Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-08-02
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The rise and persistence of far-right political movements across the globe represents one of the most consequential developments in contemporary democratic politics. From Hungary to the United States, from India to Italy, a distinctive form of right-wing populism has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to survive and even flourish beyond the immediate electoral fortunes of its founding figures. Nowhere is this phenomenon more sharply illustrated than in Brazil, where the Bolsonarista movement — built around the mercurial former president Jair Bolsonaro — has defied the conventional expectation that populist projects collapse when their standard-bearers lose office. The article under examination, published in the Journal of Politics in Latin America, takes up precisely this question with analytical precision: how does a far-right alignment consolidate itself institutionally and ideologically even after electoral defeat? The answer carries implications not only for Brazilian democracy but for the global study of authoritarian populism and the long-term vulnerabilities of liberal democratic orders.
Brazil's political trajectory over the past decade provides essential context for understanding why this question matters so urgently. The country experienced a sharp right-ward lurch following the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the imprisonment of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of the 2018 presidential election — events that created a political vacuum rapidly filled by Bolsonaro's brand of militaristic nationalism, social conservatism, and anti-institutionalism. Bolsonaro's presidency from 2019 to 2022 was marked by attacks on democratic norms, the judiciary, environmental protections, and the press, all while cultivating an intensely loyal mass base through social media, evangelical networks, and the armed forces. His narrow defeat by Lula da Silva in October 2022, followed by the January 8, 2023 insurrectionary riots in Brasília — a direct echo of the Capitol assault in Washington two years prior — signaled to many observers that the movement retained dangerous vitality. The article under review takes this observation as its starting point, asking not merely whether Bolsonarismo survived but why and through what mechanisms it has consolidated.
The study's core analytical contribution lies in its distinction between electoral performance and ideological consolidation. Political science has long treated electoral outcomes as the primary metric of movement success or failure, but this article challenges that framework by demonstrating that the Bolsonarista alignment has successfully embedded itself across multiple institutional and social registers that transcend the ballot box. The movement has developed durable infrastructure within the Brazilian military, evangelical churches, agribusiness associations, and municipal political networks. These structures operate with a degree of organizational autonomy that insulates the broader far-right project from the judicial and legal pressures facing Bolsonaro himself, who has faced disqualification proceedings and criminal investigations. In this sense, what the article describes is less a personalist movement vulnerable to decapitation than a broader ideological bloc that has claimed territory within Brazilian civil and political society — a finding with profound implications for how scholars and policymakers assess the threat posed by such movements.
Viewed through the lens of comparative politics and ODA-relevant political economy, Brazil's case illuminates wider patterns in Latin America and beyond. The Bolsonarista movement drew on and reinforced a regional trend toward the weaponization of anti-corruption rhetoric, religious nationalism, and anti-globalist sentiment to undermine redistributive social contracts. International development actors operating in Brazil during the Bolsonaro years witnessed systematic dismantling of civil society partnership frameworks, attacks on environmental monitoring agencies, and rollback of Indigenous rights protections — all with direct consequences for sustainable development goals and the international aid architecture. The persistence of Bolsonarismo even under a Lula administration means that international partners cannot assume a straightforward return to the Brazilian state's prior engagement with multilateral development norms. The institutional capture achieved by far-right networks within state bureaucracies, the military, and the judiciary creates friction points that will shape the operating environment for civil society organizations and international development actors for years to come.
The policy implications of these findings are significant and demand attention from both researchers and practitioners. For civil society organizations working in Brazil, the article's analysis suggests that the Lula government's return to power does not automatically restore the civic space that was eroded between 2019 and 2022. Deep coalitions linking far-right political actors to religious institutions, security forces, and economic elites continue to contest the terms of public discourse and state policy. For international donors and ODA implementers, this underscores the importance of supporting civil society resilience not only at the organizational level but at the level of legal and institutional frameworks — the rules, norms, and enforcement mechanisms that protect civic space from political erosion. The January 2023 attacks demonstrated that the far-right bloc retains both the will and the capacity to challenge democratic outcomes through extra-institutional means, and that confronting this threat requires sustained democratic investment rather than mere electoral arithmetic.
Looking forward, the Brazilian case is likely to serve as a critical reference point for scholars studying the long-term trajectories of far-right populism globally. The article's emphasis on consolidation beyond electoral fortunes raises an important research agenda: under what conditions do far-right alignments eventually fragment or de-radicalize, and under what conditions do they deepen and normalize? Brazil's 2026 elections will provide an important empirical test, as will the legal proceedings against Bolsonaro himself. For development researchers and practitioners, the broader lesson is that democratic backsliding is rarely a simple on-off switch that reverses cleanly with a change of government. The consolidation of far-right political infrastructure within Brazilian state and society represents a structural challenge to democratic governance that demands long-horizon analysis, adaptive civil society strategy, and renewed commitment to the institutional foundations without which sustainable development — and indeed democratic accountability itself — cannot be secured.