Brazil: Is democracy hanging by a thread?

Marie Kolling, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).

The image of Brazil as a stable democracy was strengthened throughout the beginning of the 2000s, when the country went through a huge economic recovery, enormous social progress, and political stability. This continued at the beginning of the 2010s with reforms that made the legal system more independent and efficient.

But today, democracy is under pressure and can no longer be taken for granted. Especially after four years with Jair Bolsonaro as president. There was a lot at stake, especially the future of democracy, at the presidential election in October 2022.

Settle old scores

Brazilian democracy is relatively new. It first became a reality in 1985, after 21 years of a military regime. The dismantling of the military rule was peaceful; however, the military regime had passed an amnesty law so that no one could be prosecuted for crimes and murders committed during the dictatorship.

The law is still enforced today and has had a huge impact on the country’s (lacking) settlement with the past. The regime got replaced by a civil transitional government with a president who supported the regime. In 1989, elections were finally held where all citizens over the age of 18 had the right to vote for the first time according to a new and partly progressive constitution adopted a year earlier.

However, the first elected president, Fernando Collor de Mello, quickly got into trouble and was removed in the middle of his term. Brazil’s young democratic history has had its ups and downs. Still, many Brazilians had until quite recently the experience that coup d’état and dictatorship were a thing of the past.

But under Bolsonaro's term, it again became legitimate to advocate for autocracy, and like Bolsonaro, consider the years of military dictatorship a golden age in the country’s history.

A president against democracy

Bolsonaro’s populist project was a mix of national conservatism, ultraliberalism, and militarism. "The struggle against corruption and communism" is central to his policy, as it was for the military prior to the coup in 1964.

Bolsonaro also fought against mainstream media, science, feminism, and minority rights. During his presidency, he threatened to dismantle democracy. He reminded the public how "easy it is to introduce a dictatorship in Brazil if that’s what the people want," as he said in March 2020 in one of his weekly live sessions on YouTube.

For almost a year and a half before the presidential campaign, he repeatedly stated that only God could remove him from the presidency, and he also claimed that the military was ready to help ensure this, which the military, sometimes a bit ambiguous, did not confirm. He also participated in anti-democracy demonstrations and promoted them on social media, where people of the far right went to the streets to demand the shutdown of Congress, the Supreme Court, and a military takeover of power.

No evidence for electoral fraud

As polls showed great uncertainty about Bolsonaro’s re-election in 2022, he intensified the narrative that people could not trust the election, especially in the event he lost. This is even though Brazil's electronic voting system, which, since the 1990s, has ensured that fraud of votes is very unlikely.

Bolsonaro has publicly acknowledged both before and after the election that he has no evidence to support his claims against fraud. Nevertheless, he managed to create great distrust in the electoral system and the legal bodies that monitor the election and approve the results.

His narrative also mobilised far-right voters, who wanted the military to step in and help Bolsonaro retain power by staging a coup. After the elections, they demonstrated in front of military barracks every Sunday, and in the capital, Brasília, the military tolerated a large encampment in front of the headquarters, despite its illegality.

On January 8, 2023, hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters gathered at the "Place of the Three Powers," where the parliament, the presidential building, and the Supreme Court are located. Here, they breached the buildings and destroyed them to express their contempt for the newly elected President Luiz Inácio da Silva, known as Lula, and for the institutions that affirmed the "lie" of Bolsonaro’s election defeat. At the same time, they called on the military to intervene and "restore law and order."

Democracy on thin ice

Luckily, the military chose to be loyal to the constitution and democracy that day, but the tension was great because, during his four years in power, Bolsonaro did a lot to create a close alliance with the military leadership. He gave the military great influence in his administration, more beneficial terms of employment, and thereby gained increased support among the military.

It has since emerged that democracy is on thinner ice than first assumed after Bolsonaro’s election defeat, since real coup plans were planned but not carried out.

A huge clean-up job

The current government is undertaking a massive clean-up job. This involves a literal cleanup after the January 8 riots but mostly efforts to debunk the narrative of Brazil’s unreliable electoral system and get the right-wing supporters to accept the current government as democratically elected. This struggle takes place largely on social media, which is why the government, among other things, tries to get tech giants to take more responsibility.

In addition, there is an enormous effort to sort out anti-democratic forces within the public offices and the defence forces. One of the ways Bolsonaro challenged the democratic institutions was by replacing employees in important positions and appointing people who were loyal to him and who, in many cases, helped to counter the system from the inside.

An example of this was during the presidential election, when the traffic police suddenly began to set up roadblocks on election day, October 30, 2022, and hold voters back on their way to the polling stations. This was especially seen in the states where Lula was estimated to win. The head of the traffic police was a close ally of Bolsonaro.

The operation was illegal and clearly a political weapon in the struggle against Lula, which in some ways worked. In some states, voter participation was lower than expected, but without a decisive influence on the final election outcome.

Decreasing support for democratic governance

Outside Brazil, there is great wonder about how Bolsonaro was elected president in 2018 and came so close to being re-elected in 2022, given his obvious preference for autocracy over democracy, among his many other controversial positions and actions.

This should, among other explanations, be seen in the light of the fact that support for democracy has been declining over the past 10 years, according to several polls, for example, the Latin Barometer. In the latest survey from 2020, 52.5% agreed or very much agreed with the statement that they "would not mind if an undemocratic government came to power if it can solve the problems."

This trend exists not only in Brazil but in large parts of Latin America, where it is not only the disappointment with democracy that has increased but where there has also been greater indifference about whether the form of government is authoritarian or democratic. Therefore, It Is obvious that democracy cannot be taken for granted in Brazil.