JOURNAL | Populist Governance and Populism’s Host Ideology in the Fight Against COVID-19: The Cases of Brazil and Mexico

How Did Two Populist Governments, One Right-Wing and One Left-Wing, Face the Same Crisis?

In a new article published in the Journal of Political Ideologies, Diego Sazo, Head of International Relations Research at AthenaLab, and Francisco Panizza (London School of Economics) compare the responses of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico to the COVID-19 crisis. Although both were recognized as populist leaders, their governments represented different ideological positions.

The authors show that populism did not solely determine the content of the policies adopted during the crisis. Its influence primarily appeared in a governing style that personalized decisions and turned the health response into part of the political dispute. Ideology, on the other hand, defined who constituted “the people” that each leader sought to protect and what measures could be justified in their name.

This difference allowed similar policies to acquire distinct meanings. Bolsonaro justified his opposition to lockdowns by advocating for individual freedom and the right to work. His discourse also expressed a conservative conception of masculinity, portraying the use of masks and social distancing as signs of weakness. López Obrador also sought to keep economic activity open, but appealed to trust in “the good people,” conceived as poor, morally virtuous, and capable of self-protection without state coercion.

The main theoretical implication is that “the people” of populism is not a fixed socioeconomic category nor does it necessarily represent the majority. Particularly in a crisis context, it is a political identity that the leader uses against an adversary to reinforce identification with their support base.