supported by their competitors as elitist, foreign,
and impure.
To explore the combination of these behavioral pat-
terns on foreign policymaking and test the propositions,
we compare two case studies of contemporary populist
presidents: Jair Messias Bolsonaro and AMLO, the former,
a right-wing populist leader from Brazil and the latter, a
left-wing populist leader from Mexico, as part of a fourth
wave of populism in Latin America.
3 Although both cases
are considered paradigmatic of the new Latin American
populisms of the left and right, scholars have still over-
looked the benefits of carrying out a comparative analysis
of Bolsonaro’s and AMLO’s populisms. This theoretical
and empirical gap is even more pronounced considering
the increasingly influential literature on populism in IR
and the burgeoning study of populist foreign policies (see
exceptions in de Sa´Guimara
˜
es and de Oliveira Gomes e
Silva 2021 ; Weyland 2021 ; Casarões and Farias 2022 ; Lopes,
Carvalho, and Santos 2022 ; Wehner 2022 ).
Analyzing “the International” in Latin America’s Fourth
Wave of Populism
Brazil: Bolsonaro’s Confrontational Approach to “the International”
Jair Bolsonaro presents in his narrative an ambivalent
attitude toward the external world, as sometimes he gets
involved with it to justify policymaking while in other cases
he detaches and shows strong opposition to ideas, actors,
and rules that transcend borders. Having presented himself
as the people’s savior who is willing to combat the elites,
Bolsonaro often rejects what comes “from abroad” by con-
fronting a transnational establishment, supposedly made
up of globalist diplomats, technocratic bureaucracies, and
multilateral institutions. He thus depicts both the national
and international as arenas of the Brazilian political elite
that have brought the country to a crisis. Contrarywise, Bol-
sonaro has also continued engaging with strategic partners
bilaterally, including the United States, Russia, and India,
imitating their leaders’ ideas and styles, while promoting
cherry-picked multilateral frameworks such as G20 and
BRICS. How to make sense of this ambivalence?
Bolsonaro’s political background is crucial to understand-
ing the “opportunity” dimension explained above. Although
Bolsonaro has been present in Brazil’s political life for a
while, his peripheric relevance played in his favor to artic-
ulate his narration of being a political outsider and a true
representative of the people. Before running for President,
Bolsonaro was a member of the military forces and once re-
tired he pursued a political career as a city councilor (1989–
1991) and then as deputy in National Congress representing
the area of Rio de Janeiro (1991–2018). As a deputy, he was a
member of the Christian Democratic Party, then renamed as
Social Christian Party. As a political candidate for the pres-
idency, Bolsonaro was supported by his political party, the
labor renewal party, and evangelical movements. Indeed, he
sometimes talks of his second given name to connect with
religious groups (Messias—Messiah) to portray himself as a
protector of Brazil and its conservative values ( Borba 2021 ).
Bolsonaro’s nativist approach, an original issue in Latin
American populism, was highlighted in his political cam-
paign to the presidency. This nativist message was strongly
linked to an image of Brazilian people against the left-wing
establishment that defends these “others.” Bolsonaro sought
constantly to differentiate himself and his government from
the legacy of the Workers Party, attacking the presidencies
of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff as actors of corruption
3
The previous waves of populism are “classical populist” wave (1930s–1950s),
the “neoliberal neo-populist” wave (the 1980s–1990s), and the “progressive neo-
populist” wave (2000s–2010 s) ( Wajner 2021 ).
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6 Populist Foreign Policy and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America
( Ta maki and Fuks 2020 ). In opposition of Lula’s and Dilma’s
portrayal of Brazil as a leader of the Global South, Bol-
sonaro’s campaign enacted a rhetoric of defending the true
nature of Brazil: an imperial, Western power, strongly em-
bedded in a narration of “us versus them” that mirrors pop-
ulist right-wing discourse in Europe and the United States.
Once in power, Bolsonaro not only continued using this
antagonist narration of the people versus the elite inside
Brazil, but also brought his confrontational approach to the
international in a quest for legitimation. As Casarões and
Farias (2022 , 741–3) show, Bolsonaro’s discursive rejection
of the liberal international order, which was based on three
pillars—anti-globalism, anti-Communism, and religious
nationalism—was later translated into foreign policy formu-
lation. Following the need to restore key principles of what
Brazil is and should be—which were forgotten by previous
governments according to the populist project, Bolsonaro
incorporated the role of being the savior of the country
into the Manichean narration of the “the people versus the
elite” in foreign policy matters. For instance, at the United
Nations (UN) General Assembly in 2019, Bolsonaro started
his speech by stressing that he is the voice of the true peo-
ple: “I present to you a new Brazil, one that reemerges from
the brink of socialism. A Brazil that is being rebuilt on the
basis of the yearnings and ideals of the people” ( Bolsonaro
2019a ). Therefore, “the international” is another level
for the populist leader to protect the populist project so
that it is dismantled at home from the outside in, thus
delegitimizing the opposition and legitimizing the need
for its own leadership. The foreign policy establishment
is both seen and portrayed by Bolsonaro as an extension
of the left-wing party elite influence and the different
multilateral institutions (especially the UN). Previously, as
a presidential candidate he referred to UN and the Human
Rights Committee of this institution as places that are “a
gathering of communists” ( Casarões and Farias 2022 , 746,
753) and “useless” ( Casarões and Flemes 2019 ), and thus as
threat to the people and his own restorative mission. Part of
the constant rhetoric attack on multilateralism and supra-
national technocrats was to portray himself as delivering
his promises to his audience by triggering emotions and
reactions of support from the people to his struggle.
