Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond

Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond
Author: Anthony W. Pereira
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2023-06-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000890295

With contributions from 22 scholars and empirical material from 29 countries within and beyond Latin America, this book identifies subtypes of populism to further understand right-wing populist movements, parties, leaders, and governments. It seeks to examine whether the term populism continues to have any validity and what relationship(s) it has to democracy. Part 1 is an exploration of populism as an analytical concept. It asks how populism can and should be defined; whether populism can be broken down into subtypes; and whether the use of the term within and beyond Latin America in recent scholarship has been consistent. Part 2 focuses on political economy, and specifically whether political economy explanations of both the causes and consequences of right-wing populism fit recent cases in Latin America, Europe, and the Philippines. Part 3 examines institutions, and in particular institutions of coercion and digital communication. It contains chapter studies on various aspects of populism in Brazil, Spain, India, and Italy. Part 4 concerns the coronavirus pandemic and the specific case of right-wing populism in Brazil. It examines the Bolsonaro government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and how that response exacerbated the health crisis and reduced the government’s popularity. Right-Wing Populism in Latin America and Beyond is a timely and socially relevant contribution to the understanding of contemporary challenges to democracy. It will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners eager to understand the rise in right-wing agendas across the globe.

Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina

Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina
Author: Felipe Antunes de Oliveira
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2024-07-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0822991292

In the two largest countries in South America, successive waves of structural reforms adopted in the name of development invariably have ended in disappointment. The promise of development never seems to materialize. Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentinaexamines why. Instead of looking for policy failures, F. Antunes de Oliveira’s focus is on the parameters of the public debate about “development” itself. An unfruitful dispute between neoliberalism and neodevelopmentalism has dominated Brazilian and Argentine political economy debates to the detriment of both countries. Antunes de Oliveira presents a comprehensive theoretical and empirical critique of the neoliberal and neodevelopmentalist structural reform cycles in Brazil and Argentina and applies insights from dependency theory to craft an alternative political economy framework for the analysis of development challenges.

Limits of Democracy

Limits of Democracy
Author: Marcos Nobre
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2022-10-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031163923

In this timely book, Brazilian political philosopher Marcos Nobre analyzes the social and political roots of the election of Jair Bolsonaro to the presidency of Brazil and shows how this process is connected to the rise of new far-right movements threatening democracy around the world. Nobre describes the rise of the movement that elected Bolsonaro as a reactionary and anti-democratic highjack of the democratic impulse unleashed by the June 2013 uprisings, when millions of Brazilians took to the streets to protest against a dysfunctional political system, and frames the Brazilian case within the global crisis that exposed the limits of a democracy based on the neoliberal consensus after the 2008 financial crisis. According to Nobre, the June 2013 uprisings in Brazil was part of the global cycle of popular protests that swept many countries between 2011 and 2013, reclaiming a new model of democracy which could go beyond bureaucratic and technocratic parties and cabinets. However, in Brazil, as in many other places, this initial democratic impulse was captured by new far-right movements which are now posing serious threats to democracy. This book intends to collaborate in a change of attitude, both theoretical and practical, that may help finding ways of fighting the authoritarian threat to democracy as well as of deepening democracy as a life form. The decline of neoliberalism not only did not produce any effectively progressive realist alternative, but also opened the way for a dispute over models of society in which democracy itself has ceased to represent the primary reference in disputes over the best way to regulate life in society. Democracy is no longer self-evident, it is in danger. And the only way to save it is by inventing new democratic practices to overcome the limits imposed by institutional political systems no longer capable of channeling the real struggles in the societies they claim to represent.

Brazil after Bolsonaro

Brazil after Bolsonaro
Author: Richard Bourne
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2023-08-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000926982

Brazil after Bolsonaro captures and presents the voices of a wide range of stakeholders including academics and journalists in Brazil and abroad to produce the first systematic engagement with Lula’s latest presidency. Providing fair and balanced perspectives on Lula, the authors examine the legacy of Lula’s previous presidency; what happened in the interim in the eras of Rousseff, Temer, and Bolsonaro; and what are the challenges facing a new Lula administration. This book is divided into three main sections (Background to change, Context and issues, and Foreign policy) and chapters detail the political, social, and economic dimensions of change in Brazil and its wider repercussions. A fourth section sees Luís Guillermo Solís Rivera, President of Costa Rica from 2014 to 2018, offer reflections on Lula from the perspective of a fellow president. Assuming no prior knowledge and written in an accessible style, this book is ideal for those seeking to further their understanding of contemporary politics in Brazil and to learn the context and consequences of the transfer of power from Jair Bolsonaro to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

The Limits of Judicialization

The Limits of Judicialization
Author: Sandra Botero
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2022-08-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1009098349

Utilizing case studies of seven Latin American countries, this book reassesses the role of legal institutions in the politics of the region.

