A interação entre o doméstico e o regional nos governos Lula da Silva e Kirchner

Having Néstor Kirchner’s administration (Argentina) and the first term of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil) as time cut, the article analyses how the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) is instrumentalised in political practices in both countries. More specifically, we verify the process of diffusion of regional policies to the national level and from the national to the regional one, aiming to detect if Mercosur is used as an argument to justify actions of these national governments. In this way, we identify that the strategies of domestic and foreign policies conform a continuity from the national sphere to the regional, with predominant influence of national interests – which does not exclude the interaction with variables resulting from the international system.