Bolsonaro’s rejection of “the international” as a location
of the left-wing national elite and global allies did not
translate into a passive standing position in multilateral
frameworks. Bolsonaro’s mission to protect the people,
legitimize the populist project, and undermine the power
of the elite meant to adopt the role of “antiglobalist” ( de
Sa´Guimaraes and de Oliveira Gomes e Silva 2021 ). Yet,
antiglobalism is not isolationism as it involves an active
rhetoric toward “enemies” in the international as well as
some presence together with “friends” on the international
stage ( Wehner 2022 ). Bolsonaro thus contingently engaged
with some sections of the external world to secure support
for his political project, reducing the power of the cos-
mopolitan establishment and achieving more autonomy for
the Brazilian “people” from multilateral commitments. This
explains Bolsonaro’s decision to withdrew from key mul-
tilateral debates on human rights and climate change, as
these were domestically seen as issues that were detrimental
to Brazil’s sovereignty and the values Bolsonaro wants to
restore for the country ( Casarões and Farias 2022 ). With-
drawing from these global debates has not correlated with
pulling out from formal climate accords; both were first and
foremost political arenas to empower his populist project
( Menezes and Barbosa 2021 ). Bolsonaro’s government has
ignored Brazil’s climate reduction commitments and even
allowed the private sector to increase emissions and forest
eradication in the Amazonas, which shows the “foe” and
“friend” logic. He has also tried to delegitimize multilateral
institutions and international nongovernmental organiza-
tions that promoted the global climate agenda within Brazil,
presenting this as an interference of “globalist” elites into
domestic matters, invoking the sovereignty of the Brazilian
people to decide on this matter ( Menezes and Barbosa
2021 ). Conspiracy theories certainly helped in this regard;
for instance, Bolsonaro’s then Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Ernesto Araujo, referred to climate change global crisis as a
“Marxist conspiracy” ( Casarões and Flemes 2019 ).
That said, while Bolsonaro’s confrontational perfor-
mances and opposition to the international continued, he
did not totally disengage from international matters. Cer-
tainly, partly because of obligation of the institution of pres-
idency and existing domestic and international constraints,
he carried on with Brazil’s diplomatic duties. For instance,
he adopted a pragmatic approach to China due to commer-
cial interests, despite being critical of China during his cam-
paign (cf. Gomes-Saraiva and Silva 2019 ; de Sa´Guimara
˜
es
and de Oliveira Gomes e Silva 2021 , 359, Lopes, Carvalho,
and Santos 2022 ). Yet, Bolsonaro went much further: he
developed strategic interactions with what he conceived to
be alike leaders such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Vik-
tor Orbán, Narendra Modi, and Benjamin Netanyahu, and
he also engaged with BRICS forum to gain international
visibility, thus legitimizing his own political leadership as the
sole representative of the Brazilian people ( Wajner 2022 ).
Indeed, most of these interactions with other international
actors were conducted bilaterally and the focus was interper-
sonal rather interstate. While he sought to identify himself
with Trump to achieve legitimacy by association, he tended
to differentiate the leadership figure of Trump from that
of the United States as a state, described as composed of
elite-driven institutions and agencies. As Trump became his
reference point, Bolsonaro supported Trump’s initiatives
on Venezuela, Cuba, and Israel. This followership helped
Bolsonaro’s Brazil to be granted the status of a major
non-NATO ally of the United States during the Trump
administration ( Pereyra Doval 2019 ; Wehner 2022 ).
A similarly ambivalent approach between confronta-
tion and pragmatism was adopted by Bolsonaro in the
regional arena. Taking the opportunity to reject previous
governments’ efforts in different regionalist frameworks,
Bolsonaro kept to a minimum existing multilateral com-
mitment in the region and adopted more of a bilateral
approach when needed. For instance, he followed up on
the disarticulation started by his predecessor Michel Temer
of UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), framing
this group—advanced under Lula during the mid-2000s—as
co-opted by Venezuela’s socialism and as a mechanism of
“communist” forces in the region. Bolsonaro concluded
along with other right-wing governments of the region
that UNASUR was no longer a viable option, so Brazil
announced its withdrawal from this group when it was sup-
posed to take over the group’s pro-temporary presidency.
