Latin American presidents get re-elected at extremely high rates. Yet incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro finds himself in a dogfight against his rival, former president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, in October’s presidential electoral contest. Why? The pandemic, the economy, and environmental policy may be partially to blame. But could it also be that Brazilians are in the mood for democracy?
Bolsonaro’s victory in the 2018 elections represented a clear rejection of the democratic status quo and, particularly, a revolt against a discredited establishment. Brazilians got all that and more. Yet we think that the data point to a growing backlash against Brazil’s recent undemocratic turn. If so, it could shape who wins the presidency in 2022.
Democratic Thermostatics
A powerful theory holds that elections are won by candidates who anticipate the direction of public preferences for a bundle of issues. Because collective public preferences shift together over time, they are known as “policy mood”.
Changes in policy mood flow from changes in public policy outputs, i.e. laws and spending, according to a thermostatic logic: when policies tend too liberal, policy mood swings more conservative. Likewise, if policy outputs become too conservative, the public’s “policy mood” moves in a more liberal direction. Such dynamics out-predict the usual suspects (e.g., the economy) when it comes to election outcomes.
Democracy levels and mass democratic preferences — dubbed “democratic mood” — also appear to obey thermostatic dynamics: changes in democratic mood follow changes in levels of democracy. As democracy expands, public preferences for democracy tend to shrink. This backlash can cut both ways, however. As democracy erodes, it can put citizens “in the mood” for greater democracy.
Whereas the electoral implications of policy mood are well known, the electoral implications of democratic mood are not. We contend that, where politics revolve around a pro- and anti-democracy cleavage, and when a democratic candidate is pitted against illiberal candidate, the thermostatic relationship between democracy and democratic preferences may prove predictive of election outcomes. Unlike for much of Brazil’s previous Brazilian elections, these conditions hold for the 2022 Brazilian election.
Brazilian Democracy: Cooled down, now Re-Heating
According to Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem; see graphic below), democratic backsliding in Brazil began after 2015. Under President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil suffered a “perfect storm” of political and social crises. Commodity prices fell, Lava Jato investigations revealed widespread corruption throughout the political class, Rousseff was impeached, and protests erupted across the country. Jair Bolsonaro leveraged this crisis in his candidacy for the presidency, further driving down levels of liberal democracy.
Bolsonaro took office in 2019 employing a corrosive rhetoric that combined racist, homophobic and misogynistic elements. Journalists who criticize Bolsonaro are often subjected to verbal, physical, and cyber attacks. So, too, members of the judiciary have been subject to bolsonarista vitriol. Bolsonaro and his coterie regularly author and diffuse fake news and misinformation. Looser gun laws have raised Brazilians’ fears that their civil rights and liberties are on shaky ground. Bolsonaro defends excessive use of force in quelling protests and policing favelas. Violence between political rivals has increased to record levels.
Nevertheless, liberal democracy rebounded slightly in V-Dem’s 2021 reading. This likely reflects the Supreme Court’s and the Superior Electoral Tribunal’s willingness to check some of the worst anti-democratic behaviors emanating from the executive branch. The Supreme Court played a protagonist role in response to Bolsonaro’s lackadaisical approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, affirming state and local governments’ authority to enact measures to slow the spread and ordering more protections for indigenous communities. The Superior Electoral Tribunal continues to combat accusations that seek to undermine Brazilians’ faith in the electoral process. Together, these and other actions have sent democracy’s thermostat upwards.
Brazilians’ Illiberal & Democratic Backlashes
Does Brazilians’ support for democracy exhibit thermostatic dynamics consistent with these changes in liberal democracy in Brazil?
To analyze this question, we estimated an annual indicator of democratic mood drawing on 33 years of public opinion surveys on national samples of Brazilians. Our dataset consists of time series of aggregate indicators of support for democracy from AmericasBarometer, the Brazilian Election Study, Datafolha, the Democracy on the Ballot Panel Study, and Latinobarômetro.[1]
The graphic below presents our annual democratic mood estimate from 2003 to 2021.
Consistent with the notion of democratic support as thermostatic opinion, after high and sustained levels of liberal democracy in the 2000s, we see an illiberal backlash. Brazilians’ democratic mood cooled for much of the decade from 2009 until Bolsonaro took office in 2019. Levels of democracy followed suit, bottoming out in 2020. But once Bolsonaro took office, democratic mood began warming back up. This suggests a democratic backlash against the president’s democratic backsliding. And, in line with thermostatic theory, democracy levels saw an uptick in 2020 and 2021.[2]
There is not yet data for 2022 that would enable us to assess whether democratic mood has continued to rebound. And unlike previous studies, our analysis does not statistically control for potentially confounding factors. But liberal democracy and democratic mood in Brazil do appear to be locked into a thermostatic relationship. The fact that it is more pronounced after 2015 could indicate the importance of other factors for depressing (e.g., economic prosperity) or expressing (e.g., an election featuring an authoritarian candidate or incumbent) these dynamics. More research is clearly needed.
Democracy on the Ballot Again?
If the pendulum of public opinion is swinging back in a democratic direction, it could have important electoral consequences. Falling support for democracy and rising illiberal attitudes helped explain who voted for Bolsonaro in the 2018 election. By the same token, rising democratic sentiment could damage Bolsonaro’s electoral prospects. The point is not merely academic. It matters practically to the millions of Brazilians whose rights as democratic citizens may be on the line in the 2022 election.
[1] Data were originally compiled by Mario Fuks and Ednaldo Ribeiro, and updated by Laura Beghini Chelidonopoulos and Ryan Carlin.
[2] Carlin, Fuks, and Ribeiro (2022) reach a similar conclusion in their working paper, “The Dynamics of Democratic Support in Brazil,” (available from authors upon request).
