Fluent Essays

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 https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/after-the-default-argentinas-unsustainable-20-80-economy/ https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/the-politics-of-chiles-new-constitution/ https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16650 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/16650 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 100.00 100.00 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. sUr. 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. 1.14 5.76 3.20 3.96 6.06 5.09 -0.13 7.54 3.99 1.93 3.01 0.51 -3.55 -3.47 0.98 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 …