Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-06-05
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The global resurgence of far-right political movements has become one of the defining features of the contemporary political landscape, posing fundamental questions about the resilience of liberal democratic institutions, the durability of ideological coalitions, and the relationship between electoral outcomes and longer-term political realignments. Latin America, long viewed through the lens of its mid-twentieth-century authoritarian legacies and its late-century transitions to democracy, has emerged once again as a critical laboratory for understanding these dynamics. Brazil, as the region's largest democracy and one of the world's most consequential emerging economies, occupies a particularly significant position in this global conversation. The article under review in the Journal of Politics in Latin America addresses an underexplored but urgent dimension of this phenomenon: the consolidation of Brazil's far-right political alignment under Jair Bolsonaro, and crucially, the persistence and institutionalization of that alignment even after his defeat in the October 2022 presidential election. This question — whether far-right movements can outlast their founding electoral vehicles — has implications that extend well beyond Brazil and speak directly to comparative questions about democratic backsliding, civil society polarization, and the governance of development in societies marked by deep inequality.
The core analytical contribution of this article lies in its insistence that electoral fortune is an insufficient metric for measuring the strength or durability of political movements. In much of the existing literature on populism and right-wing authoritarianism, electoral performance tends to serve as the primary dependent variable: movements are assessed by whether they win power, hold it, and expand their vote share. Bolsonaro's defeat to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 was, in this conventional framing, a referendum on his governance and an indicator of the movement's limits. The article challenges this interpretive framework by distinguishing between the electoral vehicle — Bolsonaro himself as a candidate — and the broader ideological and organizational infrastructure that his movement constructed over years of political activity. The far-right alignment consolidated during the Bolsonaro years encompassed not only his core evangelical and military constituencies but also a significant segment of the agrarian elite, segments of the urban middle class alienated from PT-era social programs, and an extensive ecosystem of social media influencers, religious networks, and municipal-level political operators. These structural components do not evaporate when a presidential election is lost. The article's argument, therefore, is not merely about Bolsonaro the individual but about Bolsonarismo as a durable political formation.
This distinction between the leader and the movement carries significant theoretical weight in the comparative study of populism and democratic erosion. Scholars such as Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way have argued that competitive authoritarian regimes often collapse when their founding strongmen exit the scene, yet more recent scholarship has pointed to cases — Hungary under Fidesz, Turkey under the AKP — where the institutional transformation wrought by populist leaders proves more enduring than the leaders themselves. Brazil's trajectory after 2022 appears to follow this second pattern more closely. The attempted coup of January 8, 2023, when Bolsonaro supporters stormed the presidential palace, the national congress, and the Supreme Court, was not merely an impulsive act of grievance but rather a coordinated mobilization drawing on organizational networks built during years of political activity. The fact that Bolsonaro himself was in Florida at the time underscores the article's point: the movement had developed sufficient institutional density to act without direct leadership. Understanding this organizational consolidation — how it was built, how it is sustained, and what internal divisions and external pressures it faces — is precisely where the scholarly contribution of this work is most valuable.
The implications for civil society and development governance in Brazil are profound. The Bolsonaro years were marked by systematic efforts to defund, delegitimize, and in some cases criminalize civil society organizations engaged in environmental monitoring, indigenous rights advocacy, and social policy delivery. Brazil's extensive network of NGOs and grassroots organizations, many of which were incubated and supported by international ODA flows and multilateral partnerships, faced sustained pressure during this period. The consolidation of a far-right alignment in Brazilian politics — even in opposition — means that these pressures have not simply receded with the change in government. Policy reforms pursued under Lula's third administration in areas such as Amazon protection, land reform, and LGBTQ+ rights remain contested not only in the legislature, where Bolsonaro-aligned parties retain substantial representation, but in the broader public sphere where the movement's media infrastructure continues to shape information flows and political identities. For international development actors, researchers, and practitioners, this means that the conventional assumption that political transitions resolve governance challenges must be set aside in favor of a more granular analysis of the institutional landscape within which development programs operate.
The article's engagement with the question of ideological consolidation is equally important from a regional comparative perspective. Brazil's far-right movement did not emerge in isolation. It is part of a broader hemispheric pattern that includes Milei's libertarian-nationalist government in Argentina, the enduring influence of Trumpism in the United States on Latin American right-wing networks, and the growing organizational capacity of evangelical political movements across Central America, Chile, and Colombia. These movements share not only rhetorical frames — anti-communism, anti-gender ideology, sovereignty discourse — but also organizational models, financing networks, and transnational media infrastructures. The consolidation of Bolsonarismo, as documented in this article, is therefore both a Brazilian story and a node in a transnational political realignment with significant implications for regional governance, multilateral cooperation on climate and sustainable development, and the political conditions under which civil society can operate effectively. The Journal of Politics in Latin America is well-positioned to facilitate the kind of comparative, regionally-grounded scholarly conversation that this transnational dimension demands.
Looking forward, the research trajectory opened by this article points toward several urgent questions for scholars, practitioners, and policy analysts. First, what are the internal dynamics of the far-right coalition in the absence of Bolsonaro's active leadership? The tensions between its military, evangelical, and agribusiness wings have historically been managed through Bolsonaro's personal authority and his ability to distribute access and policy concessions. Without that centralizing function, the coalition may fragment, radicalize, or reorganize around alternative figures. Second, how does the Lula government's success or failure in delivering on its social and environmental commitments affect the movement's electoral prospects in 2026? Far-right movements frequently draw their sustenance from governing failures, and Brazil's macroeconomic vulnerabilities — inflation, fiscal pressures, and commodity price fluctuations — provide ample material for opposition narratives. Third, and most consequentially for the development community, what institutional safeguards are being constructed to ensure that civil society organizations, environmental protections, and social policy architectures are insulated from future political reversals? The experience of the Bolsonaro years demonstrated that formal democratic institutions alone are insufficient protection against systematic erosion from within. The consolidation of a far-right alignment that endures beyond electoral defeat is not merely a political science puzzle — it is a governance challenge with direct and immediate consequences for millions of people whose lives are shaped by the policies and political economies that these movements contest.