Michael Riegner
When Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro visited Hungary in Februar 2022, he was not only strenghtening political ties to his ideological “brother” Victor Orban, who had already attended Bolsonaro’s inauguration in 2018. Bolsonaro’s visit also put a spotlight on the transregional circulation of illiberal legal ideas. Over the past decade, conservative, religious and right-wing movements, activists and governments have built transnational networks in which they exchange legal ideas, forge common litigation strategies, and organize mutual intellectual and financial support. This posts addresses the role of Brazil and Bolsonarism in these networks, and it points to some consequences for the wider research agenda of comparative constitutional law.
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Philipp Dann
The 1970s and 80s brought about two new social archetypes – the punk and the nerd. While the anti-establishment punk wants to trash the (economic, political, social) system, wants to provoke and get attention for the sake of it, the nerd behaves rather inconspicuously but effectively. He might be socially awkward and overlooked at first, but skilled and smart as he is, he knows the rules of the game and the mechanisms to get ahead with his plans. When looking at different authoritarian leaders in the world today, these two archetypes come to mind. In this blogpost, I want to use these two archetype of authoritarian leaders to analyse their behaviour and sketch the contours of an analytical framework to compare and distinguish between them.
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Jessica Holl
Even 30 years after the 1988 Constitution, the most democratic one in Brazilian history, the legacies of the military dictatorship still linger on - a fact that has been made amply evident by Bolsonaro's policies and discourse concerning transitional justice. Based on this, the present text aims to show how transitional justice has been deficient in Brazil and then discuss how Bolsonaro’s government has made the situation even worse by dismantling the policies that were developed under former governments.
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Fernando Leal, Thomaz Pereira
The Brazilian Supreme Court is currently a polarizing institution. Multiple institutional features empower it to control the constitutionality of federal, state, and municipal norms both in the course of concrete and abstract review cases. The Court stands in the complicated position of being criticized for both its actions and its inaction, while it is called to adjudicate demands by actors from all points of the political spectrum, and as it has recently come to face unprecedent authoritarian attacks. And here is the crux of Brazilian current constitutional situation: the anti-institutional speech that has been put forward by Bolsonaro and his supporters has in some cases, on its face, not been against the Constitution per se. It is presented as if it were against institutions.
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Geraldo Miniuci
Especially over the last three years, people have been demonstrating on the streets of Brazilian cities, expressing their support of Jair Bolsonaro and even demanding the return of military rule. „I authorize“ (military intervention) is a now common cry among Bolsonaro’s sympathizers, often read on banners. Some of the demonstrators are more explicit and openly demand „Military intervention with Bolsonaro“. Why is this happening? Why are these citizens willing to give up their citizen rights not only in favour of a military dictatorship, but of a leader who apparently is capable of seducing, yes, hypnotising them in a way that no General-President during the military dictatorship could ever do?
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Rafael Mafei
Brazil is currently experiencing a tense electoral campaign, in which several candidates, most notably former president Lula da Silva (Workers‘ Party), are trying to prevent the reelection of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro. In the segmentation of the electorate, one group has deserved special attention from all campaigns, the incumbent and its rivals: the so-called “evangelicals”. The evangelical electorate is more conservative, and thus has more affinities with Bolsonaro than with left-wing politicians. The politically organized evangelical community has made the Federal Supreme Court one of its main opponents.
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Evandro Proença Süssekind
The Armed Forces are back in power in Brazil. This time, differently from 1937 and 1964, it happened through elections. As one of the main supporting groups behind Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in 2018, the military’s role in his government continued to grow. I argue that, firstly, the text addressing the military functions in the Constitution of 1988 repeats the same mistakes made by past Brazilian constitutions; and secondly, that the South American countries’ constitutional framework points out attractive alternative constitutional design options on the topic.
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Florian Hoffmann
On the eve of a fateful election that will determine whether the last four years have been a bad dream and a footnote in Brazil’s political history, or not, the legacy of Bolsonaro’s regime for constitutional law and constitutionalism is widely and expertly discussed. Despite all his rhetorical machismo, Bolsonaro has not governed as a classical autocrat: he was democratically elected and his subsequent administration always found itself between the rock of a fragmented, yet viscerally opportunistic legislature, and the hard place of a judiciary that - while not always unsympathetic to his program - has been primarily interested in safeguarding its autonomy and its (self-)assumed role as the last word on virtually everything.
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Danielle Hanna Rached, M Cecilia Oliveira
The rise of right-wing populist leaders, governments and political parties around the world has impacted environmental policy in general and the climate agenda particularly. In this brief commentary, we aim to contribute to an emerging literature that studies the relation between far-right populist rhetoric and actions on climate change policy. The idea is to analyse whether Jair Bolsonaro brings new tactics to the playbook of autocratic leaders, and if so which types. While political dynamics in Hungary, Poland and the USA have all been studied to establish the links between populist politics and climate inaction, there is still room to broaden the view to countries of the Global South.
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Clara Iglesias Keller, Diego Werneck Arguelhes
This October, Brazilians will elect their next President amidst a wave of disinformation aimed at discrediting the electoral process, and the electronic voting system in particular. One of the main engines of disinformation has been President Jair Bolsonaro himself. The problems created by the President’s constant spreading of disinformation – now targeting the core of Brazil’s representative democracy – go beyond the (in itself very serious) question of whether he could or could not pull off an outright refusal to leave office, in spite of an electoral defeat. Bolsonaro’s unsubstantiated charges of fraud can contribute to and encourage confusion and violence during and after the elections.
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Philipp Dann, Conrado Hübner Mendes, Michael Riegner
If things go badly, the upcoming elections in Brazil may be the last ones for some time to come. Incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro threatens to use the Trump playbook to dispute a possible election loss, counting on the violent support of his highly mobilized followers and parts of the Brazilian military nostalgic for the military dictatorship. His contender, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who initially refused to wear a bullet proof vest, has now taken wear one on his rallies. During his tenure, Bolsonaro has drawn on populist anti-establishment sentiments and authoritarian legacies to develop his own, peculiar brand of illiberal rule known as Bolsonarism. Our symposium discusses Bolsonarism at the ballot box from the perspective of comparative constitutional law.
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