Brazilian businessmen movements: Right-wing populism and the (dis)connection between policy and politics

Abstract

We advocate for the relevance of taking Brazilian past experience and theorization of populism into account to understand present-day challenges. We depart from Weffort’s conceptualization of populism to discuss the role of businesspeople movements in supporting and taking control of the political agenda through think tanks. According to Weffort, populism is built over precarious alliances that tend to favor policy or politics in different moments. During times of divergence among political elites, a populist leader emerges as a mediator in orchestrating an unstable hegemony among asymmetric classes. At the same time, the classes included in the populist alliance give legitimacy to the populist leader; they hinder his capacity of imposing decisions. However, treason of the weakest within the alliance is certain. We suggest that the political role played by the think tank IPES, in 1960s Brazil, in reframing middle-class demands is akin to contemporary populist events in Brazil—represented by the election of Jair Bolsonaro—and in the Anglo-Saxon world. Trumpism and Brexit are examples of a still-powerful free-market ideology project wrapped up under a populist discourse (re)framed with the support of businessmen and think tanks. A corporate takeover of government and the imposition of a free-market agenda are certain, as it is the treason of the weakest in the populist coalition. CMS academics should engage with the demands that give birth to populist movements as a way to dispute the neoliberal hegemony and anti-democratic populist solutions.

Passado, Presente E Futuro De História (Crítica) Das Organizações No Brasil

“…Alcadipani (2017), based on a postcolonial approach -already consolidated in the Anglo-Saxon world -utilized the concept of sociological reduction of Guerreiro Ramos for his research on the circulation of knowledge in business administration in the periphery. Barros and Wanderley (2019) used Francisco Weffort's concept of populism to investigate the Therefore, what seems to us to be outlined here is the articulation of an author/theory, concept (Alcadipani, 2017;, or national theme (Barros & Taylor, 2020;Cooke & Alcadipani, 2015;Quelha-de-Sá & Costa, 2019;Wanderley & Barros, 2020) with an international theoretical or methodological approach (Alcadipani, 2017;Barros & Taylor, 2020;Quelha-de-Sá & Costa, 2019;Wanderley & Barros, 2020), so that our various Tupi origins can take a seat at the table of the house of knowledge (Anglo-Saxon) and thus communicate. This kind of articulation can also be a way of avoiding falling into the trap of parochialism and continuing to tell our own stories to ourselves.…”

Riding populist storms: Brexit, Trumpism and beyond, Special Paper Series Editorial

“…Barros and Wanderley (2020) continue the themes of geographical and historical contextualisation in the fifth Group 1 paper by advocating the need to take Brazilian past history into account in understanding its and other present-day populist challenges. Drawing on Weffort’s conceptualisation of populism, they discuss the role of business movements in supporting and taking control of the political agenda through think tanks.…”

‘Let the virus spread’. A doctrine of pandemic management for the libertarian-authoritarian capital accumulation regime

“…This evolution echoes comparable shifts in the US and Brazil, two countries that followed remarkably similar COVID-19 policies. In Brazil, the election of Jair Bolsonaro has been supported by a new generation of business actors and right-wing think tanks advocating radical, often libertarian policies (Barros and Wanderley, 2020). In the US, Klein (2017) has also linked the election of Donald Trump to the emergence of catastrophe capitalists and the growing influence of the think tanks that they support.…”