Ideology and evaluations of Brazilian presidents across Latin American elites: from Lula’s transversality to Dilma’s polarization

What image did Presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff project among political elites across Latin America? The aim of this paper is to analyse, with data from elite surveys in Latin American parliaments, the determinants of the evaluations of two left Brazilian presidents, Lula and Dilma, taking into account explanatory variables related to the sociodemographic characteristics and, especially, with the legislators’ ideology. The results of the logistic regressions show that the principal determinant is the legislators’ perception about the ALBA, particularly during the presidency of Dilma due to the sharp decrease in positive evaluations by right legislators, who had a much better opinion of Lula. This article provides empirical evidence that when it comes to evaluating foreign presidents in Latin America, ideology matters more than the policies presidents themselves may implement in their own countries. This finding contributes to a better understanding of why some leaderships, such as Lula's, are ideologically transversal.