Regionalism in Decline? The Foreign Policy of Leftist Governments in Chile and Brazil

During the past two decades, Latin America has gone through several transformations, whether in political, economic and social context. Among them, we can highlight the crisis of the neoliberal model and the rise of leftist parties. In a period of paradigms crisis, parties like PT, in Brazil, and PS, in Chile, became alternatives through democratic means and the programmatic transformation toward an expanded alliance policy - although the PT has carried out wider and heterogeneous coalitions, while the PS, in turn, is a member of the Concertación, comprising left and center parties. In both cases, the political institutions were presented with increasing degree of stability, articulatingcomplex social relationships. Both in the case of Brazil and in the Chilean case, the left, symbolized by PT, during the Governments of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, and PS, in the administrations of Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, rejected revolutionary ideals, emphasizing the preponderance of economic stability, but worrying about putting mechanisms for redistribution and social protection. However, despite the similarity of some social and economic policies, Brazil and Chile acted in different ways in relation to international policy. While PT administrations sought the regional leadership in Latin America as a form of international integration, Lagos and Bachelet embraced free trade agreements with the aim of greater international insertion, but without mentioning a special bond with the Latin American regionalism. Thus, the main purpose of the article is to highlight the causes that led governing parties of the left-wing tradition to assume similar roles in the economic and social sphere, but differentiate themselves in the field of foreign policy.