From Populist Promises to Democratic Threats: Brazil\'s Political Trajectory

• Autor(a) principal: Venturelli, Gustavo
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8131/tde-01042024-114706/
• topic: Brasil; Comunicação política; Erosão democrática; Jair Bolsonaro; Populismo

This dissertation falls within two fields of study. First, it represents an effort in populism studies to bring evidence from Brazil. Second, delving into the relationship between populism and democracy, it takes Brazil\'s Bolsonaro as a case to assess if the election of a populist leader would have caused the Brazilian democratic backsliding. Chapter 1 analyzes how populism has been defined in Brazil and abroad throughout the last seven decades. It goes from historical-structuralist to normative perspectives to finally advocate for a minimal operationalized concept. Chapters 2 and 3 apply this minimal definition empirically. The former analyzes official political speeches by three allegedly populist presidents through content analysis: Fernando Collor de Mello, Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, and Jair Bolsonaro. It confirms previous results that show Bolsonaro as the most populist one, followed by Collor and Lula. Yet, it shows that these leaders made populist appeals more often than previous research thought. Furthermore, it goes deeper into these presidents\' populism, discussing which topics they build the people against the elites around and identifying these actors. Chapter 3 applies the same concept and techniques to election manifestos of presidential Brazilian elections between 2010 and 2022. It shows that contrary to what was believed, populism in Brazil is not only about leadership. Primarily, populism is present in the radical left. However, the 2018 elections had right-wing and even mainstream parties making populist appeals as well. This chapter also thoroughly examines these parties\' populism and concludes that despite a few undemocratic claims existing among the radical left, they do not threaten democracy because they came from insignificant parties with no representation de facto. Finally, Chapter 4 applies the synthetic control method to check if Bolsonaro is the cause of the Brazilian democratic decline. Bolsonaro is a symptom and continuer of something that began before he took office: Dilma Rousseff\'s impeachment. The chapter argues that if misused, impeachment can harm democracy. Compared to the dissolution of parliament after a vote of no confidence, misused impeachment comes at a high price. The dissertation caught the attention of topics overlooked by Brazilian political science, bringing evidence that populism exists in Brazilian democracy and should not be neglected by experts