Human Rights Foreign Policy Under Bolsonaro: Pleasing The Conservative Constituency

Abstract

Why is it difficult for Brazilian civil society organizations to stop the shift of Brazil’s positions in international human rights arenas? Why does the human rights dimension of Brazilian foreign policy suffer from the changes brought by Bolsonaro’s government? Based on new rational choice institutionalism and of foreign policy analysis, this study analyzes Bolsonaro’s human rights foreign policy, with a special focus on gender issues. Our hypotheses are that (1) Bolsonaro’s illiberal government, based on conservative and anti-human-rights positions of his constituency, instrumentalizes foreign policy because it allows him space to be more ideological and less pragmatic; and (2) the international arena is nestedwithin the electoral arena (the most important one), and the main objective of international inflections in the human rights issues of the Bolsonaro government is to please and energize Bolsonaro’s most conservative electorate. From these two hypotheses, we argue these changes are linked with a reconfiguration of the responsiveness of Brazilian foreign policy to societal pressures, privileging evangelical conservative organizations at the expense of progressive human rights organizations.