Stereotyped images and role dissonance in the foreign policy of right-wing populist leaders: Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221108814 |
| Author | Leslie E Wehner |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367221108814
Cooperation and Conflict
2023, Vol. 58(3) 275 –292
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367221108814
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Stereotyped images and role
dissonance in the foreign
policy of right-wing populist
leaders: Jair Bolsonaro and
Donald Trump
Leslie E Wehner
Abstract
Populist leaders unfold anti-elite rhetoric to sustain the ‘in-group’ morale of the ‘people’
they represent. Populist projects contain an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dimension constituted by the
stereotyped images that serve to inform the role-selection process in foreign policy. When
images shaping roles on the international stage are used against the ‘out-group’, they become
stereotypes of other actors. Therefore, this article explores how anti-pluralist populist leaders
such as Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump use stereotyped images, and how these images – which
speak to intention, affective tags and the evaluation of options – shape the foreign policy role
behaviour of the states in question. The article develops a framework at the interplay of images
and roles to analyse how these two aspects are used by the leader in an oversimplified manner
to delineate boundaries between self and other, and thus to identify the membership base of the
populist project versus those who are seen as a threat to their populist foreign policy.
Keywords
Bolsonaro and Trump, foreign policy, images, populism, roles
Introduction
The rise of right-wing populism has become a pressing global phenomenon. Brazil,
Hungary, India, Italy, the Philippines, Poland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the
United States, to name just a few examples, are countries in which populist leaders have
made it to power in recent years. While right-wing populist leadership cannot be consid-
ered a constant for some of these countries, the eventual international consequences of
populist leaders’ actions may remain long after they are gone from power.
Corresponding author:
Leslie E Wehner, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: l.e.wehner@bath.ac.uk
1108814CAC0010.1177/00108367221108814Cooperation and ConflictWehner
research-article2022
Article
276 Cooperation and Conflict 58(3)
Among these consequences, there are changes to the way certain roles have been
played under anti-pluralist and anti-liberal order populist leaderships, while at the same
time these leaders have also brought in new roles for the state. For instance, Donald Trump
(2017–2021) tried to establish a role relationship of friend with Vladimir Putin. Trump’s
role actions undermined an extant US role of rival to Russia. At the same time, the con-
stant blaming of international institutions as the representations of a global elite impacted
on the expectations of others that no longer saw the United States as a responsible great
power. Similarly, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil (2019–present) has referred to the
deforestation of the Amazon as a myth and fantasy of global elites designed to weaken
Brazil’s sovereignty. This promoting of national sovereignty has undermined Brazil’s
multilateralist role and its commitments to global climate goals. Bolsonaro has also
attacked multilateral institutions, while undermining the value of multilateral regional-
cooperation schemes too. These actions have created tensions between key features of
long-standing expectations of Brazil playing the roles of regional power and regional
leader and other roles that this populist leader has recently cast such as anti-globalist.
The above-mentioned examples show that populist leaders’ international actions
undermine certain roles of the state that have been enacted recurrently in foreign pol-
icy hitherto. They also show that the populist leader holds images of the self and the
other that inform foreign policy behaviour. Thus, this article addresses two interrelated
questions: What type of images do right-wing populist leaders such as Bolsonaro and
Trump construct and advance of the self and the other(s)? How do these images shape
the foreign policy roles of the state in question?
I argue that images of the self and the other are simplified constructs that the populist
leader uses to describe and evaluate foreign policy goals and options. The populist leader
relies on and uses images of self and other to include and exclude groups and institutions
at home and abroad according to how they fit the populist leader’s preferred foreign
policy or not. These images emerge from the core of the populist project at home: that is,
people (friend) versus elite (enemy). These images of the people as friend and elite as
enemy have also shaped and produced a new way to enact foreign policy roles (new style
of playing roles of the state), and in some cases have brought new foreign policy roles
into play – thus creating role conflict and role dissonance between the roles articulated
and performed by the populist leader and those roles of the state that have been recur-
rently played in the past.
In light of this, the article develops a theoretical framework at the interplay of stereo-
typed images and roles in which images capture the intentions of the populist leader and
roles actual foreign policy behaviour. Stereotyped images are ideal types (gestalts) and
constructs used – in this case by the populist leader – in an unidirectional and oversim-
plified manner to delineate boundaries between self and other (Cottam, 1992: 13–14).
These types of stereotyped images, such as friend/foe, are used to identify the member-
ship base of the populist project versus those that are seen as a threat to it both domesti-
cally and internationally.
The article empirically focuses on the cases of Bolsonaro and Trump, as these two
leaders have adopted highly nationalistic frames that impact on the foreign policy of their
respective states. Both populists have advanced new types of foreign policy rhetorics that
affect long-term related goals and behaviours. In other words, these populist leaders have
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