International law under far-right governments: a comparison between the administrations of Donald Trump and Bolsonaro

Abstract

Far-right parties and candidates have been gaining ground all over the world in the last decade. The election of Donald Trump as the president of the still most powerful country in the world was a milestone in this process. More recently in Brazil, the election of Bolsonaro confirmed this tendency. In this context, one of the areas that is in constant jeopardy is the international law. Therefore, this paper analyzes the impacts that far-right governments have on this field of law. By studying the related foreign policy measures adopted by Trump’s and Bolsonaro’s governments, it is possible to learn the dimension of the threat that international law faces when this type of regime takes place. As one of the conclusions, we learn that far-right governments tend to be self-centered in terms of foreign policy and not prone to cooperation in the international level and this frequently leads to the violation of international law, which can have grave consequences.