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Populism Trumps Ideology: Poverty Relief Policy under Mexico’s López Obrador and Brazil’s Bolsonaro

Fabián A. Borges

Journal of Latin American Studies2025https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022216x25000185article
AJG 2
Weight
0.41

What the paper says

Understanding how policy design and implementation differ under populist and non-populist governments is complicated by the fact that populism never exists in a pure form and is always attached to a more developed ideology. Leveraging the near-simultaneous election of left-wing populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, this article analyses populism’s effect on cash transfer programmes. Despite the diametrically opposed ideologies of their presidents, rather than diverging, Mexican and Brazilian cash transfer policies converged under populism. Both leaders rebranded the programmes they inherited and moved policy in an improvised, politicised and clientelistic direction.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022216x25000185

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@article{fabián2025,
  title        = {{Populism Trumps Ideology: Poverty Relief Policy under Mexico’s López Obrador and Brazil’s Bolsonaro}},
  author       = {Fabián A. Borges},
  journal      = {Journal of Latin American Studies},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022216x25000185},
}

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Populism Trumps Ideology: Poverty Relief Policy under Mexico’s López Obrador and Brazil’s Bolsonaro

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Evidence weight

0.41

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.25 × 0.4 = 0.10
M · momentum0.55 × 0.15 = 0.08
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.