Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-08-07
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The global resurgence of far-right political movements over the past decade has challenged longstanding assumptions about democratic consolidation in the developing world. From Hungary to India, from the United States to the Philippines, populist authoritarian actors have demonstrated a remarkable capacity to reshape political landscapes in ways that persist well beyond their direct tenure in office. Latin America has proven no exception to this pattern. Brazil, long regarded as one of the hemisphere's most institutionally robust democracies, has become a pivotal case study in how far-right politics can take root, mutate, and endure even after the electoral vehicle that carried it to power is defeated. The article under examination in the Journal of Politics in Latin America makes a timely and analytically rigorous contribution by shifting the analytical lens away from electoral outcomes and toward the structural consolidation of an ideological project — a distinction that carries profound implications for scholars of comparative politics, development practitioners, and civil society actors operating in environments where democratic backsliding is not a momentary rupture but a deepening structural condition.
The central intellectual contribution of the article lies in its insistence that Bolsonarismo cannot be adequately understood through the framework of electoral fortunes alone. This is more than a methodological preference; it reflects a genuine theoretical intervention. Electoral analyses of far-right movements tend to treat vote share as the primary indicator of movement strength, which creates a misleading picture when political defeats are read as ideological retreats. The authors of this piece argue, compellingly, that Bolsonaro's loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the October 2022 presidential runoff did not represent the dismantling of the far-right coalition he had assembled. Rather, the 2022 election revealed the depth of the social and political realignment that Bolsonarismo had achieved over the preceding four years. The movement had succeeded in constructing a durable ideological bloc — cutting across evangelical Christian communities, segments of the military, agrarian elites, and a significant portion of the urban lower-middle class — whose coherence did not depend on Bolsonaro's personal presence in the executive. This distinction between the electoral vehicle and the structural alignment is analytically decisive and has parallels in the broader literature on movement-party dynamics, where scholars like Herbert Kitschelt and Herbert Kriesi have long emphasized that the organizational and cultural infrastructure of a political movement often outlasts the careers of its founding figures.
Situating this analysis within regional trends in Latin America sheds further light on its significance. The continent is currently traversing what several scholars have described as a "second pink tide" — a wave of left and center-left electoral victories in Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Bolivia, and Brazil itself — but this framing risks underestimating the resilience of the forces these governments must contend with. In each of these countries, the far right retains substantial legislative representation, controls important subnational governments, and maintains robust networks in media, religious organizations, and civil society. In Brazil specifically, Bolsonaro's Partido Liberal and allied parties performed strongly in the 2022 congressional elections, securing a majority in the Senate and a plurality in the Chamber of Deputies. This legislative entrenchment means that the Lula government must govern under conditions of permanent institutional adversarialism, a dynamic that constrains its policy agenda on everything from environmental governance in the Amazon to social spending and labor rights. The article's emphasis on consolidation rather than defeat thus resonates powerfully with this broader regional picture: the electoral cycle may have turned, but the underlying political terrain has been fundamentally altered.
The policy implications of this analysis are substantial and deserve direct engagement by development actors and civil society organizations working in Brazil and beyond. For ODA practitioners and international partners, the persistence of the far-right alignment in Brazil creates specific challenges in areas where Brazil's international cooperation profile is consequential — most notably in climate and environmental governance, where Bolsonaro's legacy of Amazon deforestation and indigenous rights rollbacks remains a live political battleground, contested not merely between governments but within Brazilian society itself. Civil society organizations that received foreign funding under Bolsonaro faced significant harassment and legislative threats, a pattern that has eased somewhat under Lula but has not been entirely reversed given the legislative opposition's continued antagonism toward international civil society linkages. Research institutions and development agencies must therefore develop a more sophisticated understanding of the distinction between governmental orientation and societal alignment: a government's stated commitment to multilateralism or environmental standards does not automatically translate into policy capacity when the political opposition retains the ability to obstruct, delegitimize, and mobilize counter-narratives at scale.
Looking forward, the article's framework raises important questions about the trajectories of consolidated far-right movements in the medium term. One of the most consequential open questions is whether Bolsonarismo will follow the pattern of other such movements by institutionalizing itself within the mainstream conservative bloc, gradually moderating its most extreme elements while retaining its core coalition, or whether it will continue to operate as a disruptive, anti-systemic force that thrives on democratic erosion rather than democratic competition. The answer to this question will depend significantly on developments within Brazil's own institutional landscape — the behavior of the judiciary, the role of the military, the strength of press freedom and civil society mobilization — but it will also be shaped by transnational dynamics, including the performance of analogous movements in the United States and Europe. For researchers, the article's contribution is a reminder that understanding democratic resilience requires attending not only to institutions and elections but to the social and ideological formations that sustain political projects across electoral cycles. Practitioners and policymakers who engage with Brazil over the coming years would do well to internalize that lesson.