He also followed Chile’s and Colombia’s idea on launching
a new regional group: PROSUR (Forum for the Progress
of South America), taking second stage in this venture
( Wehner 2022 ). Bolsonaro tweeted during his visit to Chile
to launch PROSUR: “Yesterday in Santiago, we laid the
foundations for a new space for dialogue and integration in
South America: PROSUL. The main pillars will be democ-
racy, prosperity and respect for sovereignties, as opposed to
the totalitarian advance observed in the continent in recent
years with UNASUR” ( Bolsonaro 2019b ).
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DANIEL F. WAJNER AND LESLIE WEHNER 7
Nevertheless, Bolsonaro adopted an ambivalent ap-
proach to MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South),
a regionalist project initiated in the 1990s as part of the
neoliberal era. Despite Bolsonaro initially signaling in his
campaign of his intention to withdraw from MERCOSUR,
once in government he preferred to show distance on the
political and diplomatic dimension by not attending some
of its meetings. However, he did not question the commer-
cial dimension of it, acknowledging MERCOSUR benefits
to Brazil’s national economy and various domestic interest
groups in Brazil that supported him ( Frenkel and Azzi 2021 ,
179). This ambivalence toward South American regionalist
schemes can be interpreted as follows: Bolsonaro’s eventual
decision to withdraw from MERCOSUR and commercial
relations would become an unbearable political cost, and
therefore inconvenient in terms of utility calculations. In
contrast, the UNASUR withdrawal decision was already
halfway implemented when he got elected president, and
it did not represent a major political cost since this group
was more of a diplomatic forum and cooperation did
not include trade and macro-economic issue areas. More
broadly, regional political cooperation could be portrayed
as an exclusionary elite venture, while regional economic
cooperation was shown as a pragmatic need for Bolsonaro’s
Brazil and his own populist project to benefit the people.
Possibly one of the best ways to describe the ambivalent
approach of Bolsonaro to “the international” is through his
reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. From the beginning,
he minimized the danger of the virus and its effects, verging
on “negationism” ( Resende 2021 , 148). He criticized scien-
tific advice and the expert role of the World Health Organi-
zation (WHO) by advising his citizens against recommended
sanitary measures coming from this multilateral institution,
which were contested by Brazilian subnational governments
(see Lopes, Carvalho, and Santos 2022 , 5). Later, Bolsonaro
also showed indifference toward efforts of governors and
technocrats of importing vaccines to be provided to the
Brazilian population to mitigate the pandemic and its
subsequent effects ( Bertholini 2022 ). In his defense, when
Brazil became one of the countries with the highest rates of
cases and deaths, Bolsonaro said: “So what? I’m sorry. What
do you want me to do? I’m Messiah (Bolsonaro’s second name)
but I can’t do miracles” (Bolsonaro quoted in France24.com
2021 ). Some scholars have even described this combination
of passivity, indifference, and mockery as a sort of “cruelty”
( Farias, Casarões, and Magalhães 2022 ). Yet, as COVID-19
cases increased and the crisis turned into public criticism
and potential delegitimation among its political basis, Bol-
sonaro ultimately decided to delegate the management of
the pandemic to ministers and governors ( Bertholini 2022 ).
In sum, Bolsonaro’s confrontational approach to the
international can be explained by his perception of foreign
policy as another opportunity to earn from presenting
himself as the savior of the country for the Brazilian people,
delegitimizing the previous “left-wing” political establish-
ment and securing support from his followers. The interna-
tional is thus seen as an extension of a battlefield between
the people and the elite in which he is both “gatekeeper”
and “arbitrator,” something to be used and exploited for the
political benefit of the populist project along the lines of
the people–elite macro-strategy of legitimation. The view of
the international is driven by principles of sovereignty and
nativism. These principles inform the type of international
actions of the populist leader, in order to achieve a higher
degree of autonomy from any type of political actor, that
seeks to undermine the populist vocation for the people at
home and abroad. This approach toward the international
is enhanced through his populist mindset of “friend” and
“foe,” by which multilateral institutions and existing prac-
tices, traditions, and commitments are shared instruments
of the transnational elites. Bolsonaro therefore presents
his confrontational mission through the messianic need of
eroding these multilateral principles and values on behalf
of Brazilian people. He relies on an antagonistic narration
of us versus them to trigger and evoke affective tags of ex-
clusion and anger against the elite. Finally, the international
also represents possibilities of legitimation and an electoral
opportunity to cement the bond with the followers of the
project at home. That said, this populist mindset has not
been an obstacle for Bolsonaro to adopt a more pragmatic
approach toward other leaders, states, and regional groups
(such as MERCOSUR) whenever needed to prevent costs
(mainly economic due to demands and constraints from do-
mestic interest groups) that were presented as detrimental
to his overall mission as redeemer of the Brazilian people.
