Personalizing the presidency: Dilma Rousseff and a study of leadership personalities in Brazilian foreign policy

Abstract

Many important studies associate the presidential profile of Dilma Rousseff to the loss of domestic density and reach of Brazil’s foreign policy, a perspective not yet confirmed by psychological mechanisms of leadership behavior in foreign policy. We offer a contribution by exploring the Leadership Trait Analysis framework with which personality concepts and comparisons between Brazilian presidents are examined. Our main findings reveal that Rousseff has leadership traits in close proximity to the average of Brazilian presidents, although her distinctions on “respecting constrains” and “focusing on causes” style mirror much of the impressions raised by the literature over her presidency.