Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-06-29
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The resurgence of far-right political movements across the democratic world represents one of the defining challenges of the contemporary moment in global politics. From Europe to North America and across the Global South, what analysts once dismissed as episodic eruptions of populist discontent have revealed themselves to be durable organizational and ideological formations capable of surviving electoral reverses and institutional opposition. Nowhere is this dynamic more consequential — or more instructive — than in Brazil, the largest democracy in Latin America and a country whose political trajectory carries profound implications for regional stability, democratic governance norms, and the broader international order. A recent article published in the Journal of Politics in Latin America provides a rigorous analytical account of how Jair Bolsonaro's far-right project did not merely contest and temporarily hold executive power but succeeded in consolidating a movement that endures well beyond his defeat at the ballot box in October 2022. Understanding this consolidation is essential not only for scholars of Latin American politics but for anyone seeking to comprehend how illiberal political formations reproduce themselves within formally democratic systems.
The central analytical contribution of the article lies in its insistence on distinguishing electoral fortune from structural entrenchment. Electoral-centered frameworks, which remain dominant in comparative politics, tend to measure the strength of political movements by their capacity to win and retain executive office. Under such a lens, Bolsonaro's loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022 would appear to signal the failure or at least the eclipse of the far-right project he championed. The article challenges this interpretation directly by demonstrating that Bolsonarismo — as a coherent ideological and organizational tendency — had by the time of that defeat already embedded itself within Brazilian society and political institutions in ways that electoral outcomes alone cannot reverse. The movement's penetration of the military officer class, the evangelical Protestant churches, agrarian business networks, and significant segments of the security apparatus had created a layered infrastructure of influence that functions independently of who occupies the Palácio do Planalto. This distinction between the electoral vehicle and the movement's deeper social anchoring is analytically powerful and methodologically important, urging researchers to look beyond vote shares toward questions of institutional colonization, ideological diffusion, and the reorganization of civil society along far-right lines.
The Brazilian case also illuminates broader patterns visible across several of the region's democracies. Latin America in the twenty-first century has witnessed repeated cycles in which leftist or center-left governments that rose to prominence during the commodity boom of the 2000s were subsequently displaced by right or far-right challengers who mobilized anti-corruption sentiment, evangelical religious identity, and anxieties about crime and social disorder. Argentina under Javier Milei, El Salvador under Nayib Bukele, and Chile's near-adoption of a constitution shaped by far-right forces during a period of social crisis all reflect similar dynamics. What makes the Brazilian case distinctive, however, is the sheer scale of the country and the degree to which Bolsonaro's movement succeeded in capturing not merely popular opinion but the institutional levers of state security. The January 8, 2023 attacks on the Congress, Supreme Court, and presidential palace — carried out by Bolsonaro supporters who refused to accept the electoral result — were not a desperate last stand by a defeated movement but a demonstration of the extent to which the far-right had developed the organizational capacity for collective action in direct confrontation with constitutional order. That the attacks failed to produce a coup does not diminish their significance; they confirmed that the movement retained mass mobilization capacity and a willingness to contest democratic legitimacy even after losing at the polls.
From a policy and governance perspective, the article's findings raise urgent questions about the resilience of democratic institutions in the face of movements that contest their legitimacy while simultaneously operating within them. The standard toolkit of democratic consolidation theory — electoral competition, legislative oversight, judicial independence, civil society activism — appears insufficient when the far-right has successfully colonized segments of all these domains. Brazil's Supreme Court under Chief Justice Alexandre de Moraes moved aggressively against Bolsonaro and his allies through prosecutions, bans, and the investigation of the January 8 plotters, demonstrating that judicial institutions can serve as a meaningful check. But the political viability of aggressive institutional self-defense depends on conditions — judicial courage, coalition support, public legitimacy — that cannot be taken for granted. For development practitioners and ODA actors operating in Brazil, the persistence of the far-right alignment has concrete implications for programming in areas ranging from environmental governance and indigenous rights to civil society enabling environments and democratic accountability. A Bolsonarista future return to power would likely entail renewed attacks on the NGO sector, environmental monitoring agencies, and multilateral partnerships perceived as external interference in national sovereignty.
Looking forward, the scholarly and practitioner community faces the challenge of developing analytical frameworks adequate to movements that are simultaneously post-electoral and pre-governmental — that is, movements which maintain coherent ideological identity, organizational structure, and social mobilization capacity across periods of electoral defeat while positioning themselves for future bids for power. The article's analysis of Bolsonarismo as a consolidated alignment rather than a personality cult organized around a single charismatic leader has particularly significant implications in this regard. If the movement can survive Bolsonaro's legal jeopardy, his potential ineligibility to stand for office, and the passage of time, it suggests that Brazilian far-right politics has achieved a degree of institutionalization that researchers and observers must take seriously as a long-term feature of the political landscape rather than an interlude. For IOCSS and allied research institutions, the imperative is to continue tracking the evolution of far-right alignments in Latin America with the same analytical rigor applied to civil society movements and democratic deepening processes — recognizing that the transformation of political economy and civil society in the region cannot be understood without accounting for the forces actively seeking to reshape both.