Source: Journal of Politics in Latin America | Published: 2026-08-19
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: bolsonaro, brazil, electoral, far-right, politics
The resilience of populist far-right movements in the aftermath of electoral defeat has emerged as one of the defining political phenomena of the current era. Across established and emerging democracies alike, the conventional assumption that losing an election signifies the decline of a political project has been repeatedly challenged. Brazil offers perhaps the most instructive case study of this dynamic in Latin America. The rise and institutionalization of Bolsonarismo — the ideological and organizational coalition that crystallized around Jair Bolsonaro during his presidency from 2019 to 2022 — did not dissolve with his narrow defeat at the hands of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in October 2022. Instead, the movement demonstrated a capacity for entrenchment that demands serious scholarly and policy attention, particularly from those working on democratic governance, civil society, and international development cooperation in the Global South.
The article published in the Journal of Politics in Latin America (Volume 18, Issue 2, August 2026) addresses precisely this question of endurance. Its central argument, as conveyed in its title and framing, is that the far-right realignment in Brazil should be understood not as a temporary electoral phenomenon contingent on the fortunes of a single charismatic leader, but as the consolidation of a durable political bloc with organizational depth, ideological coherence, and social embeddedness. This distinction matters enormously. Electoral analyses that treat Bolsonarismo as a personalist movement tend to predict its gradual demise in the absence of its figurehead occupying executive power. The contribution of this scholarship is to complicate that reading by demonstrating how a far-right alignment can outlast its principal electoral vehicle, maintaining influence through legislative presence, subnational governance, media ecosystems, evangelical networks, and civil society mobilization that was itself reorganized in anti-democratic directions during the Bolsonaro years.
The consolidation of a far-right political identity in Brazil did not occur in isolation. It reflects broader structural conditions that have made Latin America fertile ground for illiberal politics in the twenty-first century. Decades of fragile democratic institutions, persistent socioeconomic inequality, and the perceived failures of center-left redistributive governments — most notably the PT administrations and the corruption scandals associated with Operation Lava Jato — created a crisis of legitimacy that Bolsonaro's movement was adept at exploiting. The fusion of military nostalgia, evangelical Christian nationalism, anti-feminist backlash, and market libertarianism into a coherent populist package had regional antecedents in Bukele's El Salvador, Milei's Argentina, and the broader reconfiguration of the right in Colombia and Peru. What the Brazilian case adds to this regional picture is scale: Brazil's population, economic weight, and geopolitical significance mean that the consolidation of a far-right alignment there carries implications not merely for Brazilian democracy but for the entire regional political order and for the global governance frameworks — on climate, multilateralism, and human rights — within which international development institutions operate.
For practitioners working in the domain of official development assistance and civil society strengthening, the findings suggested by this article carry direct operational relevance. The Bolsonaro years were characterized by systematic pressure on NGOs, indigenous rights organizations, environmental monitoring bodies, and feminist collectives — precisely the constituency that bilateral and multilateral donors have traditionally supported as agents of democratic accountability and inclusive development. If the far-right alignment has consolidated beyond the electoral cycle, then the civil society organizations that survived the Bolsonaro presidency cannot assume that the return of a center-left government to the Palácio do Planalto is sufficient to normalize their operating environment. Residual legislative and subnational power, combined with the radicalization of a significant segment of the electorate, means that ODA frameworks designed to strengthen civil society in Brazil must now grapple with a context in which political polarization itself constitutes a structural risk. Donors and research institutions working in this space need analytical tools that assess not just formal legal environments but the social and political dynamics within which civil society actors are embedded.
Looking forward, the Brazilian far-right alignment raises questions that extend well beyond the next electoral cycle. One of the most consequential is whether the organizational and ideological infrastructure built during the Bolsonaro years will remain available to a successor figure or whether it will fragment without Bolsonaro's personal charisma and media presence. Comparative cases — from Trumpism in the United States to the post-Berlusconi Italian right — suggest that movement-based far-right politics can prove surprisingly adaptive, reconstituting around new leadership while retaining the ideological core and social coalition that gave it form. Researchers should be attentive to the ways in which Bolsonarismo is evolving its relationship with institutional politics, particularly through the Partido Liberal and its congressional allies, as well as through the evangelical bloc that has become an increasingly autonomous political force. For scholars of civil society and political economy at institutions like IOCSS, the Brazilian case underscores a broader research agenda: understanding when and how illiberal political alignments become self-reproducing, what conditions enable or impede their reversal, and what role international actors — whether donors, multilateral institutions, or transnational civil society networks — can realistically play in supporting democratic resilience in societies where the far-right has achieved genuine popular roots. These are not academic questions alone; they are the practical challenges confronting anyone committed to democratic development in an era when authoritarian politics has learned to win elections and, when it loses them, to survive anyway.