Explain the causes and consequences of Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. 

Use ONE of the countries as an example to drill down or elaborate analytically on this type of military regime.

Must use ALL attached sources and sources below and a few outside sources if needed. 

Must cite in text.

600-700 words

After the Default: Argentina’s Unsustainable “20/80” Economy

The Politics of Chile’s New Constitution

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16650

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16650

****the username and password to access the last two sources is: 

username: samijo1

password: princess11sjm

Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash

Wendy Hunter, Timothy J. Power

Journal of Democracy, Volume 30, Number 1, January 2019, pp. 68-82 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI:

For additional information about this article

[ Access provided for user ‘samijo1’ at 26 Feb 2021 16:21 GMT from Florida International University ]

https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0005

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/713723

https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0005

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/713723

Bolsonaro and Brazil’s
illiBeral Backlash

Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

Wendy Hunter is professor of government at the University of Texas at
Austin. Her works include The Transformation of the Workers’ Party
in Brazil, 1989–2009 (2010). Timothy J. Power is head of the Oxford
School of Global and Area Studies and professor of Latin American
politics at the University of Oxford. Most recently, he is coauthor of
Coalitional Presidentialism in Comparative Perspective: Minority Presi-
dents in Multiparty Systems (2018).

On 28 October 2018, Brazilian voters delivered a sweeping victory
to presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, putting the far-right populist
at the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy. After a raucous
campaign in which the former army captain demonized his political op-
ponents and promised to save the country from total ruin, Bolsonaro
handed a stinging defeat to the left-leaning Workers’ Party (PT), which
had governed Brazil from 2003 to 2016. Social media, along with net-
works of Pentecostal churches, helped to disseminate Bolsonaro’s in-
cendiary messages and organize his broad multiclass following.

After nearly clinching the presidency in the October 7 first round
with over 46 percent of valid votes, Bolsonaro received 55.13 percent of
the vote in the runoff (see Table on p. 70). The remaining 44.87 percent
went to PT candidate Fernando Haddad—a last-minute substitute during
the first round for popular former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva,
who had been imprisoned since April 2018 on corruption charges linked
to Brazil’s mammoth Operaç~ao Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) scandal.
In keeping with the polarizing tone of the campaign, the share of voters
who cast ballots for each candidate closely approximated the share who
expressed a strong antipathy toward the opposing candidate. Concurrent
elections for the 513-member Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of
the bicameral National Congress, saw a surge by Bolsonaro’s hitherto
minuscule Social Liberal Party (PSL): This party went from winning
only a single seat in 2014 to claiming 52 seats and the highest share of

Journal of Democracy Volume 30, Number 1 January 2019
© 2019 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press

69Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

popular votes in 2018. Bolsonaro had joined the PSL—previously one
of the nondescript “parties for rent” that help to populate Brazil’s fluid
system—in 2018 merely to qualify for a place on the presidential ballot.

The dramatic ascent of this far-right fringe figure and longtime legis-
lative backbencher caught many by surprise. Brazilian presidential elec-
tions since 1994 had been marked by a virtual duopoly, with the left-
leaning PT and the center-right Party of Brazilian Social Democracy
(PSDB) as the predictable finalists. Taken together, these two parties
consistently won between 70 and 90 percent of the vote. The three presi-
dents elected in this period—Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995–2003)
of the PSDB, followed by Lula (2003–11) and his chosen successor
Dilma Rousseff (2011–16) from the PT—had all won second terms in
office, lending an air of seeming stability to party politics.

Yet viewed in the context of the multiple crises afflicting Brazil since
2013, travails for which Brazilians widely blame the establishment par-
ties, the Bolsonaro backlash begins to make sense. The once-formidable
PT, which had won four consecutive presidential contests, was blamed
for the serious downturn in the economy after 2013; the massive corrup-
tion scheme uncovered since 2014 by the Lava Jato investigation; and
the unprecedented levels of crime on the streets of Brazil. Lula, the PT’s
standard-bearer since 1980, might have been able to overcome these
inauspicious circumstances and carry the day. In fact, he was the front-
runner in the polls until being disqualified at the end of August 2018 due
to his corruption conviction. His popularity as a candidate, however, de-
pended critically on his strong base of personal support (lulismo), which
was much broader than partisan support for the PT (petismo).1 With Lula
out of the mix, all the PT’s “baggage,” together with its choice to nomi-
nate Lula’s understudy at the eleventh hour, ultimately left the party
unable to draw enough center-left support to elect Fernando Haddad.

