The Establishment Upside Down: A Year of Change in Brazil

Abstract

This was a year of dramatic changes in Brazilian politics, as the established parties and actors that had dominated Brazilian politics for two decades were humbled. The year began with the administration of the extremely unpopular, lame duck President Michel Temer, and ended awaiting the inauguration of far-rightist President Jair Bolsonaro on January 1 st , 2019. In this article, we describe and analyze the major events of 2018 in Brazilian politics. From the perspective of legislative and executive productivity, the year was largely uneventful, as President Michel Temer had spent most of his political capital mustering the legislative votes needed to avoid prosecution for corruption. Yet transformations were afoot in parties and civil society. Three of the country's most traditionally important parties-the PT, PMDB, and PSDB-were decimated, and the PT's icon and standard-bearer Lula da Silva imprisoned. Meanwhile, the right and far-right grew in importance, and Jair Bolsonaro won the presidency with the sponsorship of the previously extremely small Social Liberal Party (PSL).

From Antipetismo to Generalized Antipartisanship: The Impact of Rejection of Political Parties on the 2018 Vote for Bolsonaro

“…As we saw in the introduction, the 2018 elections took place in a context of profound political and economic crisis, with a general discontent weighing on the political class, parties and other democratic institutions. The effects of Operation Lava Jato and the fact that they intensified an economic recession had a devastating effect on the party system that had been taking shape since 1988 (DUQUE and SMITH, 2019;NICOLAU, 2017).…”

Media Choice and the Polarization of Public Opinion About Covid-19 in Brazil

“…The evidence about the online environment in Brazil shows that it is predominantly anti-democratic and low in rationality (Mendonça and Amaral, 2016;Massuchin et al, 2017;Mitozo et al, 2017) the 2018 elections won by Bolsonaro (Machado et al, 2019;Resende et al, 2019;Rossini et al, 2020). Given Bolsonaro's anti-establishment and exclusionary populism (do Amaral, 2020;Rennó, 2020;Tamaki and Fuks, 2020), his electoral emergence and governing style rely heavily on the growth of social media as the means to reach and spread his message (Duque and Smith, 2019). With respect to the pandemic, the initial evidence shows that online environments were overwhelmed with misinformation campaigns after Bolsonaro escalated his denialist stance (Ricard and Medeiros, 2020).…”

The First Year of Bolsonaro in Office: Same Old Story, Same Old Song?

“…As already noted, in 2018, Brazil was under the right-leaning coalition cabinet led by President Michel Temer, affiliated with the centrist MDB. Temer was an extremely unpopular chief executive whose image had been tainted by grave corruption scandals (Duque and Smith 2019). While the country's economic performance in 2018 was not too bad (inflation was low [3.66%], and Brazil's high public debt and deficit began to decrease slowly), output growth remained stagnant (1.1%), and high unemployment persisted (12.3%) Although Brazil's party system institutionalization had grown in 1994-2014 (Mainwaring et al 2018), by 2018 the country's main parties -the PT, PSDB, and MDB -were in utter disarray (Almeida 2019: 92;Duque and Smith 2019).…”