Abstract
This chapter analyzes the Bolsonaro government as it unfolded from 2019 to mid-2022. It seeks to answer a central question about the relative stability of Bolsonaro’s social and electoral support base over time. It also addresses the question of the relationship between Bolsonaro’s specific style of governing and process of coadapting his authoritarian project to destroy democratic institutions, with the political system’s self-protection interests in relation to the law and to access of public funds. That amalgam is qualified as the limit form of pemedebismo, as the combination between Bolsonarismo’s digital party, which uses democratic institutions to destroy democracy, and Brazilian democracy’s traditional way of functioning since re-democratization.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For an overview of Bolsonaro’s election in 2018 and of his government from January 2019 until the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil in March 2020, see my “The Global Uprising of Populist Conservatism and the Case of Brazil.” In: Klaus-Gerd Giesen (Ed.). Ideologies in World Politics. Berlin: Springer, 2020. Also the conversation I had with Isabelle Aubert tries to understand Bolsonaro’s rise in global perspective, in view of the “crisis of democracy” framework. Isabelle Aubert. “Entretien avec Marcos Nobre.” Le Philosophoire, Paris, n. 53, pp. 35–50, 2020.
- 2.
On this and many other related points, see Tatiana Roque, O dia em que voltamos de Marte: Uma história da ciência e do poder com pistas para um novo presente (São Paulo: Planeta, 2021).
- 3.
This is how I understand the general meaning of the argument in André de Macedo Duarte and Maria Rita de Assis César, “Negação da política e negacionismo como política: Pandemia e democracia,” Educação & Realidade, Porto Alegre, v. 45, n. 4, e109146, 2020.
- 4.
If I understand the argument correctly, pointing to this type of strategy was the aim of José Rodrigo Rodriguez in “‘Perversões’: Estratégias de dominação do novo ciclo autoritário,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, v. 39, n. 2, pp. 371–93, May–August 2020.
- 5.
The end of March 2021 was also the moment chosen by Bolsonaro to replace all military commands within the Ministry of Defense. The Armed Forces not only bowed to the command changes imposed by Bolsonaro, but also decided not to punish General Eduardo Pazuello, who participated in a political act together with the president at the end of May 2021. Moreover, the CPI was attacked not only by Bolsonaro and Bolsonarismo, but directly by the Armed Forces, which had entered into an open confrontation with Congress ever since the moment that an active-duty general was under investigation. In early July 2021, the Armed Forces, through its three commanders and the Minister of Defense, issued a note attacking Congress head-on, in the person of the president of the CPI, Senator Omar Aziz. The official statement ends with a threat: “The Armed Forces will not accept any frivolous attack on the institutions that defend democracy and the freedom of the Brazilian people.” That note was resumed by the commander of the Air Force in even harsher terms, and the harsher version was later supported by the Navy commander.
- 6.
A history of these processes up to 2013 can be found in Imobilismo em movimento, op. cit. On the difficulties and obstacles of this relationship between PT and the pemedebismo of the political system, see once again Leonardo Martins Barbosa, Conflito partidário e ordem política, op. cit.
- 7.
For the full parliamentary functioning of a party, the barrier clause established for the 2018 election required a minimum threshold of 1.5% of the votes for the House of Representatives distributed among at least nine federal entities (out of a total of 27, that is to say, 26 states and the Federal District of Brasília), with a minimum of 1% in each of them, or, alternatively, nine deputies elected by nine different federal entities. The minimum threshold rises progressively to reach a total of 3% of the votes in the 2030 elections, with a minimum of 2% in each federate entity, or alternatively, with the election of 15 deputies scattered through a minimum of 9 different federate entities.
- 8.
Regulated by the TSE in February 2022, “the party federation is formed by two or more political parties with programmatic affinity that unite to act as a single legend for, at least, four years. The union between the associations has national coverage and works as a test for a possible merger or incorporation involving the parties that are part of the federation […]. In practice, the federation operates as a single party and, for this reason, is subject to the same rules applied to political parties. A federation may, for example, form coalitions to run for major electoral posts (president, senator, governor and mayor), but is prohibited from forming coalitions with other parties in proportional elections (federal, state or district deputies and councilors). In proportional elections, both the party and the federation must observe the legal minimum percentage of 30% of candidates of the same sex.” Available at www.tse.jus.br/imprensa/noticias-tse/2022/Fevereiro/eleicoes-2022-resolucao-do-tse-regulamenta-federacoes-partidarias. Accessed March 30, 2022.
- 9.