2

At the same time, overwhelming popular rejection of incumbent
president Michel Temer tainted the two major center-right parties as-
sociated with his government: the PSDB and Temer’s own Brazilian
Democratic Movement (MDB, known until December 2017 as the Par-
ty of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, or PMDB). Temer, Rous-
seff’s vice-president from 2011 to 2016, assumed the presidency in the
wake of her controversial impeachment. His ongoing and unsuccessful
struggle to turn around the economy, defend himself against charges
of malfeasance, and control crime in Brazil’s major cities kept his
approval ratings low and discredited the parties that supported him.
It did not help that the PSDB nominated as its candidate a bland es-
tablishment figure, four-term S~ao Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin
(who had lost badly to Lula in 2006). In the 2018 first round, Alckmin
took less than five percent of the vote, while MDB candidate Hen-
rique Meirelles, a former finance minister who ran on Temer’s record,
barely topped one percent. With the implosion of the MDB and PSDB,

70 Journal of Democracy

a broad political space from the center to the far right became vulner-
able to a hostile takeover.

Bolsonaro seized the opportunity with gusto, sounding a “law and
order” and anticorruption message that resonated strongly with the pub-
lic. His emphasis on his role in the army under Brazil’s former military
dictatorship (1964–85) enhanced his credibility as a strong leader who
would come down hard on crime. In a country in which one out of three
members of Congress was under either indictment or investigation for
criminal activity, Bolsonaro’s previous political insignificance proved a
boon: Never having held (or even run for) executive office or party leader-
ship had shielded him from opportunities to reap the fruits of corruption.
And while Bolsonaro offered little tangible proof of his professed com-
mitment to open markets (much less his qualifications to preside over
a major economy), Brazil’s business community—at first dubious about
the candidate’s purported free-market conversion—later swung behind
him when faced with the binary choice between Bolsonaro and the return
of the statist PT. In the end, the meteoric rise of Brazil’s next president
was made possible by a combination of fundamental background condi-
tions (economic recession, corruption, and crime), political contingencies
(most notably, the weakness of rival candidates), and a shakeup in cam-
paign dynamics produced by the strategic use of social media.

A Multidimensional Crisis

What we refer to as a “perfect storm” in Brazil broke due to at least
four simultaneous crises: an economic crisis caused by a prolonged re-
cession, a political crisis of rising polarization and falling trust in estab-
lished parties, a corruption crisis brought to the fore by the Lava Jato
investigation, and the deterioration of an already dismal public-security
environment. Taken together, these four crises led to a plunge not only
in government legitimacy—with the Temer administration growing

Candidate (Party) 1st Round Runoff
Jair Bolsonaro (PSL) 46.03 55.13
Fernando Haddad (PT) 29.28 44.87
ciro Gomes (PdT) 12.47 –
Geraldo alckmin (PsdB) 4.76 –
Jo~ao amoedo (novo) 2.50 –
cabo daciolo (Patriota) 1.26 –
henrique Meirelles (MdB) 1.20 –
Marina silva (rede) 1.00 –
other candidates (5) 1.50 –
Totals 100.00 100.0

0

Table—brazil’s 2018 PresidenTial-elecTion resulTs
(% of Valid VoTes)

Source: Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, http://www.tse.jus.br.

71Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

MaP—brazil

BoliVia

MaTo
Grosso

MaTo Grosso
do sUl

rio Grande
do sUl

sanTa
caTarina

S�AO PAULO

ParanÁ

rondÔnia

GoÍas Minas
Gerais

Bahia

TocanTins

PiaUÍ

serGiPe

esPÍriTo
sanTo

rio de Janiero

alaGoas

PernaMBUco

ParaÍBa

rio Grande
do norTecearÁMARANH�AOParÁ

aMazonas

roraiMa

aMaPÁ

acre

PerU

coloMBia
VenezUela

GUY.
s

Ur.

Fr.
GUY.

arGenTina

c
h

il
e

ParaGUaY

Ur.

Brasilia

Belo
horizonte

s~ao Paulo
rio de Janiero

ATLANTIC
OCEAN

PAC.
OCEAN

massively unpopular over 2017–18—but in regime legitimacy as well.
Since 1985, Brazilian democracy had had its ups and downs, but never
before had it performed so poorly for so long.3

The brutal recession spanning the Rousseff administration and Temer
interregnum followed a protracted expansion of the Brazilian economy
between 2004 and 2013. This growth was driven by the international
commodities boom and buoyed by new domestic stimuli such as higher
minimum wages and the advent of Bolsa Família (a family-welfare initia-
tive that has become the world’s largest conditional cash-transfer pro-
gram). The clouds began to darken in 2014, with the economic slowdown
threatening Rousseff’s reelection bid that year. She eventually prevailed
by a margin of 3.28 percentage points over the PSDB’s Aécio Neves, but
had the election been held even a few weeks later, the sharply worsening
economic indicators could have changed the outcome. Even then, hardly
anyone foresaw what was coming next: the worst recession in Brazilian
history. Over the next two years, nearly 8 percent of Brazil’s GDP—a sum
almost equal to the entire GDP of Peru—vanished into thin air. Rousseff’s
belated appointment of pro-austerity finance minister Joaquim Levy (who
lasted eleven months in office) came too late to stop the bleeding. By
2017, Temer’s first full year in office, misery was widespread. Unemploy-
ment had increased to a record 12.7 percent and underemployment af-
fected an additional 23.8 percent of the economically active population.4

72 Journal of Democracy

The end of the recession in 2017 was an imperceptible technicality, with
the economy expanding less than 1 percent in that year.