Mexico: AMLO’s “Passive–Aggressive” Approach to “the
International”
A different type of relationship with “the international” can
be identified in AMLO. Like Bolsonaro, AMLO has used his
narration of the external world to legitimize his own polit-
ical figure and securing support for his government, but in
very different ways, adapting his foreign policy to the spe-
cific context and the relevant public. Multiple contingency
factors have influenced AMLO’s reaction to developments
coming “from abroad” through either resistance and min-
imization or, conversely, indifference and apathy, in what
appears as a “passive–aggressive” behavioral pattern.
The opportunity to distance himself from previous gov-
ernments is also crucial in AMLO’s reaction to external
actors, agendas, and projects. Indeed, despite his backlash
against the “corrupt,” “conspiratorial,” and “manipulative”
institutions and his preferred portrayal as a transpar-
ent and genuine anti-establishment leader, AMLO is not
exactly a political outsider nor is he a particularly new
populist ( Bruhn 2012 ; Flores-González et al. 2021 ; Sánchez-
Talanquer and Greene 2021 , 60–62; Solorio et al. 2021 , 250–
51; Weyland 2021 , 47–48). AMLO began his political career
as a member of the all-powerful and traditionally populist
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI, Institutional Revo-
lutionary Party), more than four decades ago. After joining
the newly created Partido de la Revolución Democrático (PRD,
Party of the Democratic Revolution) of Cuauhtémoc Cár-
denas in 1989, AMLO became an active protagonist on the
national stage as early as 1996, when he became the national
leader of the PRD, and most specifically in 2000, when he
was elected Governor of the powerful Mexico City. After an
incredibly narrow defeat in the 2006 presidential elections,
AMLO proclaimed himself the “Legitimate President” of
Mexico, organized mass protests and riots, and created
an alternative executive to “fulfil the People’s happiness.”
Since then, AMLO’s trajectory as a populist leader has
not only a national but also an international character,
given the regional context of those years—Latin America
experienced the rise to power of left-wing neo-populisms
led by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez, and
such transnational group backed AMLO’s “Cabinet of De-
nunciation.” AMLO eventually left the PRD after a second
electoral defeat in 2012 and formed a new political party,
the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (MORENA, National
Regeneration Movement), which formed the basis of the
political coalition Juntos Haremos Historia (Together we will
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8 Populist Foreign Policy and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America
make history) with whom AMLO won the 2018 presidential
elections, achieving 53 percent of the Mexican vote.
Hence, once in power, AMLO’s approach to “the inter-
national” has been influenced by two models from which
he wanted to distance himself, seeking to avoid negative
associations within different targeted publics and making
symbolically clear that he “does things differently” and
is not “an old wine in a new bottle” ( Villamar 2019 , 2–3;
Sánchez-Talanquer and Greene 2021 , 60). On the one
hand, AMLO advanced a foreign policy that contrasted with
the one promoted throughout the 2000s by the previous
governments of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderón, of the
right-wing Partido de la Acción Nacional (PAN), and more
recently in the term of “PRIAN”s Enrique Peña Nieto until
2018.
4
Despite the nuances, all these past administrations of
“evil conservatives” had prioritized Mexico’s insertion in the
world through the active promotion of dependence on the
United States and Europe, a programmatic orientation that
AMLO denounced. Both the political and diplomatic eche-
lons suffered from AMLO’s rhetoric: “elitist” ministers and
“technocrats” educated abroad were accused of being part
of the “golden bureaucracy” that responds to foreign inter-
ests rather than putting the interests of the Mexican people
first. Other victims of AMLO’s public tactics of shaming and
naming were the academia, independent media bodies,
and international nongovernmental organizations accused
of supporting this “mafia of power” that “believe they own
the country” ( Castro-Cornejo, Ley, and Beltrán 2020 , 8–10;
Flores-González et al. 2021 , 340–44; Sánchez-Talanquer and
Greene 2021 , 58–61). Yet, AMLO was also interested in
disassociating his government from the left-wing populist
experience in Latin America and, more specifically, from
the Chavista–Madurista regime in Venezuela, which by 2018
was immersed in a severe crisis with profound international
dimensions. If in 2006 AMLO identified himself in tandem
with a populist wave of regional dimensions, in 2018 AMLO
tried to downplay the “revolutionary” and “transforma-
tional” dimension previously advocated for his foreign
policy ( Ellner 2018 ; Kosevich 2019 ; Beck, Regidor, and Iber
2020 , 112–14; Sánchez-Talanquer and Greene 2021 , 67–69).
AMLO’s approach to “the international” was constrained
not only by the “heritage” of non-populist governments,
but also by the “traditions” of previous populist leaders in
Mexico, who used to adopt pragmatic foreign policy stances
despite their loud nationalistic rhetoric ( Wajner 2021 ).
