THE BRAZILIAN “NEW” RIGHT: AN ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICAL MARKET AFTER PRESIDENT ROUSSEFF’S IMPEACHMENT

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  • Presentation type: Early Career Researchers
  • Track: Presentation
  • Keywords: extreme right; Bolsonaro; Social Media; political behavior; political communication;

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Abstract

In March 2015 the Brazilian democratization process reached its 30th anniversary. It has been the country’s longest democratic experience (Amaral & Meneguelo, 2017) in 521 years. Celebrations, nonetheless, were interrupted by a political, social, economic and institutional crises, which resulted on President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in the following year (Kingstone & Power, 2017). Two years after President Rousseff’s deposition, the country faced an electoral process even more politically and ideologically fragmented. It was also carrying serious social and economic challenges and its citizens were even more disappointed at the political system. The series of political events in the four years before the 2018 election put in check even democracy itself. The ideological dispute went from lack of confidence in representative institutions to debates regarding the legitimacy of the democratic system.
All these elements – dissatisfaction with political actors, the government, representative institutions, the functioning of representative democracy and even the fragile support to the democratic regime – may have contributed to the emergence of political outsiders, along with an extremist speech lined up to what researchers have identified as a “new” right, an “extreme” right or even as a “radical” right.This is exactly our research object: the Brazilian “new” right. It aims to understand the rise of this political spectrum in Brazil by looking into how demand and supply met in the political market. It focuses on two main points: who are the Brazilian “new” right voters and what is the role played by social media as an intermediate between voters and candidates.
Neoconservatism (Teixeira, 2010) and the rise of radical right groups is an international phenomenon (Codato, Bolognesi & Roeder, 2015). And, the discussion about this phenomenon in this beginning of century has been based in two main elements: economic and cultural issues (Gridon & Hall, 2017; Norris & Inglehart, 2019). In order to understand the intersection of these two variables, we develop an analysis based on the political culture framework, focusing on the theory of value change (Inglehart, 1977).
The value change theory or the “Silent Revolution” is based on the premise that in order to reach personal goals, individuals have certain priorities, being physical security the first one. Notwithstanding, once individuals started overcoming the limits of material survival and economic security, especially in the post-war period, advanced societies started going through “slow and continuous changes in individual valuing priorities” (Ribeiro & Borba, 2010, p. 29) leaving behind traditional “material” values and going toward rational and secular values (O’Neil, 2006), what Inglehart (1977) calls “post-materialist” values. Value change, consequently, reflected on political attitudes, which used to be “directed to the political elite” and started “challenging the political elite” (Inglehart, 1977).
Value and social change processes, however, are not linear (Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart & Welzel, 2005; Norris & Inglehart, 2019) and the reverse movement is also possible. The same way socioeconomic modernization promotes human development, threats to survival accentuate livelihood patterns and those, therefore, promotes authoritarian institutions as well as xenophobic societies (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). Inglehart (1977, p. 4) stated “undoubtedly there [would] be counter-trends that [would] slow the process of change and even reverse it for given/ periods of time”, in case there were new changes in advanced societies. According to him, it happens because sociocultural change is not a linear process and socioeconomic conditions may orientate value changes. Norris and Inglehart (2019) call this trend “The Silent Revolution in Reserve” or “Cultural Backlash”.
The Cultural Backlash Theory argues that post-materialist values fomented a reaction among conservative citizens. Within what was expected to be a universe of “critical citizens”, it was developed, vis-à-vis, a niche not only unsatisfied with State and its institutions, but also with democracy itself and its intrinsic values.
The roots of this cultural change seem to be the September 11th, 2011terrorist attacks. Since then, terrorism, mostly represented by Islamic groups, have become number one enemy of advanced societies (Teixeira, Calandrelli, 2017). The war on terror, therefore, bolstered migration flows, which along socioeconomic and cultural issues promoted a policy of resentment (Norris, 2005; Norris & Inglehart, 2019) and gave voice to neoconservative movements (Teixeira, Calandrelli, 2017). Those movements, for instance, have taken the electoral arena through populist leaders and parties aligned to the extreme right.
Although each region holds its own peculiarities, the radical right populist rhetoric has common elements: the battle between the corrupt political elite or the political establishment and people’s will; the “us versus them” dichotomy; the negative tone in political communication; critiques to what is considered “politically correct” as well as mainstream speeches; the disrespect to formal and informal rules; emotional appeals; an anti-pluralism speech; and the defense of radical solutions to the issues of their own interests (Greven, 2016; Norris & Inglehart, 2019).