Eroding support for the Rousseff government had been evident even
before the full onset of economic contraction. In June 2013, street
marches originating in opposition to a fare hike for S~ao Paulo public
transportation morphed into a nationwide protest movement that is-
sued demands of all types, but focused mainly on corruption and the
poor quality of public services. Although diffuse and disorganized,
the protests put Rousseff on defense. They also revealed two emerg-
ing trends: 1) a deepening sentiment of rejection and hostility toward
the PT (known colloquially as antipetismo);5 and 2) the presence of a
small but visible far-right fringe openly expressing nostalgia for the “or-
der” and “clean government” of the military dictatorship. Both these
trends would drive demonstrators to the streets again in 2016, when
Rousseff was impeached on charges of violating federal budgetary laws.
Against a backdrop of full-blown recession and daily street protests,
Rousseff’s large and heterogeneous cross-party alliance in Congress—
sure-footedly assembled by her mentor Lula a decade earlier—quickly
fell apart. Legislators paid little heed to Rousseff’s legal defense, and
moved quickly to oust her: She was forced to relinquish the government
to Vice-President Temer (PMDB) in May 2016 and was finally con-
victed and removed from office in August. The PT and the left viewed
Rousseff’s removal as a golpe (parliamentary coup d’état) and Temer’s
successor government as illegitimate.

1.1

4

5.7

6

3.

20

3.96

6.06

5.09

-0.13

7.54

3.99

1.93

3.01

0.51

-3.55 -3.47

0.9

8

1.

40

2.40

-4

-2

0
2
4
6
8

Lula
Dilma Temer

Dilma/
Temer

figure 1—brazilian gdP growTh, 2003–19 (%)

Sources: Data for 2003–17 are from the World Bank (data.worldbank.org). Data for
2018 and 2019 are projections made in September 2018 by the Central Bank of Brazil
(www.bcb.gov.br).

Projected

73Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

The sharp rise in political polarization between 2013 and 2016 was vis-
ible at both the mass and elite levels. Street protests dominated the nation’s
TV screens, and Rousseff’s impeachment—featuring a naked intracoali-
tional betrayal led by Temer—showed the political class at its worst. As
Temer prepared to serve out the final two-and-a-half years of Rousseff’s
second term, the political atmosphere could hardly have been more toxic.

The daily revelations from Lava Jato, the largest corruption investiga-
tion in the world, added fuel to the fire. Lava Jato initially focused on mon-
ey laundering through auto-service stations. As the operation expanded,
however, investigators stumbled onto a much larger bribery and kickback
scheme involving rigged bids by leading construction firms for contracts
with Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil giant, and the recycling into illegal
campaign donations of the profits these firms made by overcharging. In its
first four years (2014–18), Lava Jato produced nearly one-thousand arrest
warrants and 125 convictions, with the guilty verdicts falling on politicians
and private businesspeople alike. Although the investigation ensnared pol-
iticians from fourteen different political parties (including Eduardo Cunha,
a powerful former PMDB speaker of the lower house), many of the most
important names were linked to the PT. Lava Jato led to the jailing of sev-
eral past PT party presidents and treasurers before finally reaching former
president Lula himself, who was sentenced in 2017 to nine years in prison
for accepting a bribe in the form of a beachfront apartment from the con-
struction firm OAS. This initial sentence was increased to twelve years by
a regional court in early 2018 and was later upheld by the Supreme Court.
Lula’s unsuccessful legal appeals were front-page news throughout 2018,
and his eventual exclusion from the presidential race may have changed
the course of history. Yet Lava Jato’s impact on the election was not sim-
ply a “legal” question: Revelations of pervasive corruption hardened both
antiestablishment and (fairly or not) antipetista sentiment within the elec-
torate, eventually working to Bolsonaro’s advantage.

