Democracy and Brazil

Collapse and Regression

Bernardo Bianchi, Jorge Chaloub, Patricia Rangel, Frieder Otto Wolf

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000168501
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Democracy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression discusses the de-democratization process underway in contemporary Brazil.

The relative political stability that characterized domestic politics in the 2000s ended with the sudden emergence of a series of massive protests in 2013, followed by the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. In this new, more conservative period in Brazilian politics, a series of institutional reforms deepened the distance between citizens and representatives. Brazil's current political crisis cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of right-wing and ultra-right discourse, on the one hand, and to the neoliberal ideology that pervades the minds of large parts of the Brazilian elite, on the other. Twenty experts on Brazil across different fields discuss the ongoing political turmoil in the light of distinct problems: geopolitics, gender, religion, media, indigenous populations, right-wing strategies, and new forms of coup, among others. Updated analyses enriched with historical perspective help to illuminate the intricate issues that will determine the country's fate in years to come.

Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression will interest students and scholars of Brazilian Politics and History, Latin America, and the broader field of democracy studies.

1De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil

From 2015 to 2020

Bernardo Bianchi, Patricia Rangel, and Jorge Chaloub

This book advances a discussion about the process of de-democratization, underway in Brazil since 2015. The first act of this process is represented by the questioning of the results of the 2014 presidential elections by the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party), won by Dilma Rousseff by 3.3% of the valid votes, i.e., 3.5 million votes, the thinnest proportional margin in Brazilian history. In this context, after a questionable parliamentary maneuver in 2016, Rousseff was impeached, unleashing a double process comprising the unsettlement of the political institutions and social unrest, which guides the division of this book into two main parts: Political Collapse and Social Regression. To these first acts, one must add the rise of Rousseff’s former Vice-President Michel Temer to the presidency, the murder of Marielle Franco, the Federal Military intervention in 2018, the imprisonment of Rousseff’s immediate predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the victory of a far-right politician in the 2018 presidential elections, and Bolsonaro’s frequent statements and acts against institutions, minorities, and political groups.

The conceptualization of de-democratization will shed new light on the interpretation of Brazilian politics by criticizing an understanding based simply on a formalist approach. In other words, by preferring the term de-democratization, we aim to critique those perspectives which tend to consider contemporary liberal democracies as something given or completed once and for all, as if the word “democracy” could magically eradicate the threats of authoritarianism that haunt every democratic experience. It is also a perspective that brings together processes of the expansion of democracy (democratization) as well as its downfall (de-democratization).¹

De-democratization addresses a different account of the Brazilian political debate. On the one hand, it can be related to analyses around the idea of an instrumentalization of the institute of impeachment, that is, the idea that instead of cancelling elections or electoral results, the ruler can be neutralized by means of the judiciary system as well as parliamentary maneuvers that materially subvert the existing political regime, even though they can hardly be regarded as a formal institutional break. On the other hand, de-democratization highlights the processual dimension of the transformations analyzed, considering them as a meeting of different times, which often cannot be connected to one specific episode, such as the impeachment of Rousseff in 2016, the legal impediment of Lula da Silva’s candidacy in 2018, and the subsequent election of Jair Bolsonaro in the same presidential campaign. The concept does not deny the existence of different weights for certain events, but aims to analyze them from a longer perspective.

