Populist governance and populism’s host ideology in the fight against COVID-19: the cases of Brazil and Mexico

This study aimed to elucidate the impact of populism on policy decisions and how to distinguish it from that of its so-called host ideology. It studies the health policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by presidents Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico to address the following questions: 1) What was ‘populist’ in the (populist) governments’ management of the pandemic? 2) How can the populist form be distinguished from its ideological substance? and 3) What explains policy differences in the management of the pandemic? The article contributes to the understanding of the relationship between populism and ideology by adopting a minimalist conceptualization of populism, centered on the antagonistic constitution of ‘the people’ as a political actor, to conceptualize populist governance and showing that the ‘populist’ logic of the governments’ response to the crisis was embedded within the mechanisms of governance, while the host ideology played a constitutive role in discursively constructing ‘the people’ – a process of identification that subsequently informed policy options. However, it concludes that governance and policy are not wholly discrete spheres, nor can populist form be wholly separated from ideological substance, as both played a role in shaping decisions and outcomes.