Finally, alarming levels of violent crime and public insecurity were
pivotal to the outcome of the 2018 campaign. In 2017, seventeen of the
fifty most violent cities in the world were in Brazil.6 The preponderance
of these were located in the country’s north or northeast and formed part
of drug transit routes. In that same year, 63,880 people were murdered in
Brazil, up 3 percent from 2016, and the murder rate was 30.8 per 100,000
people—a figure that compares unfavorably even with homicide rates in
Mexico.7 That everyday policing is largely a state-level responsibility in
Brazil’s federal system, and not within the purview of presidents except in
emergency situations, was an academic point in the minds of most voters.
Heightened fear of crime cut across socioeconomic as well as ideological
lines, giving Bolsonaro another opportunity to build broad political sup-
port. In truth, his hard-line “eye for an eye” discourse, combined with the
view that human rights must be subordinated to public safety, was nothing
new: Bolsonaro had virtually “owned” this policy space since the 1990s.

74 Journal of Democracy

In the tense climate of 2018, however, such appeals struck a chord
with the electorate. Affluent sectors were drawn to the “law and order”
candidate despite their ability to afford private security measures such
as armed guards, armored vehicles, and gated communities. Poorer seg-
ments, who not only lack access to such options but also typically reside
in areas of greater crime, sought credible promises of protection as well.
The widespread view that recent governments had failed to keep the pub-
lic safe strengthened the appeal of a candidate who openly advertised his
willingness to combat crime by restricting due process, lowering the age
at which defendants could be charged as adults, loosening gun laws, and
giving the police more autonomy as well as greater firepower.

These four simultaneous crises took a heavy toll on support for both
the government and the regime. Latinobarómetro, an annual survey
of citizens in eighteen Latin American countries, found that Brazil’s
government had the lowest approval rating of any among this group in
2017 and 2018.8 In both years, only 6 percent of respondents said they
approved of the incumbent government (compared, for instance, to 18
percent in Mexico and 22 percent in El Salvador). Figures for regime le-
gitimacy are similar. In 2018 Brazil came in dead last in Latin America
in levels of satisfaction with the performance of democracy. Only 9 per-
cent of those surveyed reported being satisfied, a drop of 40 percentage
points when compared to 2010, the final year of Lula’s government. As
Figure 2 suggests, 2015 was an inflection point in Brazilians’ support
for democracy: The number of respondents who agreed that “Democ-
racy is preferable to any other system of government” started to fall,
while the view that “For people like me, it doesn’t matter whether we
have a democratic government or an authoritarian one” began gaining in
popularity. Although Brazil has routinely ranked comparatively low in
the region in satisfaction with democracy as measured by these indica-
tors, the downward trend and the current absolute level of indifference
and even skepticism toward democracy are alarming. Needless to say,
this situation bodes poorly for the chances of strong action by ordinary
Brazilians to defend democratic norms under the next president, whose
illiberal inclinations have been hidden in plain sight for thirty years.

Enter Bolsonaro

Prior to his spectacular presidential victory, Jair Messias Bolsonaro
was neither an outsider nor an insider in Brazilian politics. After sixteen
years as a cadet and paratrooper in the army, from which he retired as a
captain, Bolsonaro was first elected to the Rio de Janeiro City Council
in 1988. His original platform was mostly limited to improving military
salaries and advocating for military families and veterans. Beginning in
1990, he was elected to seven consecutive terms as a federal congressman
from the State of Rio de Janeiro, with his campaign rhetoric gradually

75Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

broadening to encompass a comprehensive far-right agenda. His victories
were consistently comfortable due to Brazil’s use of open-list proportional
representation with a high number of representatives per district (Rio has
46 seats in the lower house), a system that is friendly to niche candidates
with strong personal followings. During this period Bolsonaro appeared
acutely aware of his narrow base: He never attempted to run in a majori-
tarian election, such as those for mayor, governor, senator, or president.

Although this longtime officeholder was not truly an outsider, Bolso-
naro’s fringe status in national legislative politics meant that he was not
much of an insider either. In the 1990s and 2000s, Bolsonaro became a
well-known though irrelevant backbencher, building a reputation as a
gaffe-prone extremist and a cartoonish foil for the left. His ability to
provoke opponents and generate controversy was the stuff of legend,
and even led to legal cases against him. In 1999, Bolsonaro called for
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to be shot by firing squad as a
punishment for privatizations. Loud and intemperate, he insulted his
legislative colleagues on a regular basis. He infamously stated that PT
congresswoman Maria do Rosário Nunes was “not worth raping.” In a

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

60

10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
50
55
60

Democracy always preferable

Under some circumstances, authoritarianism

For people like me, doesn’t matter

figure 2—PoPular suPPorT for deMocracy in brazil, 1995–2018
(Three-year MoVing aVerage, %)

Note: Response options were “Democracy is preferable to any other system of government”;
“Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government might be preferable to a democratic
one”; and “For people like me, it doesn’t matter whether we have a democratic government
or an authoritarian one.” Each annual value corresponds to the average of that year and the
previous two years.
Source: www.latinobarometro.org.

76 Journal of Democracy

2011 interview with Playboy, Bolsonaro said that he “would be inca-
pable of loving a homosexual son” and would prefer that his son “died in
an accident” before “show(ing) up with some bloke with a moustache.”

