Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-06-19
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The resurgence of far-right political movements across the globe has become one of the defining features of twenty-first-century democracy. From Hungary to India, from Italy to the United States, illiberal political projects have demonstrated a remarkable capacity not only to win elections but to reshape the institutional and cultural terrain long after their most visible protagonists leave office. Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro presents one of the most instructive — and in some respects alarming — case studies of this phenomenon in the Global South. The scholarly attention now being directed at this movement, as exemplified by recent work published in the Journal of Politics in Latin America, reflects a growing recognition that understanding the durability of far-right political realignments is not merely an academic exercise but an urgent task for those concerned with democratic governance, civil society health, and the international order that underpins development cooperation.
The central analytical contribution of this article lies in its deliberate pivot away from electoral outcomes as the primary lens through which to evaluate political movements. Conventional political science has tended to measure the success or failure of political projects through vote tallies and office-holding. By asking how Bolsonarismo survived and even consolidated itself after the 2022 presidential electoral defeat — Lula da Silva's victory by a razor-thin margin — the authors force a more structurally sensitive reading of what far-right movements actually are and how they reproduce themselves. The study's two core research questions appear to center on, first, the ideological and organizational mechanisms that allowed Bolsonaro's project to persist beyond his personal electoral fortunes, and second, the extent to which the movement has succeeded in embedding itself within Brazilian political institutions, civil society networks, and cultural life. This framing is theoretically productive precisely because it decouples the fate of the leader from the fate of the movement — a distinction that democratic observers, aid agencies, and civil society partners operating in Brazil ignore at their peril.
Brazil's far-right alignment did not emerge in a vacuum. It drew sustenance from decades of frustration with the Workers' Party's governance, amplified by the economic and institutional crises of the mid-2010s and the catastrophic corruption revelations of the Lava Jato operation. Bolsonaro skillfully channeled evangelical Christian mobilization, agribusiness interests, and military nostalgia into a coalition that proved more durable than many anticipated. What is analytically significant about the post-2022 period is the degree to which this coalition has maintained coherence even as its figurehead faces legal proceedings and political marginalization. This resilience mirrors patterns observed in comparative perspective: Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party following the 2020 loss, the persistence of Orbánism as an intellectual and organizational project beyond any single electoral cycle in Hungary, and the way Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National rebuilt itself after serial defeats to become France's dominant opposition force. In each case, the movement proved more significant than the moment, and the institutional footprint outlasted the electoral setback. Brazil's case adds important Southern Hemisphere dimensions to this global pattern, including the specific role of Pentecostal networks, rural land-ownership politics, and the armed forces as an ideological constituency rather than merely a coercive instrument.
For ODA practitioners, civil society researchers, and international development organizations, these findings carry direct operational implications. Brazil is not only the largest economy in Latin America; it is also a pivotal actor in global environmental governance, Amazonian biodiversity, multilateral trade arrangements, and South-South development cooperation frameworks. The consolidation of a far-right alignment within Brazilian political culture — even under a center-left presidency — constrains the policy space available to the Lula government on issues ranging from climate commitments and deforestation enforcement to social protection expenditure and engagement with multilateral institutions. International partners who assumed that Bolsonaro's electoral defeat had cleared the political field have found themselves navigating a more contested environment, in which subnational governments, congressional blocs, and judiciary-adjacent actors aligned with the far-right can obstruct, delay, or dilute progressive policy initiatives. Civil society organizations working on human rights, indigenous rights, and environmental advocacy in Brazil have reported continued intimidation and operational difficulties, suggesting that the institutional normalization of far-right actors remains a live challenge regardless of who occupies the presidency.
Looking forward, the analytical framework advanced in this article should prompt researchers and practitioners to develop more sophisticated monitoring tools for tracking far-right consolidation beyond the electoral cycle. Metrics such as legislative capture, judicial appointments, municipal-level policy shifts, military institutional culture, and evangelical media ecosystems may be more revealing indicators of the movement's true trajectory than presidential approval ratings or voter intention surveys. For Brazil specifically, the 2026 electoral cycle will be a crucial stress test: whether Bolsonarismo fields a competitive presidential candidate, how effectively the Lula administration has consolidated democratic institutions in the interim, and whether international civil society networks have adapted their partnership models to the post-Bolsonaro-but-not-post-Bolsonarismo reality. The broader lesson for comparative politics and development studies is that the study of democratic backsliding must evolve beyond the drama of election night and attend more carefully to the slower, quieter processes by which political movements reshape the landscape of the possible — a task to which scholarship of this kind makes an indispensable contribution.