Description
Most populist regimes establish power domestically by walking the tightrope between fashioning themselves as harbingers of change and commitment to preserving an “original” way of life. This propensity to change is uniquely tied to historical and mythic imaginations of nationhood, acutely manifested in discourses of recognition and status in the international sphere. This is particularly true of both India and Brazil, united in their search for greatness and status in the world affairs. Narendra Modi and Jair Bolsonaro however, have taken different paths in entrenching this change, potently affected by the incidence of the pandemic.
Increasingly, there has been a conversation in both countries about how their leaders have “changed” the making of foreign policy in their countries. In both countries, continuity with change has defined post-Cold War foreign policy making, where in the Brazilian scenario the bulwark of Itamaraty has stayed the power of its presidentialism and the ideological bent of post-independent India and constitutive structures of the Ministry of External Affairs constrained veering policy making. How has populism, authoritarianism and the individual leadership of these two leaders interacted with this systemic stability? What are the lessons for understanding foreign policy making from analysing these contrasting but complementary cases? This paper hopes to unentangle the contradictions between stability of foreign policy strucutres and individual leadership visions.
