Neoliberalism, Authoritarianism, Evangelism: Hegemonic Politics and Elective Affinities in Bolsonaro’s Brazil

In 2018, the election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil by a wide margin of votes—a radical defender of the civil-military dictatorship—defeating Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the Workers' Party (PT), reversed the progressive expectations that the successful administrations of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had left in the country's politics. The aim of this chapter is to analyze this surprising political shift in light of the transformations in Brazilian society that progressively distanced it from the pact established by the New Republic, that is, the period that followed the end of the dictatorship in the country and the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution. To this end, we argue that Jair Bolsonaro's election in 2018 and his notable electoral performance in 2022 indicate the emergence of a new hegemonic project in Brazilian politics and society. This is a hegemonic project based on social foundations very different from those that supported the New Republic. Instead of civil government, an increasingly prominent political activism by the armed forces; instead of investments in health, education, social protection, and labor rights, a raw version of neoliberalism; instead of trade unions and other progressive social movements as a dynamic source of popular mobilization for the expansion of citizenship rights, evangelical churches advocating a conservative agenda. In this context, we argue that Bolsonaro's election in 2018 represented a provisional response to the challenge of reconciling accumulation and legitimation, and Lula's election in 2022 by a very narrow margin of votes indicates that social and political disputes in the current interregnum defined by the crisis of neoliberal globalization are still open.