Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-05-25
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 compelled scholars and policymakers alike to reconsider the structural conditions that sustain ideological mobilization beyond individual electoral cycles. Brazil's experience under Jair Bolsonaro represents one of the most consequential and closely studied cases of this broader phenomenon. While Bolsonaro's defeat in the October 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was widely interpreted as a democratic rebuke of illiberalism, the persistence of Bolsonarismo as a coherent political and social force demands deeper analysis. The article published in the Journal of Politics in Latin America, authored under an ahead-of-print designation, addresses precisely this question: how did a far-right ideological alignment in Brazil consolidate to a degree that transcended the electoral fortunes of its founding figurehead? This question is not merely academic. It speaks directly to the resilience of democratic institutions, the dynamics of ODA-recipient governance, and the organizational logic of civil society under conditions of political polarization.
The core analytical contribution of the article lies in its insistence that Bolsonarismo should not be understood primarily through the lens of populism as a personal style, but rather as a structured ideological alignment with durable organizational underpinnings. The research engages two principal questions: what accounts for the emergence of this far-right movement as a significant electoral and extraelectoral force, and how has it managed to survive and even consolidate following the 2022 defeat? In addressing these questions, the article moves beyond candidate-centric explanations that would collapse the movement into Bolsonaro's individual charisma or communication strategy. Instead, it points toward the ideological coherence of a bloc that combines social conservatism, military nostalgia, anti-institutionalism, and evangelical Christianity into a recognizable and reproducible political identity. The defeat of a candidate does not necessarily dissolve the networks, discourses, and institutional footholds that gave rise to his political project. Brazil under Bolsonaro saw the reconfiguration of state institutions, the appointment of ideologically aligned military figures to civilian roles, and the deepening penetration of evangelical movements into the formal political system — all structural changes that outlast any single election.
This analysis connects meaningfully to broader regional and global trends. Across Latin America, the relationship between electoral democracy and institutional liberalism has grown increasingly strained. The region has witnessed oscillations between left-wing populism and right-wing reaction, often in ways that weaken the institutional mediators — independent judiciaries, autonomous civil society organizations, free press — that democratic governance requires. In the Brazilian context, the consolidation of a far-right alignment has specific implications for the civil society sector, which had expanded substantially during the Workers' Party years and which faced sustained hostility during the Bolsonaro administration. International development organizations, including bilateral donors and multilateral institutions operating ODA programming in Brazil, found themselves navigating a government that was openly skeptical of NGOs, that curtailed environmental monitoring in the Amazon, and that politicized social protection systems. This is not an isolated Latin American dynamic; it echoes patterns visible in Hungary, India, the Philippines, and elsewhere, where nationalist governments have systematically narrowed the operational space for civil society as a check on executive power.
The policy implications of the article's findings are significant for both domestic Brazilian governance and for the international community engaged in development and democratic support programming. If the far-right alignment has achieved a degree of organizational and ideological consolidation that is genuinely post-Bolsonaro — that is, capable of generating new leadership, sustaining mobilized constituencies, and contesting institutions from within — then the return of Lula to the presidency, while symbolically important, does not resolve the structural tensions in Brazilian democracy. ODA practitioners working in governance, civil society strengthening, and human rights must therefore calibrate their programming to account for a politically contested environment in which prior gains may be reversible. Strengthening the institutional resilience of democratic norms rather than simply supporting allied governments or civil society actors is a more durable strategy under such conditions. Research on democratic backsliding increasingly confirms that recoveries from illiberal episodes require not merely electoral change but the patient reconstruction of institutional trust — a process that takes years and that is vulnerable to reversal if the underlying social conditions that produced the far-right alignment are left unaddressed.
Looking forward, the analytical framework offered by this article invites scholars and practitioners to develop more sophisticated tools for measuring the consolidation of political alignments independently of their electoral performance. Standard indicators of democratic health — freedom indices, civil society assessments, press freedom rankings — tend to track changes in formal institutional conditions and often lag behind the more diffuse social and organizational processes through which ideological movements entrench themselves. Brazil will remain a critical laboratory for these questions through the remainder of the decade. As the 2026 elections approach, the question of whether Bolsonarismo can contest power through democratic means, or whether it will pursue extraelectoral pressure strategies, carries implications not only for Brazilian citizens but for the broader international community's understanding of how far-right political projects evolve in middle-income democracies. For researchers at institutions like IOCSS focused on civil society and global political economy, the Brazilian case underscores the necessity of examining the organizational infrastructure of political movements — their funding networks, social base, institutional alliances, and ideological coherence — as independent variables with explanatory power that neither election results nor individual leaders can fully capture.