Antidemocratic Politics and Regional Powers’ Multilateral Foreign Policies: Comparing Brazil and Türkiye

Abstract

This paper explores how the world crisis currently affecting liberalism and democracy has impacted Brazil’s and Türkiye’s foreign policy in three multilateral issue areas: security, human rights, and climate change. Assuming that a country’s foreign policy echoes the interplay between international and domestic dynamics, it considers two cases of similar escalation of antidemocratic domestic politics – the Bolsonaro administration (2019-2022) and Erdogan’s first mandate as Türkiye’s president under presidentialism (2018-2023). By means of a comparative methodological framework, it showcases that Bolsonaro and Erdogan may look very similar in their opposition to some (not all) Western and liberal values; however, they adopt different strategies to express their opposition, and neither one rejects multilateralism. The paper analyses their distinct geopolitical motivations in foreign policy based on different conceptions of how states should act in and for development.