Democracy and Brazil

Democracy and Brazil
Author: Bernardo Bianchi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2020-09-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000168506

Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression discusses the de-democratization process underway in contemporary Brazil. The relative political stability that characterized domestic politics in the 2000s ended with the sudden emergence of a series of massive protests in 2013, followed by the controversial impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018. In this new, more conservative period in Brazilian politics, a series of institutional reforms deepened the distance between citizens and representatives. Brazil's current political crisis cannot be understood without reference to the continual growth of right-wing and ultra-right discourse, on the one hand, and to the neoliberal ideology that pervades the minds of large parts of the Brazilian elite, on the other. Twenty experts on Brazil across different fields discuss the ongoing political turmoil in the light of distinct problems: geopolitics, gender, religion, media, indigenous populations, right-wing strategies, and new forms of coup, among others. Updated analyses enriched with historical perspective help to illuminate the intricate issues that will determine the country's fate in years to come. Democracy and Brazil: Collapse and Regression will interest students and scholars of Brazilian Politics and History, Latin America, and the broader field of democracy studies.

Global Authoritarianism

Global Authoritarianism
Author: International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2022-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3732862097

We are witnessing a worldwide resurgence of reactionary ideologies and movements, combined with an escalating assault on democratic institutions and structures. Nevertheless, most studies of these phenomena remain anchored in a methodological nationalism, while comparative research is almost entirely limited to the Global North. Yet, authoritarian transformations in the South — and the struggles against them — have not only been just as dramatic as those in the North but also preceded them, and consequently have been studied by Southern scholars for many years. This volume brings together the work of more than 15 scholar-activists from across the Global South, combining in-depth studies of regional processes of authoritarian transformation with a global perspective on authoritarian capitalism. With a foreword by Verónica Gago.

The Jakarta Method

The Jakarta Method
Author: Vincent Bevins
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1541724011

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 BY NPR, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND GQ The hidden story of the wanton slaughter -- in Indonesia, Latin America, and around the world -- backed by the United States. In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. This was one of the most important turning points of the twentieth century, eliminating the largest communist party outside China and the Soviet Union and inspiring copycat terror programs in faraway countries like Brazil and Chile. But these events remain widely overlooked, precisely because the CIA's secret interventions were so successful. In this bold and comprehensive new history, Vincent Bevins builds on his incisive reporting for the Washington Post, using recently declassified documents, archival research and eye-witness testimony collected across twelve countries to reveal a shocking legacy that spans the globe. For decades, it's been believed that parts of the developing world passed peacefully into the U.S.-led capitalist system. The Jakarta Method demonstrates that the brutal extermination of unarmed leftists was a fundamental part of Washington's final triumph in the Cold War.

Brazil, Land of the Past: The Ideological Roots of the New Right

Brazil, Land of the Past: The Ideological Roots of the New Right
Author: Georg Wink
Publisher: Bibliotopía
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2021-12-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 6079934817

Brazil, Land of the Past scrutinizes the ideological roots of the so-called New Right in Brazil. The book traces the continuity and resilience of a system of thought based on the idea of a God-given hierarchical order to be defended against any social contract and modernizing relativization. It explains in detail how today a diverse movement — which includes actors ranging from the authoritarian Bolsonaro wing to economic liberals to the military to both Catholic and evangelical religious conservatives – assumes unanimously the ideas of this tradition as underlying premises of their political action. Though not always explicitly, this drives the self-declared “liberal-conservative” but rather anti-modernist reaction which claims to liberate an imaginary authentic “Brazil” from an aberrant “State” – and in so doing intends to preserve inherited privilege in an extremely unequal society.