The exemplary case here is the defeat of the so-called “printed vote” in a vote in the House of Representatives in August 2021, part of Bolsonaro’s campaign to discredit the electronic ballot box and the elections more broadly. A precious monitoring of social media by NetLab/UFRJ on the theme reached the following conclusions: “The ‘auditableʼ printed ballot campaign inflamed Brazil with a complex web of disinformation about the security and legitimacy of democratic institutions. The agenda has long occupied a place in conspiratorial discourse but, even with the defeat of the Constitutional Amendment Proposal, the Bolsonaro attack on this issue was seen by many as a dangerous rehearsal for reactions to a possible defeat of the president in the polls in 2022″ (Relatório Técnico NetLab/UFRJ – Casos do Voto Impresso e 07 de Setembro 2021, p. 2).
- 10.
For these reasons, I prefer to speak of “coadaptation.” This is a nomenclature that I understand does not necessarily conflict with the notions of “autonomization” of the Legislative or even in a “conditioned presidential government,” as does Acir Almeida, Governo presidencial condicionado: Delegação e participação legislativa na Câmara dos Deputados. Rio de Janeiro: IESP-UERJ, 2018. Diss. (PhD in Political Science), but it certainly gives these phenomena a different meaning. I understand it to be the author’s premise, confirmed by the data he produced, that the political interests of representatives determine the degree of presidential control over the agenda. This is an interesting result and also symptomatic because it makes explicit what I see as the deepening of one of the trends present in the paradigm of coalition presidentialism since its birth, which is to bring the model closer and closer to an interpretation of the functioning of the political system in terms of the parliamentary system. At the same time, the deepening of this birthmark is linked to explanatory difficulties faced by the model. In any case, as I seek to show here, coadaptation is not exactly confused with any of the explanatory alternatives in dispute, namely, usurpation, abdication, or delegation of final decisions by the presidency, although it can be said to contain, to some extent, elements of the types in question.
- 11.
Available at www.olb.br. Accessed March 31, 2022. The operational premises of the Observatório continue to be those of the paradigm of coalition presidentialism as established in the country since the 1990s and, for that reason, the interpretation it proposes of the data it produces and analyses are not entirely coincident with those I present here. The most important thing that remains though, as in the case of any research oriented by the paradigm of coalition presidentialism, is the quality of the data produced and the analyses carried out. In terms of repositories of electoral data, the TSE is, of course, the first reference. Among the research groups of excellence that also maintain websites open for consultation, we should mention the Banco de Dados Legislativos do NIPE/Cebrap (bancodedadoslegislativos.com.br), doxa/IESP-UERJ (doxa.iesp.uerj.br), Cesop/Unicamp (www.cesop.unicamp.br/por/banco_de_dados), and Cepesp Data, of Cepesp/fgv (cepespdata.io).
- 12.
Fabiano Santos, Júlio Canello and Leonardo Martins Barbosa, “Conflito partidário na Câmara dos Deputados.” In: Fabiano Santos (Ed.), Congresso remoto: A experiência legislativa brasileira em tempos de pandemia. Rio de Janeiro: EdUerj, 2021, pp. 55 ff. The data gathered here refer only to the case of the House. For the case of the Federal Senate, see Chap. 4 of the same book.
- 13.
Debora Gershon and Júlio Canello, “The Centrão in the Chamber and the Bolsonaro government,” Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil, n. 176, pp. 5–7, Mar. 2022.
- 14.
Revealed by Breno Pires – “Orçamento secreto bilionário de Bolsonaro banca trator superfaturado em troca de apoio no Congresso.” O Estado de S. Paulo, 8 May 2021 – the “secret budget” continued to be implemented despite interventions against such practices from the Supreme Court and other control agencies of public spending.
- 15.
Available at olb.Ed.br/ciencias-sociais-articuladas-balanco-de-2021-na-camara dos-deputados-a-gestao-de-arthur-lira-pp/. Accessed March 31, 2022.
- 16.
Piercamillo Davigo, “Itália: Um país resignado?” In: Maria Cristina Pinotti (Ed.), Corrupção: Lava Jato e Mãos Limpas, op. cit., p. 119.
- 17.
Id., L’occasione mancata: Mani Pulite trent’anni dopo. Bari; Rome: Laterza, 2021, p. 148. “Tangentopoli” (“Bribe City”) is an alternative name for “Mani Pulite.”
- 18.
Gherardo Colombo, “Corrupção e responsabilidade.” In: Maria Cristina Pinotti (Ed.), Corrupção: Lava Jato e Mãos Limpas, op. cit., p. 89.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 87.
- 20.
As far as I know, the whole story of the nascent Bolsonarismo connections with far-right movements around the world has yet to be told concretely. Benjamin Teitelbaum’s research and accounts in The War for Eternity: Inside Bannon’s Far-Right Circle of Global Power Brokers (New York: Dey Street Books, 2020) show Bolsonaro’s connection to Traditionalism through Olavo de Carvalho, as well as his relationship with Steve Bannon after Bolsonaro’s rise to the presidency in 2018. However, I am not aware of a thorough reconstruction of the past history of Bolsonarismo in these terms, especially since 2014, especially in relation to its funding sources, digital technology learning, and ideological networks.
