Is Jair Bolsonaro a classic populist?

ABSTRACT

Is Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro a classic populist? This article tries to answer this question by testing whether the political discourse of Bolsonaro fits the tenets of two major theories of populism: Mudde and Kaltwasser’s and Laclau’s. We analyse the entire text of his presidential campaign platform to find that Bolsonaro’s discourse has almost no room for a ‘concept of the people’ or of nation, a fact that problematizes the bulk of the literature on populism, including its major theories. Conversely, his discourse is structured around the concept of corruption, which is tightly linked with a strong anti-left and anti-PT sentiment. It is corruption that connects the different regions (themes) of his discourse. We then run a computerized similarity analysis to confirm the central placement of corruption regarding the whole of his discourse and its different regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Populism
• Bolsonaro
• Brazil
• Laclau
• politicization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Jair Bolsonaro was elected to the city council of Rio de Janeiro in 1988, the same year he retired from the army as a lieutenant, after leading a movement for raising the salary of low-ranking military and orchestrating the bombing of a water treatment plant that serves the city of Rio de Janeiro. His first electoral success can be credited to the popularity he acquired as a leader of low-ranking military men and their families. Bolsonaro has been a professional politician since then, moving from party to party before settling in the Partido Popular (PP), a medium-size right-wing party deeply embroiled in corruption scandals. He was first elected federal deputy in 1990, a post to which he was re-elected five more consecutive times, always relying on the vote of conservative military and people that resented the end of the military dictatorship. Bolsonaro kept a low profile and a low level of engagement in parliamentary activity throughout his parliamentary career, something of which he seems to be proud, Congress approved only two bills sponsored by him throughout the 27-years period of his career as a federal deputy.

2 IRAMUTEQ (Interface de R pour les Analyses Multidimensionnelles de Textes et de Questionnaires) is an open-source computer program developed by Pierre Ratinaud (2009), based on the statistical software R, that allows for an array of statistical analysis of textual corpora (Ratinaud, 2009; Camargo & Justo, 2013).

3 ALCESTE (Reinert, 1990) is a program created by M. Reinert, whose algorithm was later incorporated by IRAMUTEQ, among other types of statistical analyses of text (Reinert, 1990).

4 Based on historical evidence, Canovan identifies the following types: farmers’ populism, peasants’ populism, intellectuals’ populism, populist dictatorship, populist democracy, reactionary populism, and politicians’ populism.

5 This move is possible by conceiving the struggle for hegemony from a Lacanian perspective of an endless strife for representing the real by the symbolic. According to Laclau: ‘The representation of the unrepresentable constitutes the terms of the paradox within which hegemony is constructed’ (Laclau, 2005, p. 66).

6 Mouffe tried to domesticate Schmitt’s conception of the political and apply it to the understanding of the workings of liberal democracy by arguing that the antagonistic nature of politics could be mediated by institutions and thus must not be equaled to a destructive, war-like competition for the annihilation of one’s enemy (Mouffe 1999, 2000).

7 The capital of Brazil from the late eighteenth century to 1960, the city of Rio de Janeiro still retains several active military installations such as garrisons, schools, forts, etc.

8 All candidates for president in Brazil are obliged by law to deposit a document containing their political platform in the Supreme Electoral Court.

9 The document containing the electoral platform of Fernando Haddad, of the Workers Party (PT), has a total of 210,594 characters while Bolsonaro’s has only 51,683. For Haddad’s platform check https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eI6Zqs4v0XqzbmfHVS9NNrppNwzLJE5x/view. For Bolsonaro’s platform check https://divulgacandcontas.tse.jus.br/candidaturas/oficial/2018/BR/BR/2022802018/280000614517//proposta_1534284632231.pdf, last accessed in 3 March 2021.

10 The PT won four consecutive presidential elections, starting in 2002, when Lula became president. He then was re-elected in 2006 and helped elect one of his Ministers, Dilma Rousseff, president in 2010. Dilma then won the 2014 presidential election but had her term interrupted in 2016 by a controversial impeachment process.

11 These numbers were extracted from the Transparency Portal of the Federal Government, and organized by the cabinets of Senator Alessandro Vieira (Cidadania) and representative Tabata Amaral (PDT). More information can be found at: https://preview.flourish.studio/5202872/T2tMbc_otm_djTbBa5TjnxQZeGuOssq8WLnbmc8pYL764Sti6FBP6nHeyHEnDT6q/. Last access in 11 March 2021. Realização: Senador Alessandro Vieira (Cidadania/SE) e Dep. Tabata Amaral (PDT/SP) Source https://preview.flourish.studio/5202872/T2tMbc_otm_djTbBa5TjnxQZeGuOssq8WLnbmc8pYL764Sti6FBP6nHeyHEnDT6q/. Last checked in 11 March 2021.

12 Bolsonaro has explicitly threatened or hinted at a military take over several time after becoming president. For some examples, see https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/materia/vou-intervir/; https://istoe.com.br/bolsonaro-faz-ameaca-aberta-de-golpe-agora-so-falta-o-fuzil/; https://anovademocracia.com.br/noticias/14988-inspirado-por-trump-bolsonaro-ameaca-golpe-em-2022.

13 For the relation between military intervention in Brazilian politics and the notion of poder moderador see https://jus.com.br/artigos/82698/um-poder-moderador.

14 It is required by law that all candidates to elected public offices in Brazil have a party membership.

15 The word is here used in its continental sense, which is more cogent to the meaning of libertarian or neoliberal.

16 President Bolsonaro continues to call Lula and the PT populists, blaming them for allegedly being fiscally unresponsible, as in his recent reaction to a speech Lula gave after being exonerated of three convictions by the Supreme Court. See https://valor.globo.com/politica/noticia/2021/03/10/bolsonaro-reage-a-lula-defende-gestao-da-pandemia-e-diz-que-petista-faz-campanha.ghtml.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FAPERJ, under the Cientista do Nosso Estado; by CNPq, under the Produtividade Scholarship; and by CNPq and CAPES under the Institutos Nacionais de Tecnologia, as part of the Instituto da Democracia e da Democratização da Comunicação.

Notes on contributors

João Feres Júnior

João Feres Júnior is associate professor of political science at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP) of State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), FAPERJ CNE scholar, CNPq productivity scholar, coordinator of the Laboratory of Studies on Media and Public Sphere (Lemep) and of the news media watchdog website Manchetometro (www.manchetometro.com.br), and coordinator of the Observatory of the Brazilian Legislative (OLB).

Fernanda Cavassana

Fernanda Cavassana is Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Capes Brasil/INCT – Institute of Democracy and Democratization of Communication) at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP) of UERJ, where she is a researcher at the Laboratory of Studies on Media and Public Sphere (Lemep). Bachelor of Social Communication (State University of Londrina – UEL), master’s in communication and PhD in Political Science (Federal University of Paraná – UFPR).

Juliana Gagliardi

Juliana Gagliardi is Executive coordinator of the Laboratory of Media and Democracy (Lamide/UFF) and postdoctoral researcher at Universidade Federal Fluminense (Fluminense Federal University, UFF). Bachelor of History (Rio de Janeiro State University – UERJ), Social Communication, with a degree in Journalism (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ), Master and PhD in Communication (UFF).