One of the main risks of a reading in terms of processual dimension is its tautologic historicization.² This can be seen very clearly in the way some analysts read the Brazilian crisis, neglecting the particularities of the present state of affairs both in Latin America and on a global scale, refraining from elaborating a clear understanding of the present. Accordingly, analysts such as Vladmir Safatle (2017) and Paulo Arantes (2014) argue that the Brazilian crisis can be attributed to fundamental vices connected to the end of the military regime (1964–1985) and to the implementation of the so-called New Republic, which took shape under the 1988 Federal Constitution. This perspective is characterized by the idea of a depletion (esgotamento) of the New Republic, which amounts to the fundamental fragility of the agreement between conservative and progressive sectors of Brazilian society in the mid-’80s. According to Safatle, the current downturn in Brazilian political life should be understood as a consequence of this “original sin.” This perspective – which we call the inherent vices thesis³ – does not do justice to the long and painful democratization process of the late 1970s and 1980s. The emphasis on the fragility of the reconciliatory nature of the 1988 political regime leads such a perspective to a teleological analysis, a tautologic historicization, which depoliticizes the social processes concerned, postulating the current situation of the Brazilian politics as an unavoidable effect of foundational mistakes of the center-left and the Left, which were neither resolute nor conscious enough in their view to bring about the rupture needed by the political context.⁴

The 1988 pact was a major democratic accomplishment, marking a fundamental turn not only in terms of the transformation of national political institutions, but also on the level of social movement participation. In the tradition of Brazilian democratic constitutions (1934 and 1946), the 1988 Constitution deserved the appellation it received from Ulysses Guimarães, former President of the Constituent Assembly, as a Citizen’s Constitution, due to the rights it enshrined, and additionally for being the product of public participation. The Constitution, “like the sea snail, will conserve forever the roar of the waves of suffering, hope, and claims from whence it came”⁵ (Guimarães 2016). Historically neglected social movements were included in the debates of the 1988 Constituent Assembly – Indigenous, African Brazilians, quilombolas,⁶ Landless Workers Movement (MST), LGBTQI movement, favelados (slum inhabitants), etc. Even if it is true that the transition from the military regime to the New Republic was not made through a radical break with the past (in the form of a revolution, for example), analysts must admit that it marked a powerful transformation in the way politics was done in Brazil. Therefore, 1988 was not a compromise, but a true defeat of the reactionary sectors of Brazilian society.

After 1988, Brazil achieved an important consensus over basic human rights and values, which were not directly attacked by any relevant political group. This was a major accomplishment of the adversaries of the dictatorship, who were able to build a solid resistance against previous authoritarian practices. The 1988 Federal Constitution is a milestone of this political victory. Neither authoritarian ideas nor reactionary actors were publicly supported. Many current debates in Brazilian politics would seem absurd through the lenses of this recent past. The right-wing agenda was limited to economic policies, and their victories were far less relevant than the ones accomplished by progressive groups in cultural, social, and political realms.

Although a few conservative groups (both religious and secular) had succeeded in influencing and preventing advances in polemical issues such as abortion, the country experienced an era of progressive neoliberalism (Fraser 2016). In the decades following the establishment of the New Republic, Brazil witnessed important transformations, even though it continued to experience effects of the authoritarian organization of society and the state, entangled with the democratic features of the new regime. The Brazilian Police Apparatus has never been reformed and has continued to act under the protection of Military Justice like an imperium in imperio. In addition, the political training of public security officers remains untouched. In their headquarters, military and police agents continue to be educated along the same lines as employed during authoritarian times prior to 1985. Systematic massacres undertaken by police agents are regarded as ordinary mishaps, although they target African Brazilians, the poor, and other marginalized segments of the population, in both rural and urban contexts: Carandiru (1992), Candelária (1993), Vigário Geral (1993), Corumbiara (1995), Eldorado do Carajás (1996), Baixada (2005). The first Brazilian president to directly approach this issue was Rousseff (2011–14, 2015–16), who, among other measures, created the Truth Commission (Comissão da Verdade) – responsible for addressing not only the political assassinations by military agents during the dictatorship but also police violence in contemporary times.⁷

Nevertheless, Brazil experienced a period of stability after the introduction of the 1988 Federal Constitution, notwithstanding the impeachment of Fernando Collor in 1992, and the large popular demonstrations in 2013. The dramatic shift took place in 2016, when Rousseff was impeached by an illegal parliamentary maneuver. The episode represented a clear break from the political nature of the regime as it denatured the Brazilian presidential system into a de facto parliamentarism. This marked the difference between Rousseff’s impeachment process and Fernando Collor’s in 1992.⁸ The lack of legal elements demanded by law, together with clear purposes of undermining popular participation in major political decisions, produced a rupture in Brazil’s democratic trajectory.