In 2017, he claimed that quilombolas
(residents of communities formed by de-
scendants of escaped slaves) were “not
even good enough for procreation.” On
national television during the 2016 im-
peachment of Dilma Rousseff, a feverish
Bolsonaro dedicated his vote to the army
intelligence officer who oversaw her tor-
ture when she was a political prisoner in
1970. The list goes on and on.9

It is tempting to write off Bolsonaro’s
behavior as that of an unhinged provo-
cateur, but over time he acquired both a
highly committed following and a degree

of influence among the broader electorate. His longtime view that human-
rights activists “only defend the rights of criminals,” however ludicrous, is
overwhelmingly endorsed by the Brazilian public.10 His nostalgia for the
1964–85 military regime began to gain traction among voters clamoring for
safer streets and an end to corruption, finding particular resonance among
those too young to be able to compare life under authoritarianism with their
experiences of democracy. Moreover, Bolsonaro’s crude and inflammatory
speech during Rousseff’s impeachment—which lasted less than two min-
utes—put him in the public eye at the perfect time, allowing him to surf the
wave of rising anti-PT sentiment in the run-up to the 2018 election. Thanks
to Bolsonaro’s legions of followers on social media (to whom he is known
as O Mito, or “The Legend”), even those voters who had previously tried to
ignore Bolsonaro could not escape his growing national presence.

A full year before the 2018 election, Bolsonaro was already boasting
15 to 20 percent support in opinion polls. He and Lula were the only
strong candidates in so-called “spontaneous mention” polling (in which
respondents are asked how they intend to vote without initially being pro-
vided with the names of parties or candidates), showing the motivation
and enthusiasm of their respective voter bases. Much like Donald Trump
(another perennial noncandidate) in the United States two years earlier,
Bolsonaro read the public mood well and chose the right year in which to
finally throw his hat in the ring. He accepted the nomination of the mi-
nuscule PSL, over which he knew he would have full operational control.
During the convention season in May and June, no major party nominated
a novel or appealing candidate who could challenge Bolsonaro from the
center-right. On the left, Lula, far more popular than his wounded PT,
continued to lead in all major polls right up until his removal from the
race. Under these circumstances, Bolsonaro’s easiest path to the presi-

Bolsonaro’s easiest
path to the presidency
lay in a runoff election
in which he would
face a candidate from
the weakened PT—but
not Lula himself. This
is exactly the scenario
he got.

77Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

dency lay in a runoff election in which he would face a candidate from the
weakened PT—but not Lula himself. This is exactly the scenario he got.

Bolsonaro’s actual participation in campaign activities was minimal.
After going to two televised debates during the first round, he was stabbed
in the lower abdomen while being carried on the shoulders of supporters
in Juiz de Fora on September 6.11 Narrowly escaping death, he underwent
several operations and never returned to the campaign trail (in a first for
Brazil, there were no debates in the runoff election). The massive media
attention given to the assassination attempt—a “hard news” event that fell
outside the purview of normal government regulation of candidate access
to TV and radio—helped to consolidate Bolsonaro’s position as the lead-
ing anti-PT candidate. With the final exclusion of Lula on September 11
and his understudy Haddad’s ascent to second place in the polls, the bi-
nary choice facing voters became clear, and Bolsonaro was able to secure
support from an even wider swath of anti-PT voters.

Polling during the runoff campaign showed that he had solidified
many of his strengths and limited some of his earlier weaknesses. By
October 2018, Bolsonaro—long perceived as a misogynist—even man-
aged to narrow the yawning gender gap that had plagued him throughout
the year. The four best predictors of support for Bolsonaro were income,
education, religious affiliation, and region of residence. Bolsonaro won
among all income groups except for the poor and very poor: Haddad
proved more popular among voters whose monthly earnings were less
than two times the minimum wage. Not only did Bolsonaro run away
with the vote of Brazil’s “traditional” middle class (households earning
more than ten times the minimum wage), he also prevailed among the
so-called “new” middle classes, whose emergence is often credited to
the economic growth and social-inclusion policies overseen by the PT.12
Education, which in Brazil is highly correlated with income, was also
a major factor. Despite Bolsonaro’s frequent contention that Brazilian
universities are hotbeds of “leftist psychos” (esquerdopatas), he scored
an overwhelming victory among college graduates.

