Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-05-21
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The resurgence of far-right political movements across the globe has reshaped the terrain of democratic governance in ways that scholars and policymakers are only beginning to fully reckon with. Brazil, the largest democracy in Latin America and a country long regarded as a bellwether for regional political trends, offers a particularly instructive case. The rise and partial electoral defeat of Jair Bolsonaro — a former army captain whose populist nationalism, militarism, and evangelical-aligned social conservatism propelled him to the presidency in 2018 — raises fundamental questions about the durability of illiberal political projects even after they suffer setbacks at the ballot box. The article under review, published in the Journal of Politics in Latin America, takes seriously the possibility that Bolsonarismo is not simply a personalist phenomenon contingent on one man's fortunes, but rather the expression of a deeper structural alignment within Brazilian society and politics. In a global context where far-right movements from Italy to Hungary to the United States have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to endure, adapt, and reconstitute themselves after electoral losses, the Brazilian case demands careful analytical attention.
The central argument of this research is that Bolsonarismo has achieved a degree of ideological consolidation that outlasts the specific electoral cycle of 2022. When Bolsonaro lost the presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by a narrow margin, many observers — drawing on historical precedents of Latin American populism — predicted a swift unraveling of the movement. The article challenges this assumption directly. The authors identify two core research questions: first, how did the far-right coalition assembled under Bolsonaro manage to sustain its organizational and social coherence despite the loss of the executive branch; and second, what structural features of Brazilian political economy and civil society enabled this endurance. The findings point to a complex interplay of institutional entrenchment — particularly within Congress, state-level governments, the military, and the evangelical church network — and a deeply rooted cultural politics that has reshaped the normative boundaries of acceptable political discourse in Brazil. This is not merely a story about one polarizing politician; it is an analysis of how a movement successfully colonized key nodes of institutional power and social identity, making itself resilient to ordinary electoral reversal.
To understand the depth of this consolidation, it is necessary to situate it within the longer arc of Brazilian political development and the specific crises that created the conditions for far-right mobilization. Brazil's political landscape after redemocratization in 1985 was defined by the dominance of the Workers' Party (PT) under Lula and Dilma Rousseff, the massive corruption revelations of Operation Lava Jato (Car Wash), and a deep recession that eroded faith in the established center-left project. The impeachment of Rousseff in 2016, widely contested as legally dubious, and Lula's subsequent imprisonment under controversial circumstances, created a political vacuum and a widespread delegitimization of traditional party politics. Bolsonaro filled this vacuum not only by attacking the PT but by positioning himself against the entire political establishment, channeling authoritarian nostalgia, religious conservatism, and a hypermasculine nationalism that resonated with large segments of an economically anxious, socially conservative electorate. The article's contribution is to show that the movement he built was more than electoral opportunism; it laid down organizational infrastructure, cultivated loyal constituencies in the security forces and agribusiness sector, and generated a coherent if internally diverse ideological vision that now operates independently of Bolsonaro's personal candidacy.
The implications of this analysis reach well beyond Brazil's borders and intersect directly with concerns central to development studies, civil society research, and ODA policy. Far-right governments and movement actors have increasingly disrupted the normative frameworks that underpin international development cooperation — frameworks premised on democratic governance, civil society participation, and human rights conditionalities. During Bolsonaro's presidency, Brazil withdrew from multilateral climate commitments, attacked indigenous land rights and environmental agencies, and subjected NGOs and civil society organizations to hostile regulatory scrutiny. Even with Lula's return, the legislative power now substantially held by Bolsonarista lawmakers continues to constrain progressive policy. For international donors and development organizations working in Brazil and across the Latin American region, this signals a structural shift rather than a temporary turbulence. The article implicitly underscores the need for ODA practitioners and civil society scholars to rethink assumptions about institutional resilience — the presence of formal democratic institutions does not guarantee that a pro-development, rights-respecting political economy will prevail if the social and institutional coalitions sustaining far-right movements remain intact.
From a broader comparative perspective, the Brazilian case resonates with patterns observed in other middle-income democracies navigating the fractures of late-capitalist development. The alignment between evangelical Christianity, agrarian capital, military nostalgia, and anti-establishment populism that defines Bolsonarismo bears family resemblances to formations in the Philippines under Duterte, in Turkey under Erdogan's AKP in its later phase, and in parts of Central Europe. What distinguishes the Brazilian variant is the sheer scale of the country's social heterogeneity and the depth of inequality that has structured its political conflicts since at least the abolition of slavery in 1888. The article's focus on consolidation rather than mere emergence is analytically significant because it shifts attention from conjunctural triggers to structural reproduction — asking not just why the movement arose but how it sustains itself through networks of loyalty, patronage, and shared cultural identity that are not easily dismantled by electoral outcomes alone.
For researchers and practitioners engaged with questions of democratic backsliding, civil society space, and the political economy of development, this article makes a timely and important contribution. It suggests that the standard toolkit of democratic resilience — institutional checks and balances, independent judiciary, vibrant civil society — is necessary but not sufficient when a far-right movement has successfully embedded itself within those very institutions. The methodological lesson is equally significant: analyses of populist movements must extend their time horizons beyond electoral cycles and attend to the sociological depth of political alignments. Looking forward, the dynamics described in this article will likely intensify as the 2026 Brazilian elections approach and Bolsonaro's allies position themselves for a comeback. The question is not merely whether Bolsonaro or a surrogate can win the presidency, but whether the deeper alignment between militarism, religious nationalism, and agrarian capital that the article documents will continue to reshape Brazilian democracy in ways that constrain the possibilities for progressive governance, redistributive policy, and robust civil society participation for years to come. Scholars of Latin American politics, development practitioners, and international organizations alike would do well to treat this as a long-term structural challenge rather than a contingent political episode.