How could AMLO approach “the international” without
entering into crisis with foreign allies or betraying his politi-
cal base? He opted for a strategy of (apparent) apathy, if not
indifference, passivity, or denial, in his narration of the ex-
ternal world. Through his daily morning press conferences,
which are released directly to his public through both social
networks and traditional media, AMLO affirms that what
comes “from abroad” is simply not important, and that Mex-
ico should focus on developing “transformative” reforms in
social matters, infrastructure, and internal security ( Flores-
González et al. 2021 , 340–43). In AMLO’s own words, “the
best foreign policy is the domestic policy” ( Kosevich 2019 ;
Garza-Giron, Blomeier, and Beck 2020 ). This declared ap-
athy is translated into policy by undermining technocratic
diplomacy and deprioritizing the promotion of trade and
foreign investments as part of his preference for “republican
austerity” ( Beck, Regidor, and Iber 2020 , 109–11; Sánchez-
Talanquer and Greene 2021 , 59–62). This call to return
to a more traditional, narrow-minded foreign policy was
4
AMLO called PRIAN to the alliance between PRI and PAN in the 2012
elections.
also expressed in budgetary terms, considerably cutting the
resources allocated to diplomatic personnel and to ProMéx-
ico, the body in charge of promoting trade and investments.
Likewise, AMLO refuses to leave Mexico to follow an in-
ternational agenda, and certainly not in the brand-new
presidential plane bought by Peña Nieto, claiming to end
“political tourism” for these inferior purposes and having
“many things to do within the country” ( Garza-Giron,
Blomeier, and Beck 2020 ). AMLO had the full support in
this strategy of Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s Secretary of For-
eign Relations, whom AMLO praise for having been trained
in Mexico and not abroad. Hence, by prioritizing domestic
affairs and portraying himself in opposition to the “elitist”
international channels of diplomacy of previous govern-
ments, AMLO also hoped to legitimize his own leadership
of the “people” as its sole, genuine representative.
That said, AMLO’s strategy includes an inherent contra-
diction: he seeks to deny the relevance of the external world
in this narration, but AMLO still resorts to it in his adop-
tion of specific discursive strategies for specific situations.
For instance, AMLO brought to Mexico the “Trumpian
war” about “fake news” against the “elitist” press ( Krauze
2019 ). In this sense, AMLO follows in the footsteps of other
populists, also from the right, to look abroad for populist
leaders as “friends” and elites as “enemies” ( Flores-González
et al. 2021 ; Sánchez-Talanquer and Greene 2021 ). When
targeting their political bases, the selected narrative tends
to fragment the people–elite categories by projecting them
transnationally, as in other cases of contemporary populists,
trying to achieve positive resonance and thus increasing po-
litical support among his followers. Conversely, when AMLO
targets international audiences and domestic like-minded
publics, his preferred narrative appears to pair “people” and
“elites,” claiming that he does not attach importance to in-
ternational interactions. Despite the apparent indifference,
AMLO’s approach toward “the international” is highly in-
strumental, embracing it once it is functional to increase the
legitimacy of his political leadership or to undermine the le-
gitimacy of his political competitors and rejecting it when it
does not serve that cause. Hence, AMLO discursively rejects
the technocratic, Yankee-like, (neo-)liberal international
order, but is willing to embrace it as long as it benefits his
political interest and does not upset domestic allies.
This pattern of ambivalent behavior can be illustrated
by Mexico’s current relations with the United States. When
AMLO was in the opposition, he strongly rhetorically at-
tacked the United States to defend Mexico’s honor against
Trump’s rhetoric ( Bremmer 2018 , 4; Flores-González et
al. 2021 , 340–41). However, since AMLO is in power, his
discursive performance ignores the role of the United States
in the development of Mexico. In practice, AMLO managed
to create a good relationship with Donald Trump and his
administration, under the understanding that the United
States allows Mexico “flexibility” and “autonomy” and does
not press too hard on “internal affairs,” like in the war on
drugs ( Ellner 2018 ; Malamud 2019 ; Malamud and Núñez
2020 ). Despite the harsh rhetoric from both sides, AMLO
and Trump reached discreet agreements not to incur in au-
dience costs. For example, in June 2019, AMLO supported
the ratification by the Mexican Senate of the renewed trade
negotiations as part of North American Free Trade Agree-
ment (NAFTA), which is crucial for the country since its
trade with the United States and Canada represented 77 per-
cent of Mexico’s GDP by 2017 ( Bremmer 2018 ; Garza-Giron,
Blomeier, and Beck 2020 ). AMLO also acted discreetly to
limit the caravans of Central American migrants hailing
from to the United States across the border with Mexico,
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DANIEL F. WAJNER AND LESLIE WEHNER 9
which achieved intense media coverage. While Trump
accused Mexico of not taking the necessary measures and
Mexicans felt attacked, AMLO managed to calm down the
tense situation and “save face” for both sides by initiating a
border policy of “abrazos, no balazos” (“hugs, not bullets”).
AMLO’s Mexico even established a National Guard with a
tougher coercive stance against migrants and signed com-
prehensive agreements with the governments of the Central
American Northern Triangle: El Salvador, Guatemala, and
Honduras ( Beck, Regidor, and Iber 2020 , 114–16).