He also took 70 percent of the votes of Pentecostal Christians, who
now make up a quarter of the Brazilian electorate. During the campaign,
tightly organized networks of Pentecostal pastors had provided a vital
communications channel for Bolsonaro, who has successfully sought to
attract Brazil’s evangelicals. The new president still describes himself as
a Catholic, but has an evangelical spouse and attends a Baptist church; in
2016, he underwent a public baptism in the Jordan River by a fellow poli-
tician who is an Assemblies of God pastor.13 Finally, patterns of regional
support were stark. Although he lost the poor northeast to the PT, Bolso-
naro performed spectacularly in the economically advanced states of the
south and southeast and in the Federal District (Brasília). He received
68 percent of the vote in Rio de Janeiro and S~ao Paulo, 70 percent in the
Federal District, and 76 percent in Santa Catarina, all areas with high

78 Journal of Democracy

levels of human development.14 With the exception of the very poor and
northeasterners, Brazil as a whole went heavily for Bolsonaro.

A Changing Party Landscape

Who were the main casualties of the October 2018 presidential elec-
tion? Suffering the greatest setbacks were the PT, the PSDB, and the
party system anchored since 1994 by these rival parties, a system that
had helped to consolidate Brazilian democracy. Even before the 2018
campaign began, the weaknesses of all three were already evident.

To say that Bolsonaro’s victory reflects poorly on the PT is an under-
statement. Leaving aside major failures in the areas of economic manage-
ment and administrative probity, the party’s defeat laid bare its tragicomic
dependence on Lula. The mythical status of Lula within the PT—evident
in the staunch support for his candidacy even after his conviction—came
at the expense of cultivating new political leaders. As far back as 2010, the
commanding role that Lula played in Rousseff’s presidential nomination
had foreshadowed this problem. Technocratic and severe, Rousseff had
been Lula’s energy minister (2003–05) and chief of staff (2005–10). She
had never held elected office and had no independent following or sway
within the PT, thus allowing Lula to preserve his influence after leaving
office. More recently, Lula’s insistence on remaining the PT’s candidate
in 2018 even once it appeared likely that he would be barred from running
raised fundamental questions about the party’s organizational strength
and capacity for evolution. Not even Lula’s disqualification could strike
him from the PT’s narrative: In a particularly graphic demonstration of
the party’s overreliance on the former president, PT electoral strategists
arranged for Fernando Haddad to don a Lula mask at campaign appear-
ances and filled the airwaves with the slogan, “Haddad is Lula. Lula is
Haddad.” Although Lula did ultimately manage to transfer much of his
popularity to Haddad, it was too little, too late. In any event, the party’s
future strategy cannot rest on invoking the legendary leader’s aura.

The 2018 results also revealed that the PT’s competitiveness in presi-
dential elections has become increasingly confined to Brazil’s northeast.
In his 2002 presidential bid, Lula was able to clinch an electoral major-
ity in every Brazilian state but one. In 2006, he deepened his foothold
in poor northeastern states but lost seven others, including the key state
of S~ao Paulo and several states in Brazil’s south and center-west.15 In
2010, Rousseff held onto the PT’s northeastern stronghold but lost three
additional states outside the region, and her vote totals in 2014 followed
a roughly similar pattern. Haddad’s performance in 2018 was even more
lopsided. Although he won every state in the northeast and two in the
north, he failed to carry a single state outside those regions. For the first
time ever, the PT lost its ability to command a majority in the populous
state of Minas Gerais, which borders Rio de Janeiro and S~ao Paulo. And

79Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

in many states, the PT candidate’s margin of loss was shockingly high.16
In short, the PT risks becoming a regional party. Moreover, even within
the party’s northeastern stronghold, support is uneven: Haddad did sig-
nificantly better in poor rural areas. With crime at record levels in urban
areas, he was able to carry only two northeastern capital cities. If the
PT’s narrative remains centered on Lula and its popularity confined to
the northeast, its prospects in future elections will be limited. To regain
its competitiveness, the PT will need to make rebalancing its regional
appeal a priority within a broader process of reflection and renewal.

The 2018 vote totals reflected even more poorly on the PSDB, the PT’s
principal rival in presidential elections from 1994 to 2014. In the six pre-
vious contests, the PSDB had secured on average almost 40 percent of
the vote. Yet the party once headed by renowned intellectuals and tech-
nocrats who championed democracy and free-market reforms alongside
redistributive social policies has now lost five straight presidential elec-
tions, with a particularly dismal showing in 2018. It secured only 29 seats
in the Chamber of Deputies (down from 54 in 2014) and will control only
three of 27 state governments. With its overdependence on S~ao Paulo and
with no promising young leadership emerging, the PSDB’s days as a ma-
jor national party appear numbered. The MDB, the PSDB’s main partner
in the Temer administration, has a questionable future as well. A peren-
nial source of support for both PT and PSDB presidents, this center-right
party had not run a presidential candidate of its own since 1994. In 2018,
however, the beleaguered Temer enlisted his finance minister Meirelles
to carry the government’s banner. The outcome was disastrous, with the
MDB floundering not only in the presidential race but in the Chamber as
well: The size of its delegation dropped from 66 members in 2014 to 34 in
2018. Overall, the spectacular self-destruction of the center-right (PSDB
and MDB) and the emergence of a new far-right option (the PSL) imply
major changes for the party system. On the left side of the spectrum, how-
ever, there is still no alternative to PT hegemony.