The impeachment opened the door to a series of institutional reforms, first carried out by the newly sworn-in Temer, Rousseff’s vice-president, who replaced her in office, and then radically intensified by Bolsonaro. The main achievements of this process came through in the form of an amendment to the Constitution, which precluded any real increase in public expenses for the following 20 years (Constitutional Amendment No. 95/2016), and by means of a deep reform in social security, which preserved well-paid groups that support Bolsonaro, such as military forces and the judiciary. Other constitutional reforms are already underway, involving the tributary system and public service reform.

The Brazilian context cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of the right-wing and ultra-right discourse amid the political turmoil. Since the massive rallies in 1984, which culminated in the restoration of democratic institutions, the depth of Brazilian social problems has undermined the power of right-wing rhetoric in both liberal and conservative sectors. The very label “right-wing” has been regarded as an efficient disqualification method in the political arena. For this reason, right-wing intellectuals have repeatedly insisted on the need to overcome the Left-Right dichotomy in Brazil – when they do not simply reject any affiliation to right-wing ideas. The last few years have changed this situation. The right-wing camp is no longer ashamed to state their preferences. Organized through think tanks, as well as by ideologues, and with the support of the media, they have developed a sophisticated ideological front, which spreads hate speech against minorities and what they label “cultural modernity.” There is a clear effort to eliminate every idea that could be regarded as leftist, ideas which are then characterized as cognitive pathologies and moral deviations. Just like before 1964, moralism has become a central feature of the new Brazilian conservatism, which, notwithstanding its intrinsic heterogeneity, reveals important general characteristics.

With the election of the ultra-right candidate Bolsonaro in October 2018, the Brazilian government seems to adhere to a radical combination of economic neoliberalism and neoconservatism.⁹ Although this arrangement was already present under Temer’s administration, it has taken a radical expression in more recent developments. In Brazil, criticism against “cultural modernity” comes alongside the praise of capitalism and market-driven distribution of wealth, as can be seen in the discourses of Olavo de Carvalho (2013). Analyses such as those from Jürgen Habermas on the “new conservatism” (Habermas 1991), Brown (2006) on the relationship between “neoliberalism” and “American neoconservatism” in the United States, or Jacques Rancière’s (Ranciere 2014) on “hatred of democracy” express the global inscription of the right-wing tide and prevent any isolated interpretation of the Brazilian context, which also hinders any insistence on the inherent vice thesis presented in the beginning of this text. Nevertheless, Bolsonaro is one of the most radical expressions of contemporary right-wing forces. Even though Brazil is not a fascist political regime, there is a clear expansion of fascist politics (Stanley 2018), like the open defense of violence, a strong sense of natural hierarchies and the pick of minorities as public enemies. We call ultra-right the political movements that combine a fascist political language and an electoral strategy for power. The conjunction between regular institutional means, present in neoliberal and neoconservative political languages, with frequent symbolic and physical violence demands a different concept, distinct from the regular uses of terms like extreme-right, that usually concern groups that do not act in those different political scenarios. Moreover, unlike the populist radical right, as defined by Cas Mudde (2017, 5), economics is a central issue for the Brazilian ultra-right, which incorporates elements from neoliberal and ultraliberal discourses.

Additional approaches can be found throughout the work of other authors. On the one hand, David Runciman (2018) and Steven Levitsky, together with Daniel Ziblatt (2018), point at conjunctural troubles concerning the relationship between capitalism and democracy. On the other hand, Wolfgang St...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• 1 De-democratization in Contemporary Brazil: From 2015 to 2020
• Part I Political Collapse
• Part II Social Regression
• Notes on Contributors
• Index