AMLO has adopted a similarly ambivalent attitude toward
regional integration, with Mexico choosing to step aside out
of considerations of utility and support. Faced with regional-
ist fatigue after the “Nuestramerican” period, in addition to
the public’s perceived aversion toward the growing “declara-
tory regionalism,” AMLO preferred to also distance himself
from regionalism and its consequent summits and encoun-
ters. AMLO’s Mexico moved away from both the regional
stances in the pro-US Organization of American States
(OAS) and the Chavista bloc during the institutional crises
in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. That said, AMLO’s ap-
proach toward “the region” (and “the international” more
broadly) is not always part of a deliberate strategy, but rather
often reactive and highly dependent on contingencies. Ex-
amples in this regard were the Mexican invitation to Evo
Morales for political asylum and the latter’s controversial
presence at the Mexican Embassy in La Paz surrounded by
military forces, or Mexico’s refusal to recognize Juan Guaidó
as the legitimate president of Venezuela, as most other Latin
America countries ( Ellner 2018 ; Beck, Regidor, and Iber
2020 , 117–18). Likewise, in the midst of critical junctures
in these regional crises in November 2019, AMLO made
some diplomatic efforts through the recently created initia-
tive “Grupo de Puebla,” claiming to “promote a progressive
axis in Latin America” together with the elected president of
Argentina, Alberto Fernández, and various like-minded re-
gional parties ( Malamud 2019 ; Garza-Giron, Blomeier, and
Beck 2020 ). However, these actions were more reactive and
symbolic rather than the formulation of concrete policy and
did not include significant follow-up. In parallel, AMLO
showed a quiet opposition to the “Pacific Alliance,” a re-
gional scheme of a neoliberal character in which Mexico
had previous commitments, and whose XIV summit held
in Lima AMLO decided to avoid, despite not quitting from
it. AMLO maintained a similarly passive–aggressive attitude
not only toward the newly created Lima Group and PRO-
SUR, but also toward MERCOSUR and CELAC (Commu-
nity of Latin American and Caribbean States) ( Garza-Giron,
Blomeier, and Beck 2020 ; Malamud 2021 ). Indifference and
flexibility based on contingency and utility considerations
also appeared to characterize Mexico’s approach to the old–
new challenges in Central America ( Ellner 2018 ).
In a similar vein, AMLO adopted a very pragmatic attitude
toward Europe, with whom Mexico has had a productive
association agreement since 2000 that underwent a similar
renewal. AMLO’s government also strengthened relations
with China; even before taking office, Foreign Minister
Ebrard visited China and declared the strategic value of
this bilateral relationship ( Villamar 2019 ). There were also
some symbolic gestures toward countries such as Russia
and North Korea, which AMLO exploited to demonstrate
his commitment to Mexico’s position of nonalignment and
noninterference in front of his political base. However,
AMLO himself was also careful not to compromise his spe-
cial relation with hegemonic powers in the West ( Villamar
2019 ; Garza-Giron, Blomeier, and Beck 2020 ). Furthermore,
contrary to his declared orientation, AMLO’s administra-
tion has also not adopted a “transformational” approach
to other transnational issues, such as climate change, fi-
nance, minority rights, and human security ( Ellner 2018 ;
Beck, Regidor, and Iber 2020 , 117–18; Solorio et al. 2021 ,
267–68). Certainly, “non-interventionist,” “equidistant,” and
“autonomous” policies in Mexico, as in Brazil, have also
been well recognized in previous populist and non-populist
governments ( Malamud 2019 ; Luhnow and Cordoba 2021 ).
The main difference here, nevertheless, lies in how such
autonomy disappears according to time and space when it
does not fit national interests and political support.
Hence, AMLO’s designation of the roles of “friends” and
“enemies” was defined according to the contextual needs,
often as a result of an individual emotional response to
international crises and additional externalities strongly
conditioned by heuristics. Probably, the best example of
this dynamic strategy of “apathy” can be seen in AMLO’s
reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. It began with the de-
nial of the virus and the minimization of its effects, then the
delegitimization of the measures to combat it, and finally
the indifference to the possibility of a scientific solution
from abroad through vaccines ( Malamud and Núñez 2020 ;
Renteria and Arellano-Gault 2021 ). These strategies were
not necessarily followed by health officials ( Malamud 2020 ;
Orsi 2020 ). However, they enabled high levels of accep-
tance among Mexican constituents, who suffered less from
confinements than in other countries in the regional and
abroad, despite the high level of infected and deaths in the
country ( Zissis 2021 ). Although these contingency-oriented
responses were based on heuristics and thus less sustainable
in the long run, they were functional in relatively maintain-
ing AMLO’s approval in the crisis years. By February 2022,
despite continued criticism of the national situation in terms
of crime, corruption, and the economy, AMLO’s popularity
returned to the pre-COVID-19 levels (around 64 percent of
approval and 36 percent of disapproval), making him one of
the most popular leaders in Latin America ( Castro-Cornejo,
Ley, and Beltrán 2020 ; Sánchez-Talanquer and Greene
2021 , 65–66; Weyland 2021 , 48; The Economist 2022 ).
