Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-05-24
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The rise of far-right political movements across the globe over the past decade has prompted serious scholarly attention to questions that go beyond electoral arithmetic. In Latin America, this phenomenon found one of its most dramatic expressions in Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, whose presidency from 2019 to 2022 reshaped the country's political culture, institutional norms, and international alignments in ways that continue to reverberate long after his departure from office. The publication of this analysis in the Journal of Politics in Latin America arrives at a moment when the global community is grappling with a fundamental question: does the defeat of a far-right leader at the ballot box represent the end of the movement he catalyzed, or merely a pause in a deeper structural transformation? Brazil offers perhaps the most instructive case study in the world for answering that question, and the findings emerging from this scholarship are both sobering and essential for policymakers, civil society organizations, and development practitioners working across the region.
The central contribution of this article lies in its insistence on moving beyond what the authors call "electoral fortunes" as the primary lens for evaluating the trajectory of far-right politics in Brazil. This framing is analytically significant because it challenges a common assumption in transitional democracy literature — that electoral defeat constitutes a self-correcting mechanism sufficient to contain or reverse authoritarian tendencies. The Bolsonaro case disrupts this assumption forcefully. Despite losing the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a contest that was extraordinarily close by Brazilian historical standards, the far-right coalition that Bolsonaro assembled did not dissolve. Rather, the article documents a process of ideological consolidation in which the movement deepened its organizational roots, maintained a substantial legislative presence, and preserved its grip on significant segments of the military, evangelical Christian communities, and agribusiness sectors. The persistence of this alignment suggests that Bolsonarismo as a political phenomenon is better understood as a durable ideological project than as a personalist vehicle tied exclusively to one individual's political fortunes.
Understanding the structural underpinnings of this consolidation requires situating the Brazilian case within broader regional and global trends. Across Latin America, the erosion of traditional party systems over the past two decades created fertile ground for anti-establishment movements of various ideological stripes. The same conditions that produced left-wing populism in Venezuela, Bolivia, and elsewhere generated a countervailing far-right mobilization in Brazil, amplified by the unique characteristics of Brazilian institutional design, its highly fragmented multi-party legislature, its historically powerful military, and its evangelical Protestant boom. Globally, the Brazilian trajectory resonates with patterns observed in Hungary, Turkey, India, and the United States, where far-right or illiberal nationalist movements have demonstrated remarkable resilience even when individual leaders face electoral setbacks. What the Journal of Politics in Latin America article appears to document is that Brazil has undergone a process of political realignment that is structural rather than episodic — a recomposition of the right that has permanently altered the landscape of viable political coalitions. This is not simply a Latin American story; it is a contribution to the comparative study of democratic backsliding and authoritarian populism with implications far beyond the region.
For civil society organizations and international development partners, the policy implications are considerable. The consolidation of a far-right alignment in Brazil has direct consequences for the country's engagement with multilateral institutions, its commitments on climate and environmental governance, and the operating space available to progressive civil society actors. During the Bolsonaro years, Brazil witnessed significant restrictions on indigenous rights organizations, environmental NGOs, and social movement actors who had historically been partners in ODA-funded development programming. While the Lula administration has moved to restore some of these partnerships, the article's findings imply that the political environment constraining civil society is not simply a function of who holds the presidency. As long as the far-right alignment retains substantial legislative and judicial influence, the structural conditions for civil society repression remain partially intact. International donors and development agencies must therefore develop more nuanced frameworks for assessing political risk in Brazil — frameworks that account for sub-national variation, the resilience of authoritarian coalitions within democratic institutions, and the distinction between formal changes in government and deeper shifts in political culture and norms.
Looking forward, the Brazilian case offers researchers and practitioners several productive lines of inquiry. First, the relationship between economic grievance and far-right consolidation deserves sustained attention: to what extent does the durability of Bolsonarismo depend on the Lula government's ability to deliver tangible material improvements for working-class Brazilians who split their votes between the two candidates in 2022? Second, the role of digital infrastructure and social media ecosystems in sustaining far-right networks outside of formal electoral periods remains undertheorized and urgently in need of empirical study. Third, comparative work situating Brazil alongside Argentina, where Javier Milei's electoral victory in 2023 represented a further regional expansion of far-right politics, would illuminate whether a distinctly Latin American variant of this global phenomenon is taking shape. What this scholarship ultimately makes clear is that the consolidation of far-right alignments is not an aberration to be managed at the margins of democratic governance, but a structural feature of contemporary political life that demands serious, sustained engagement from scholars, practitioners, and citizens alike.