- 21.
Having functioned from September 2019 to March 2020, the congressional investigatory committee had its term extended, but was then suspended indefinitely due to the pandemic. The work of the committee was not resumed afterward, being ended without a proper and final report.
- 22.
Arlie R. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, op. cit., p. 19.
- 23.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, I base myself here on investigations such as those by Camila Rocha, Menos Marx, mais Mises, op. cit.; Camila Rocha, Esther Solano and Jonas Medeiros, The Bolsonaro Paradox, op. cit.; Camila Rocha and Jonas Medeiros, “Jair Bolsonaro and the Dominant Counterpublicity,” op. cit., as well as on works by Isabela Kalil, Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, Leticia Cesarino and João Cezar de Castro Rocha.
- 24.
Arlie R. Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land, op. cit., p. 144.
- 25.
Ibid., p. 10.
- 26.
Ibid., p. 79.
- 27.
As proposed in Chap. 4, I understand that the explanatory thesis of the “squeezed middle class” (or the “squeezed middle”) has not yet found reasonable elements of proof. Even if she does not dwell mainly on economic elements of the paradoxes proper to the extreme right, Hochschild brings a reformulation of the question that may prove very useful for future investigations: “On the one hand, the national ideal and promise at the brow of the hill was the American Dream – which say progress. On the other hand, it had become hard to progress” (ibid., p. 140).
- 28.
The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- 29.
Already in 2012 Skocpol and Williamson considered it very symptomatic that Gingrich, as early as that moment, felt that the Republicans were going too far toward the ideological right (p. 175), in a move very reminiscent of the fate of the “new rights” in Brazil. On many interesting and provocative thoughts about bipartisanship and the actual functioning of the party system in the United States, see Lee Drutman. Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2020.
- 30.
“From our perspective as political scientists, local Tea Party takeovers of GOP committees are likely to matter – along with local Tea Party efforts to exert watchdog pressures on elected representatives. GOPers who want to run for election or reelection to state legislatures and Congress will think twice – or three times – before ignoring the stated policy preferences of even relatively small Tea Party minorities in their districts, if they think those folks are closely following what they do and will turn out in primary contests or weigh in on crucial procedural or endorsement decisions taken by GOP committees” (ibid., p. 182).
- 31.
Ibid., p. 27.
- 32.
See in this regard once again the text by Allan de Abreu, “A polícia toma o poder,” op. cit. In particular, in conjunction with what was argued in the previous chapter, the following passage of the text should be highlighted, referring to the “police family”: “This base tends to be unconditional allies of the police, even in the face of illegal actions, such as the mutiny of troops. Not by chance, in recent years, it has become common for police officers’ wives to occupy the barracks to protest for better salaries in place of their husbands, who are prevented from carrying out acts of this type.”
- 33.
“Nas ruas, Sete de Setembro encheu; nas redes, #flopou: Com piadas e pedidos de impeachment, oposição a Bolsonaro dominou o debate no Twitter, produzindo o dobro de menções que os apoiadores do presidente.” piauí, 7 Sep. 2021. Available piaui.folha.uol.com.br/nas-ruas-sete-de-setembro-encheu-nas-redes-flopou/. Accessed April 1, 2022.
- 34.
According to a survey conducted by Novelo Data in the 30 days prior to the events, the number of posts and interactions remained stable over time, at a high level. More than that, the “numbers point not only to the thermometer of these calls on the networks, but also to a script that coincides, millimetrically, with the other two pro-Bolsonaro demonstrations held this year” (Marina Rossi, “Convocatória para o 7 de setembro toma fôlega nas redes e repro reproduz roteiro de outros atos pró-Bolsonaro,” El País Brasil, 29 Aug. 2021. Available brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2021-08-29/convocatoria-para-7-de-setembro-toma-folego-nas-redes-e-reproduz-roteiro-de-outros-atos-pro-bolsonaro.html. Accessed April 1, 2022.
- 35.
Patrícia Campos Mello, “Base fiel bolsonarista passa por uma hiper-radicalização, aponta estudo,” Folha de S.Paulo, 21 Sep. 2021, p. A8.
- 36.
Just as an illustration of the size of the Bolsonarismo’s digital party, the study showed that in the first 2 months of 2022, 30.65% of profiles and 53.82% of interactions were from Bolsonarists. As a standard of comparison, Lula, who comes second, is linked to 30.28% of profiles, which, however, account for only 24.4% of interactions. The other candidates are at much lower levels than these two.
- 37.
Relatório Técnico NetLab/UFRJ – Casos do Voto Impresso e 07 de Setembro 2021, op. cit., p. 38.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nobre, M. (2022). The Bolsonaro Government as the Limit Form of Pemedebismo. In: Limits of Democracy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16392-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16392-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-16391-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-16392-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)