From an academic point of view, Brazil& #39;s current foreign policy is quite relevant for International Relations theory. For example, it& #39;ll be a useful case study to test whether soft power matters. Here we have a country whose gov quickly undermined its own soft power [threadhttps://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="👇" title="Down pointing backhand index" aria-label="Emoji: Down pointing backhand index">]

According to Joe Nye, who created the term, soft power involves shaping the preferences of others through appeal and attraction, rather than coercion. While conceptually vague&often misunderstood, there was a relatively broad consensus that Brazil possessed significant soft power

A 2013 study by a leading business school, INSEAD, noted that "Brazil is an attractive country in the traditional soft power sense. It has an appealing popular culture and a multicultural society whose people interact well with others." https://www.oliverstuenkel.com/2016/09/20/brics-possess-power/">https://www.oliverstuenkel.com/2016/09/2...

While soft power is an inherently relational concept (e.g. China may be attractive from an African perspective but not from a US perspective), there is a broad perception that the Bolsonaro government is dramatically reducing Brazil& #39;s attractiveness in the eyes of the world.

In order to assess to what extent soft power matters, we could thus compare Brazil& #39;s influence abroad in 2013-2018 with that in 2019-2020. (We should not include the time before 2013 because Brazil& #39;s economy doing very well at the time, which would complicate the analysis.)

It& #39;ll take years for scholars to produce more sophisticated academic analyses of Bolsonaro& #39;s foreign policy (we still lack access to documents &can& #39;t conduct oral history interviews w decision makers), but radical changes like this always provide rich material to test IR theories