Populists and Regional Organizations: lessons from Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that a right-wing populist leader’s support of regional organizations depends on how domestic supporters are affected by populist engagement with them. If the regional organization does not affect groups of the populist project, then the leader enjoys latitude to question the regional institution. However, whenever undermining the regional organization damage a group, the leader does not target the regional organization, and assumes an ambivalent approach. We use the case of Bolsonaro’s Brazil engaging two regional organizations: MERCOSUR and PAHO to test our argument. Our findings reveal that right-wing populist leaders are aware of domestic costs.