Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-06-17
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The rise of far-right political movements across the Global South has fundamentally reshaped the terrain on which international development cooperation, civil society organizations, and democratic governance operate. Brazil, the largest democracy in Latin America and a pivotal actor in South-South cooperation, has been at the center of this transformation. The publication of this analysis in the Journal of Politics in Latin America arrives at a critical juncture: with Jair Bolsonaro barred from seeking public office until 2030 yet remaining the organizational fulcrum of a durable ideological coalition, scholars and practitioners alike are forced to reckon with the possibility that electoral defeat does not equal political defeat. For institutions engaged in ODA programming, civil society support, and democratic governance assistance in Brazil and across the region, this distinction carries profound operational consequences.
The central contribution of this article lies in its insistence on separating the fate of Bolsonaro the candidate from the fate of bolsonarismo as a political phenomenon. Too often, international observers interpreted the narrow victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October 2022 as evidence that Brazil's democratic institutions had self-corrected, that the far-right wave had crested and begun its retreat. The article challenges this reading directly by demonstrating that the ideological infrastructure undergirding Bolsonaro's movement — its organizational networks, its media ecosystem, its penetration of military and evangelical institutions, and its capacity for popular mobilization — survived the electoral outcome largely intact. This is not a trivial scholarly observation. It speaks to a structural consolidation that electoral cycles alone cannot dislodge. The movement did not merely lose a vote; it contested the legitimacy of the counting process itself, and a significant portion of its base continues to operate from a position of deep institutional distrust. The January 8, 2023 attacks on Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace were not the death throes of a defeated movement but a demonstration of its continued organizational capacity and radicalized commitment.
The article situates this consolidation within the broader global architecture of far-right political alignment. Brazil's case is not isolated. The ideological and organizational features of bolsonarismo bear strong family resemblances to Trumpism in the United States, the European far-right parties that have achieved governing status in Hungary, Italy, and increasingly France, and the authoritarian populist formations emerging across Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. What makes Brazil analytically significant, however, is the particular fusion of neoliberal economic ideology, Christian nationalist social policy, military nostalgism, and anti-institutionalism that Bolsonaro's movement synthesized. This combination proved resilient because it spoke simultaneously to urban middle-class anxieties about economic stagnation and state corruption, rural evangelical communities feeling culturally marginalized, and segments of the security apparatus that viewed civilian democratic oversight as an obstacle. The article's analysis of this coalition's internal logic helps explain why it did not fracture after electoral defeat — each constituent group found in the movement's continued existence a vehicle for ongoing cultural and political contestation.
For development practitioners and those engaged in civil society support programming, the implications of this analysis are substantial. Brazil under Bolsonaro pursued a systematic dismantling of the participatory governance architecture that had been built over two decades, gutting federal councils that had given voice to civil society organizations, rolling back environmental protections that affected Indigenous and quilombola communities, and defunding the public institutions through which international development partnerships were often channeled. Lula's return to the presidency has restored much of this architecture formally, but the article's findings suggest that the political forces capable of dismantling it again remain organized and motivated. International donors and development banks designing long-term programs in areas such as Amazon conservation, democratic governance, or gender equity cannot assume institutional durability. They must build program resilience that accounts for potential political reversal, invest more deeply in grassroots civil society capacity rather than relying on state intermediaries, and engage seriously with the structural social conditions — inequality, economic insecurity, corruption fatigue — that made bolsonarismo's promises legible to millions of Brazilian voters.
Looking forward, the article's findings open several important research agendas and carry practical implications for the coming political cycle. Brazil holds presidential elections in 2026, and with Bolsonaro legally barred from running, the movement faces a succession question it has not yet resolved. Whether a surrogate candidate can command equivalent loyalty, or whether the coalition fragments into competing factions, will depend partly on Bolsonaro's continued capacity to act as organizational anchor from the sidelines and partly on how effectively the Lula government addresses the material conditions that drive far-right support. Researchers working at the intersection of comparative authoritarianism, Latin American democratization, and global populism would do well to track Brazil closely over the next two years as a living experiment in whether far-right consolidation survives the removal of its charismatic figurehead. For IOCSS and similar institutes engaged in monitoring civil society resilience and ODA effectiveness in politically volatile environments, this article provides an essential conceptual framework: the lesson from Brazil is that the consolidation of ideological movements follows a different timeline than the electoral fortunes of their leaders, and that understanding this gap is the first requirement for serious analytical and policy work in an era of democratic backsliding.