From Sectarianism to Multipolarity: The Workers’ Party and the Roots of Brazilian Progressive Diplomacy (1980s–2000s)

Abstract Since its formation in the 1980s, the worldview of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores; PT) in Brazil has undergone significant transformations amid the consolidation of neoliberal hegemony and the post‐Cold War reconfiguration of the global left. Drawing on party congress resolutions, programme documents and internal debates, this article argues that the PT's reformulation of its conceptions of socialism, imperialism and international order did not represent mere ‘transformism’ or ideological abandonment. Instead, it views the party's stance as a strategic recalibration shaped by the crisis of socialism after 1989, the retreat of workers’ and socialist movements as well as Brazil's position within peripheral capitalism. This process moved the PT from an early sectarian posture, strongly influenced by Trotskyist and non‐Leninist currents, towards a defensive anti‐neoliberal strategy that combined programmatic moderation, broad‐front alliances and an anti‐imperialist reading of the North–South conflict and US‐led unipolarity. The article argues that the PT's evolving worldview helps explain key features of foreign policy under PT governments, especially commitments to autonomy, multipolarity, regional integration, South–South cooperation, global governance reform and the defence of Latin American sovereignty.