With high turnover in both houses and the major parties losing seats,
Brazil, which had set the world record for party-system fragmentation four
years earlier, has now topped its own record. Candidates from 30 different
parties (up from 26 at the end of the previous session) were elected to fill
the Chamber of Deputies. Nine similarly sized parties will hold between 28
and 39 seats apiece. Politicians representing 21 different parties (up from
17) were chosen to fill the 81-seat Senate. Notwithstanding rules intended
to lower the number of parties in Congress by disadvantaging smaller par-
ties—which will inevitably cause some party-switching in early 2019—
this fragmentation will complicate the formation of congressional coali-
tions conducive to efficient and effective governance. With a president
perceived as an ideological extremist, a dose of gridlock could be salutary.
Yet it could also be counterproductive, insofar as Bolsonaro may be tempt-
ed to find illiberal paths around routine institutional obstacles.

80 Journal of Democracy

Jair Bolsonaro did not “come out of nowhere” to win the presidency.
Rather, Bolsonaro has been hidden in plain sight during his thirty-year
career as a fringe defender of the defunct military regime, an advocate
of the lex talionis, and an antagonist of minorities and human-rights
activists. His election was possible only because Brazilian democracy

had done so much to clear a path for
him. Four simultaneous crises—cor-
ruption, recession, polarization, and
rising crime—paved the way, creat-
ing a favorable environment for an
incendiary populist. Corruption alle-
gations implicating a dozen political
parties discredited the political class.
Center-right forces allied with a tre-
mendously unpopular interim govern-
ment imploded, leaving vacant a wide
ideological space for Bolsonaro to fill.
The PT clung to an imprisoned former

president, opting for a strategy of victimization and drawn-out legal the-
ater rather than providing early backing to the creditable Fernando Had-
dad. Door after door was flung open wide for Bolsonaro.

In the end, Bolsonaro won the election by successfully exploiting two
major cleavages in the Brazilian electorate. One was the antiestablish-
ment cleavage, centering on a widespread sentiment of cumulative dis-
gust with politics and politicians as whole (“throw the rascals out”). The
other was the antipetista cleavage, which hinged on the determination
among many voters to inflict a belated punishment on the party that had
governed for over a decade (although the PT was no longer the incumbent
party in 2018, it was treated as if it still were). Some candidates were on
the winning side of one of these cleavages but not the other: Center-right
candidates Alckmin and Meirelles, for instance, were antipetistas but (le-
thally for them) card-carrying establishment insiders. Bolsonaro was the
only candidate who was on the right side of both cleavages. He energized
voters who detested the PT, and he energized voters who detested every-
one. When the electoral options were narrowed to Bolsonaro and a petista
whose name was not Lula, Bolsonaro won by a landslide.

The dynamics of the 2018 election have thus given Bolsonaro a strong
popular mandate. Public expectations for bold and energetic action from
the president are high. The multiple crises that first opened the door to
Bolsonaro will linger, strengthening his position. In 2019, he will stand
virtually alone at the apex of national politics: There is no single leader
or party with the authority to effectively challenge him. The once-for-
midable PT is diminished and the PSDB is a shadow of its former self.
Not only does Brazil lack a natural “leader of the opposition,” it lacks a
popular former president who is not in jail. Together with the polarized

Bolsonaro was the only
candidate who was on
the right side of both
cleavages. He energized
voters who detested the
PT, and he energized
voters who detested
everyone.

81Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

atmosphere and Bolsonaro’s deeply illiberal inclinations, these opposi-
tion weaknesses have worrisome implications for Brazilian democracy.

Much like his populist predecessor Fernando Collor (president from
1990 until his impeachment and resignation in 1992), Bolsonaro lacks an
institutionalized party to catch his falls and see him through hard times.
As Collor’s short-lived presidency showed, early public support is no sub-
stitute for a strong and enduring party base. In dealing with the country’s
perennially fragmented legislature, Bolsonaro will be, mathematically
speaking, a minority Brazilian president like any other. His PSL, domi-
nated by inexperienced newcomers elected on his coattails, will make up
10 percent of the Chamber of Deputies and less than 5 percent of the Sen-
ate. Even anticipated support from the usual “parties for rent” may not
yield the coalition necessary to effectively confront the problems he has
pledged to solve. To make good on his bold promises and maintain his
“heroic” image, Bolsonaro is likely to resort to decree authority, and per-
haps to plebiscitary initiatives as well. As a former paratrooper who exalts
the military and is widely popular among police officers, Bolsonaro could
also pivot to the security sector. His choice of the blustery former general
Hamilton Mour~ao as his vice-presidential running mate suggests plans to
cultivate this power resource. As of this writing in December 2018, he has
already named seven current or former military officers to his cabinet,
one of whom will head the Ministry of Defense (created in 1999 with the
explicit intent of advancing civilian supremacy over the armed forces).
To put this in perspective, none of the five military presidents during the
dictatorship of 1964–85 included more than seven officers in their cabi-
nets. Drawing on the military for protection, if not actively deploying it to
shore up his power, would represent a significant break with the last five
Brazilian presidents, all civilians who had opposed the military regime.

