An analysis of Brazil’s foreign policy: from Bolsonaro to Lula as seen from the autonomy of the periphery

This paper offers a comparative analysis of Brazilian foreign policy between 2019 and 2025, focusing on the internal and external factors that influenced national autonomy during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro (2019Bolsonaro ( -2023) ) in its departure from multilateralism and its ideological alignment mainly with the Trump administration and the third term of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2023-2025) in terms of his proposal to return to diplomatic pragmatism and his non-alignment based on active participation in the construction of a multipolar international system.The conceptual framework is based on the theory of peripheral autonomy developed by Hélio Jaguaribe and Juan Carlos Puig.The paper concludes with a framework that contrasts Bolsonaro's ideological isolationism with Lula's flexible pragmatism, highlighting in the latter the importance of a balanced approach between ideology and pragmatism as a strategy for preserving autonomy in a global context undergoing transformation and fraught with geopolitical and geoeconomic tensions.It also discusses the importance of the theory of peripheral autonomy and its relevance in international analysis, particularly in the case of the foreign policies of the Global South.