In sum, the case reveals how contextual factors highly
influenced AMLO’s narrative of the external world and its
translation into policy. Despite the declared resistance to
ideas, agendas, and actors “coming from abroad,” AMLO’s
foreign policy has often been ambivalent in practical terms,
showing himself indifferent to this parallel scenario in some
cases, while minimizing transformational stances in others.
This does not mean that AMLO’s government has changed
its combative postures against them, but that it decided to
hide them in a kind of “passive–aggressive” pattern, leaving
the door open to resume previous attacks in case the situ-
ation changes and requires (re-)legitimation. When AMLO
was more exposed to domestic pressures, and particularly
in times of crises when these political constraints were more
critical, the populist repertoire against “elitist,” “techno-
crat,” and “corrupt” transnational actors stood out again.
Such an ambivalent policy seems to have been effective in
a very difficult period for government leaders around the
world and, contrary to many of them, has allowed AMLO to
strengthen his power among his political bases in parallel
with his popularity within the broader Mexican population.
Conclusion
This paper analyzed the populist leaders’ motivations for
what appears to be contradictory stances of both ambigu-
ously becoming involved at times and disassociating them-
selves from “the international” at others. Seeking to further
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10 Populist Foreign Policy and the Fourth Wave of Populism in Latin America
understand under what conditions one pattern of behavior
is preferred over another, we carried out two case studies of
the foreign policy approaches of two paradigmatic leaders
of the current fourth wave of populism in Latin America:
the right-wing populist president of Brazil, Jair Messias
Bolsonaro, and the left-wing president of Mexico, AMLO.
The findings of these cases helped to clarify the circum-
stances and mechanisms by which Bolsonaro and AMLO
incorporated topical issues from abroad or, conversely,
rejected them through a combination of resistance, mini-
mization, and indifference. On the one hand, the external
world represents a pool of opportunities for populist leaders
to exercise their roles as protectors of “the people” of the
populist project. Anti-international stances are used in the
populist repertoire for the purpose of increasing domestic
legitimation and political support. Whenever international
issues, institutions, and initiatives represent an arena in
which the elite is omnipresent for the leader, then the pop-
ulist leader enacts his role of redeemer and takes a more
proactive rhetorical stance to erode their pillars. Indeed, in
this work, we described Bolsonaro’s and AMLO’s proactivity
as “confrontational” and “aggressive,” respectively (for a
recent account of populism as a transgressive style, see
Aiolfi 2022 ). Both populist leaders have shown skepticism
for the international since their period as candidates for
the presidency, an attitude they mostly maintained once in
power, criticizing the “elitist” international organizations,
initiatives, and leaders that seemed detrimental to the
realization of the populist project against elites at home and
abroad. On the other hand, this pool of opportunities also
includes disengagement when the perception of “the inter-
national” (or a specific actor, agenda, or project within it)
is that not much can be gained from it to either target the
elite or benefit the people. The populist leader may adopt
a more pragmatic and passive approach when it comes to
preserving economic ties, as undermined bilateral relations
can put pressure on the costs of living for people at home,
and thus on public attitudes toward the populist’s leader-
ship. Audience costs at home affect the electoral viability of
the populist project, constraining the leader’s narrative of
the external world and leading him to show distance and
apathy.
Contemporary populists also take advantage of the op-
portunities that “the international” shows to embrace a
process of differentiation from previous governments, es-
pecially when certain foreign policy initiatives, multilateral
commitments, and regional relations bear the hand and
imprint of transnational elites. Drawing on evidence from
the foreign policies of Bolsonaro and AMLO, we confirm
this pattern of distancing from the “heritage” of previous
populist and non-populist leaders. Both leaders advanced
differentiating strategies of the international vis-à-vis the
respective previous governments that for them were driven
by, and allegedly to benefit a specific elite group. For
Bolsonaro, this elite was that of the Workers Party and the
progressive foreign policy technocracy, while for AMLO,
the previous government heritage was mainly conservative
in nature (i.e., the PAN political party). In this sense, both
leaders have distanced themselves from the political and
diplomatic sides of regionalism in Latin America as loca-
tions of the elite. Regional groups, thus, serve the purpose
of reaffirming their anti-elite vocation for the benefit of the
people. However, the populist leader often tends to fulfill
the duty of the presidency and put aside their previous criti-
cisms and skepticisms to the international when confronted
with the reality of long-standing diplomatic relationships
(primarily with the United States) and bilateral and multi-
lateral commitments on key security and economic issues.
