Lula and the Brazilian Regime

In the short term, President Lula needs to deal with the threat of political violence. Long term, Brazilian democracy depends on growth and development.

Jan 17, 2023

There were major nerves among observers of Brazil when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won his third term as president of Brazil on October 30. On the one hand, the right wing authoritarian populist Jair Bolsonaro had been rejected by the Brazilian electorate, but on the other, Lula won with just 50.9% of the two-candidate vote, and Bolsonaro warned throughout the claim that he would consider any loss fraudulent. Yet the transition seemed as smooth as one could expect. Bolsonaro never conceded defeat or congratulated Lula, and no one was surprised that he did not personally place the presidential sash on Lula at the January 1 inauguration. However, Bolsonaro implicitly recognized his loss by authorizing his staff to begin the transition between administrations after the election, and he dutifully vacated the presidential offices before his term ended.

More importantly, Bolsonaro’s network of supporters seemed to dissolve quickly after the election result became clear. A Brazilian president depends heavily on a coalition of supporters in Congress. The Brazilian party system is highly fractured, with more than twenty parties holding seats in the legislature. Proportional representation guarantees that even the strongest parties will struggle to control ten percent of seats. Pro-administration coalitions are not held together by ideology. Rather, they are transactional and based on patronage. Bolsonaro’s Congressional base, rooted in a group of center-right legislators called the Centrão, had little interest in denying the result of the election. These legislators immediately started negotiating terms of support for the Lula administration. There was nothing in Brasília analogous to the election deniers in the U.S. Republican Party after Donald Trump’s defeat in 2020.

The January 8 violence encompassing the Palácio do Planalto, the National Congress, and the Supremo Tribunal Federal in the heart of Brasilia are a stark reminder many of the 49% of Brazilians who voted for Bolsonaro reject the new administration thoroughly, to the point of supporting its forcible overthrow. Until Bolsonaro’s emergence as a national political force in the 2018 election, the major criticism of the Brazilian political system was that the 1988 post-dictatorship constitution created weak state capacity, with the military shielded from accountability, an overly-powerful president, and a weak legislature prone to corruption and domination by regional power brokers (like the Magalhães family in Bahia). State performance improved after 1994, when the Plano Real stabilized the Brazilian currency and stopped hyperinflation, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso became president for two terms. Lula succeeded him after the 2002 election, serving two terms of his own, during which the living standards of the Brazilian middle class rose on the strength of a commodity boom focused on exports to China. The boom did not lead to internal political reform or the opening of an economy still largely constructed on import substitution, and once the boom ended around 2015, living standards fell, as did the Brazilian real. Politics became destabilized, with President Dilma Rousseff impeached and removed in 2016 as her coalition came apart, and right-wing populists around backbench congressman Jair Bolsonaro rose to claim the 2018 election.

Frustration with the weak and inefficient Brazilian state generally leads to calls to abandon the 1988 constitution, and with it a failing democratic political system. The default alternative to the democratic system is military rule, as has been the historical norm in Latin America. Article 142 of the 1988 constitution calls the military a “moderating power,” and charges it with “the guarantee of law and order.” Various polls over the last decade have suggested that around half of Brazilians are open to another period of military rule, and Bolsonaro’s electoral rhetoric regularly espoused nostalgia for the 1964-85 military dictatorship. He appointed thousands of military members, both retired and active duty, to government positions during his presidential term. The military joined Bolsonaro in questioning the soundness of the Brazilian electoral system, especially its use of electronic voting machines, as the 2022 election approached. Many Brazilians feared that if Bolsonaro attempted a self-coup after an election loss, the military would support him, which did not happen, at least on January 8.

It is not altogether clear what happened on January 8. Protestors had gathered to demonstrate at the Praça dos Três Poderes in Brasília, and charged into the headquarters of each of the three branches of government. The attack took place on a Sunday, when the buildings were empty save for security guards. There were no official proceedings to interrupt akin to the certification of the electoral vote in Washington two years previously (the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral certified the election result in December, and Lula had already been president for a week). The rioters likely hoped invading government buildings would encourage the military to launch a coup, but this did not happen. As such, the rioters only succeeded in inflicting property damage before security forces took the buildings back and arrested thousands of the occupiers.

The question of whether this was just a demonstration that got out of hand, or whether someone else was involved, remains. Bolsonaro left Brazil before his term ended, and has been in Orlando, Florida since Lula assumed office. His role on January 8 was unclear, though the Supremo Tribunal Federal authorized an investigation. The governor of the Federal District, Ibaneis Rocha, has been suspended from office just days into his new term, and Anderson Torres, former Minister of Justice under Bolsonaro and newly-installed Secretary of Public Security in the Federal District who left for Florida days before the attack, was arrested upon his return to Brasilia. Lula is said to worry about lingering loyalty to Bolsonaro among the army and police.

For the most part, the political system is holding. The courts have begun to identify and prosecute those behind the violence, both the protestors themselves and those who may have helped to organize them. There have been few if any claims among elected officials that Lula’s election was illegitimate, and many pro-Bolsonaro officials, such as the new São Paulo state governor Tarcísio de Freitas, have been quick to distance themselves from Bolsonaro. The larger issue is public opinion. Bolsonaro’s presidency grew from the rise of right-wing authoritarian views in Brazilian society, opposed not only to the “disorder” the Right associates with the post-military democratic regime, but also cultural change in Brazil similar to that which has provoked a populist response in other countries. Membership in evangelical churches has grown significantly in Brazil in recent decades, largely at the expense of the Catholic church, and evangelicals have played an important role in the rise of a populist Right in Brazil, and will be a core locus of opposition to the Lula administration.

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In the short term, the central question in Brazilian politics will be whether those loyal to Bolsonaro will embrace greater political violence to bring down Lula’s government. But over the longer term, Lula faces a similar challenge to the one Brazilian governments have faced since the 1990s. The Brazilian state is weak, both in terms of controlling crime and violence and promoting higher living standards, and most view dictatorship of the Right as a viable alternative to a weak state. In the end, Lula’s success will depend on whether continues to take steps toward becoming a First World nation under his rule.

References;

https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/the-real-risks-facing-brazil-after-january-8/

https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-64271602

https://brazilian.report/power/2023/01/11/military-responsible-capital-riots/

https://brazilian.report/opinion/2022/12/14/democratic-stability-center-right-party/

https://www.braziloffice.org/en/articles/the-bolsonaro-lula-transition-in-2023

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/04_latin_america_cardenas.pdf

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/state-building-in-latin-america/origins-of-state-capacity-in-latin-america/9ACEB8F72EC170D19CE861AC88BCCFBA

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-brazil-bolsonaro-1.6708776

https://www.cmi.no/publications/5241-for-the-guarantee-of-law-and-order

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2016/1117/Why-do-some-Brazilians-want-military-rule

https://www.dw.com/pt-br/o-governo-lula-pode-confiar-nas-for%C3%A7as-de-seguran%C3%A7a/a-64334746