Given the complex challenges Bolsonaro will encounter in trying to
reverse Brazil’s economic decline (an endeavor that will require him to
take up the difficult task of pension reform), he is likely to view anti-
crime and public-security projects as a more promising route to quick
and visible progress. Unleashing the police and even deploying the army
in urban areas, which Temer has already done in Rio de Janeiro since
February 2018, is a form of low-hanging fruit. By expanding these in-
terventions, Bolsonaro could boost his approval on a crucial issue that
matters to the public. Given the tremendous popularity that President
Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has managed to secure by playing
these cards, it would not be surprising if Bolsonaro followed suit, imper-
iling human rights and the rule of law in the process.

NOTES

1. See Wendy Hunter, The Transformation of the Workers’ Party in Brazil, 1989–2009
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

82 Journal of Democracy

2. Third-time presidential contender Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labor Party
(PDT), to whom some looked during the first round for a center-left option not weighed
down by the PT’s badly damaged reputation, also floundered: For some voters he was too
much of an establishment figure, and for others he was compromised by his loyal service
as a minister in Lula’s cabinet. He ended up with 12.47 percent of valid votes.

3. On the crisis period, see Peter R. Kingstone and Timothy J. Power, “A Fourth Decade
of Brazilian Democracy: Achievements, Challenges, and Polarization,” in Kingstone and
Power, eds., Democratic Brazil Divided (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).

4. “Entre 2014 e 2017, desemprego cresceu mais em Santa Catarina e no Rio,” Agên-
cia IBGE, 10 April 2018, https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-noticias/2012-
agencia-de-noticias/noticias/20118-entre-2014-e-2017-desemprego-cresceu-mais-
em-santa-catarina-e-no-rio-de-janeiro.

5. See David J. Samuels and Cesar Zucco, Partisans, Antipartisans, and Nonparti-
sans: Voting Behavior in Brazil (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

6. Angelo Young, “The Most Dangerous Cities in the World,” 24/7 Wall St., 11 July
2018, https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/07/11/the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-
world-2/2.

7. Anuário Brasileiro de Segurança Pública 2018, www.forumseguranca.org.br/publi-
cacoes/anuario-brasileiro-de-seguranca-publica-2018.

8. Figures in this paragraph are drawn from “Informe Latinobarómetro 2018,” 9 No-
vember 2018, www.latinobarometro.org.

9. For English translations of these remarks, see Sam Meredith, “Who Is the ‘Trump
of the Tropics’? Brazil’s Divisive New President, Jair Bolsonaro—In His Own Words,”
CNBC, 29 October 2018, www.cnbc.com/2018/10/29/brazil-election-jair-bolsonaros-
most-controversial-quotes.html; Mariana Sim~oes, “Brazil’s Polarizing New President, Jair
Bolsonaro, in His Own Words,” New York Times, 28 October 2018.

10. An April 2018 IPSOS poll of 1,200 Brazilians found that only 20 percent believed
that human rights benefited victims, while 66 percent believed that they benefited crimi-
nals. See André Shalders, “Dois em cada tr^es brasileiros acham que ‘direitos humanos de-
fendem mais os bandidos’, diz pesquisa,” BBC, 16 May 2018, www.bbc.com/portuguese/
brasil-44148576.

11. Preliminary investigations suggest that the attack was perpetrated by a mentally
unwell individual acting alone.

12. See Timothy J. Power, “The Reduction of Poverty and Inequality in Brazil: Politi-
cal Causes, Political Consequences,” in Ben Ross Schneider, ed., New Order and Prog-
ress: Development and Democracy in Brazil (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

13. See Chayenne Polimédio, “The Rise of the Brazilian Evangelicals,” Atlantic, 24
January 2018.

14. On regional trends, see Kiko Llaneras, “Bolsonaro divide o Brasil: arrasa nas ci-
dades mais brancas e mais ricas,” El País, 30 October 2018.

15. Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power, “Rewarding Lula: Executive Power, So-
cial Policy, and the Brazilian Elections of 2006,” Latin American Politics and Society 49
(Spring 2007): 1–30.

16. See map at www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46013408.