Similarly, when the regional group has an economic and
political dimension that cannot be presented by populists
as against the benefit of “the people,” the leader tries to
prevent self-damaging costs for the populist cause and the
domestic beneficiaries of the project. When this is the case,
attitudes of apathy or indifference take the form of reacting
on contingent events rather than adopting a proactive
position on foreign policy matters.
Moreover, this article also showed how the legitimation,
cost prevention, and differentiation strategies from previous
governments are driven by the so-called populist mindset.
This populist mindset implies the leader assessing, evaluat-
ing, and creating scripts of action in foreign policy as well
as incorporating domestic and international demands. The
mindset dimension also has a normative and emotional tag
component that takes form in patterns of behaviors that
are part of how the populist leader narrates the interna-
tional. Therefore, the ways in which populist leaders such
as Bolsonaro and AMLO narrate the external world depart
from the leader’s social cognitive dimension, which con-
tains strategic, normative, and emotional manifestations.
The combination of this triad of elements—opportunity,
legitimation, and support—is key to understanding how
these leaders react to the international. By resorting to
this populist mindset, the leader perceives the interna-
tional landscape, describes it, and ultimately shapes it. The
populist leader, therefore, begins to normatively promote
his judgment of “good” or “bad” or “friend” and “foe,” as
well as triggering emotional reactions and appeals that the
same leader communicates by narrating a specific relation
or different international settings. The cases reaffirm how
the need to secure the support of his political base for
his project leads the populist leader to see himself deeply
constrained by contingencies and heuristics, and thus react
to external pressure during international crises through
ad hoc emotional responses. For this reason, it is not sur-
prising that, although both Bolsonaro and AMLO show an
anti-globalist outlook of the world, they do not offer (or
attempt to offer) an alternative, systematic vision of what a
post-liberal international order should look like.
That said, the comparison between the two cases also
reveals certain nuances, if not clear differences. While Bol-
sonaro embraced solidarity with right-wing populist leaders
abroad and adopted a critical rhetoric against left-wing pop-
ulism such as Venezuela’s Chavismo–Madurismo, AMLO
adopted a more subtle process of differentiating not only
from right-wing populism but also from current and press-
ing left-wing populist repertoire in Latin America. Both
leaders also seem to have followed a different path when it
comes to contingent reactions and attitudes to the interna-
tional. It seems to be the case that AMLO was at times more
constrained by the context and the need to react to external
demands, while Bolsonaro was more salient in his criticisms
of the international and less keen on modifying the anti-
elite narrative when external contingency put pressure on
his views. Yet, Bolsonaro still experienced constraints on
his international behavior such as eventual economic and
political costs signaled by domestic actors, for example, with
regard to the relationship with China and MERCOSUR.
Finally, when it comes to COVID-19 reactions, both leaders
initially questioned scientific experts, but AMLO ended up
moderating his stance on COVID challenges at least rhetor-
ically while focusing on keeping his domestic popularity
and not implementing heavy restrictions on the Mexican
people. Like AMLO, Bolsonaro minimized the effects and
threat of COVID and took second stage, but unlike AMLO,
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DANIEL F. WAJNER AND LESLIE WEHNER 11
whenever he had the opportunity to criticize the scientific
elite and the international council, he did it. Through
different means, both leaders tried to legitimate their mea-
sures and attitudes, while also at some point they sought
ways to minimize costs for the people and the viability of
their own populist projects.
This study also calls for new cases to study the apparent
contradictions in the foreign policy of populist leaders.
More research is needed on the behavioral manifestations
of the dilemma posed by the responsibility of the presiden-
tial office and the demands of being the “sole” legitimate
representative in foreign policy. Furthermore, this paper
hints at the need to theorize and empirically document
the means and ways in which populist leaders manage the
contradiction generated when they act in international set-
tings that, from the perspective of the populist project, are
elite-driven and detrimental to “the people.” How do they
frame these performances to the people to prevent criticism
from its own masses? Likewise, given that left and right con-
stituencies differ substantially in their public and normative
attitudes toward these elites, and therefore in their discur-
sive preferences, do the framings of populist leaders always
differ, as did Bolsonaro and AMLO? Additional empirical ev-
idence from other cases of left- and right-wing populism in
Latin America and around the world is crucial to generalize
in this regard, which could contribute to the further un-
derstanding on the nexus between “the populist demand”
and “supply” in a context of different “thick” ideologies.
Finally, populist leaders certainly show in an ambiguous
way what we call apathetic and empathetic attitudes toward
“the international,” but it remains unclear whether the
intensification of such attitudes through populist discourses
can have more structural, profound political effects in the
medium and long term. Both apathy and empathy need to
be further theorized in both its key conceptual properties
and their eventual consequences, not only for the populist
leader, party, and movement, but also for foreign policy
practitioners and stakeholders more generally.
Funder Information
For Daniel Wajner’ case this work was supported by the Is-
rael Science Foundation [grant number 2450/22, “Populist
International (In-)Security” project]. For Leslie Wehner’s
case this work was supported by the University of Bath’s In-
ternationalisation Fund.
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