Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-09-13
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
Brazil's 2022 presidential election, in which Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, was widely read in international commentary as a decisive repudiation of far-right populism in Latin America's largest democracy. Yet the persistence of Bolsonarismo as an organized political, social, and ideological force in the years since suggests that electoral defeat and the consolidation of a far-right alignment are not mutually exclusive phenomena. This distinction matters enormously for how scholars, donors, and civil society actors interpret democratic resilience in the Global South. At a moment when far-right movements from Argentina to the United States to parts of Europe have demonstrated remarkable capacity to survive setbacks at the ballot box, understanding the mechanisms by which Bolsonarismo has entrenched itself in Brazilian institutions, media ecosystems, and grassroots networks offers a critical case study for anyone tracking the durability of illiberal politics worldwide.
The article's central contribution lies in shifting analytical attention away from electoral outcomes as the primary metric of political success or failure, and toward the deeper structural and organizational processes through which a movement embeds itself in a polity. Rather than treating Bolsonaro's 2022 loss as an endpoint, the analysis frames it as one moment within a longer trajectory of alignment-building that includes the capture of evangelical and agribusiness constituencies, the cultivation of a decentralized but ideologically coherent network of state and municipal legislators, and the strategic use of digital media infrastructures to sustain mobilization outside formal power. This reframing echoes a broader theoretical move in comparative politics literature on populism, which increasingly emphasizes that far-right projects function less as personalist vehicles tied to a single leader and more as durable coalitions of interest groups, media actors, and ideological entrepreneurs who can survive the electoral fortunes of any one figurehead. The Brazilian case is particularly instructive because Bolsonaro's own political future has been clouded by legal jeopardy and eventual ineligibility, making the persistence of the movement independent of his personal candidacy a strong test of the alignment thesis.
These findings resonate with wider patterns observable across Latin America and beyond, where far-right and hard-right formations have shown an increasing tendency to institutionalize through subnational power, judicial and security-sector alliances, and transnational ideological networks rather than relying solely on presidential incumbency. In Brazil specifically, the durability of Bolsonarista state governors, the entrenchment of "bancada da bala, boi e Bíblia" (bullet, beef, and Bible) blocs in Congress, and the continued mobilization capacity of military police and evangelical networks all point to a far-right infrastructure that operates semi-autonomously from the presidency. This has direct relevance for the civil society and development landscape that IOCSS tracks closely: donor-funded programs on democratic governance, human rights monitoring, and civic space protection in Brazil cannot calibrate their strategies around presidential transitions alone, since the social and institutional base of illiberal politics remains active regardless of who occupies the Palácio do Planalto. The Brazilian trajectory also offers a cautionary parallel for other middle-income democracies receiving significant governance-oriented ODA, where international assistance has often been structured around electoral cycles and formal transitions of power rather than the more diffuse, longer-horizon work of counteracting entrenched ideological coalitions.
For the ODA and civil-society-support community, the policy implications are considerable. Programming that measures success through election outcomes or short-term indicators of democratic backsliding risks missing the slower, more consequential process of coalition consolidation that this article documents. Donors and multilateral partners engaged in Brazil, and in comparable contexts across the region, may need to reorient support toward strengthening independent media literacy, protecting electoral administration bodies from politicization, and sustaining civil society organizations capable of monitoring subnational and legislative-level entrenchment rather than focusing narrowly on presidential-level democratic risk. This also has implications for how international observatories and research institutes assess "democratic recovery" narratives: a change in the executive branch, however significant symbolically, does not necessarily indicate a reversal of the deeper social and institutional realignments that a far-right movement may have achieved during its period in power. Analysts and policymakers should therefore treat post-authoritarian or post-populist transitions with considerable caution, disaggregating formal political outcomes from the underlying distribution of ideological and organizational power.
Looking forward, this line of research invites both scholars and practitioners to develop more robust frameworks for tracking movement consolidation independent of electoral cycles, potentially drawing on network analysis of legislative coalitions, longitudinal surveys of civil society space, and closer attention to the financing and media ecosystems that sustain far-right mobilization between elections. As Brazil approaches its next electoral cycle, the persistence of Bolsonarista alignment will offer an important empirical test of whether such movements can translate institutional entrenchment back into executive power, or whether their durability is better understood as a form of enduring opposition and veto capacity within a still-functioning democratic system. Either outcome carries significant lessons for the broader study of democratic resilience, civil society vulnerability, and the political economy of illiberalism in the Global South, and should inform how research institutes like IOCSS calibrate their long-term monitoring of political risk in Latin America and comparable regions.