A Fragile Democracy without democratic values: Brazil in the XXIst century

Abstract

The election as president of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018, shocked some academic and political circles. However, if we look back at Brazil's historical and political trajectory, his election should not come as a surprise. For this reason, we discuss, based on the concept of hybrid political culture, the election of Bolsonaro in 2018 as an exploratory reflection of the fragility of Brazilian democracy. Based on the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from the Seventh Wave of World Values Survey (WVS), collected in 2018 and 2019, we characterize the political culture of Brazilians as authoritarian and conservative, despite a general support for the democratic idea. In this sense, we understand that this political culture has contributed to the development of an inertial democracy that is sustained in its processes, but not in democratic values. We also retrace a brief political history to show that Brazilian politics has a pattern of instability. Our conclusions indicate that democracy remains fragile in Brazil, because the hybrid political culture, exacerbated by the election of a president who clearly defends an authoritarian outcome.