The ideological dynamic of these movements has one last variable in common: the authoritarian speech (Codato, Bolognesi & Roeder, 2015) and its dissemination on social media. For Teixeira (2017), the use of social media platforms is an important aspect to consider because they enable the organization of groups as well as the dissemination of speeches that would not have space in formal institutions and on traditional media channels. That said, it is through social media that authoritarian and radical speeches gain space and viralize.
In Brazil, the radical right gained space during the polarized 2014 presidential election. Longitudinally, looking into the stabilization and the quality of democracy in Brazil in its three decades, we can see it has not been a linear process. However, “after 1994 the country inaugurated a period of political stability, what enabled the strengthening of its democratic institutions and the development of a set of public policies that resulted in an improvement of all socioeconomic indexes” (Melo, 2016, p. 35).
Brazil seemed to be going toward modernization, cultural change, the consolidation of its democratic system (Inglehart & Welzel, 20015) as well as human empowerment (Welzel, 2013). This path, nonetheless, was interrupted in the past years, notably after. The political conjuncture in the past years damaged the image of the government, the political institutions and, especially, the political parties. It also divided Brazilians in distinct ideological groups (Braga & Casalecchi, 2016; Borges & Vidigal, 2018) and stimulated the emergence of what has been called the Brazilian “new” right.
The reasons that promoted the emergence of this radical right worldwide and, more specifically in Brazil, are multiple and evolve economic, political and cultural issues. To understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to look into the various actors involved in this dynamic: voters (demand), political elites (supply) and the media, more specifically, social media as an intermediary between demand and supply.
That said, we aim to understand the intersection between voters and political elites (demand and supply) through the use of social media. In order to achieve this goal, our analysis is theoretically based on the political culture framework. It means we observe the emergence of this new political spectrum looking into voters’ attitudes, values and preferences.
It is important to highlight that research on political culture tend to not include or, at least, not give enough attention to the role of the media. Communication tools are never incorporated as a significant variable to comprehend common political ideas (Miguel, 2002). According to this author, studies within Political Science usually focus on a plurality of actors, while the media is not included or is seen only as a tool to transmit political agents’ speeches as well as political information.
It is precisely this aspect that makes this research important. Even though it is a study within the Political Science field, we believe that institutional variables are not enough to explain the Brazilian political context in the past years. This is a multidisciplinary research object, so it requires that the researcher uses elements from other human sciences in order to explain all the variables involved.
Based on the research problem presented above, we aim to investigate the underlying conditions that enabled the emergence of the Brazilian “new” right. We first try to identify the profile of those voters who support the “new” right rhetoric, expressed mostly on Jair Bolsonaro, based on socioeconomic and demographic elements; and cultural values such as authoritarianism, law and order, tradition and stability, nationalism and intolerance to groups considered minorities. Second, we want to comprehend the dynamics of social media in the political scene. We aim to understand how they may have contributed to shape voters’ values and perceptions. Thus, our research question is: Who is the Brazilian “new” right and how it built itself through social media?
In consonance with the authors mentioned above, our hypothesis is that Bolsonaro’s voters are more inclined to cultivate attitudes aligned with those other extreme right movements worldwide. Additionally, we believe those attitudes are reinforced among more active groups on social media.
Methodologically, we take from Norris and Inglehart’s studies (2019), which evaluated the extreme right phenomenon in Europe and in the United States. As follows, we adapt their research model to explain the Brazilian case. The authors, bringing economic concepts to the Political Science field, evaluated the emergence of extreme right forces based on the Supply and Demand Law within the political market.
Norris and Inglehart (2019) believe that to comprehend the rise of the radical right it is necessary to analyze the political events from the voters’ point of view (demand), how those demands are translated into votes as well as the institutional rules that allow these actors to conquer sits in the executive and legislative branches (supply). Only after understanding this dynamic, it is possible to think about the effects on governance – democracy, public policy agenda and civic culture. In order to evaluate these variables, it is necessary to analyze the political market looking into voters’ values and beliefs, political parties’ position within the ideological spectrum as well as the institutional rules.
The authors’ empirical analysis, however, highlights the institutional elements once they emphasize the role of political parties. We follow another direction. Instead of looking into political parties, we evaluate the role of the media within this context, more precisely the role of social media. We believe that social media platforms were the link between the two sides of the political market: supply (political parties and candidates) and demand (voters).
That said, to evaluate how supply and demand met during the 2018 presidential election, our empirical, taking a quantitative approach, uses public opinion survey data to understand Bolsonaro’s voters’ profile.
In a first moment, we look into previous studies on the Brazilian “new” right movements risen after the 2014 election as well as on Jair Bolsonaro. After understanding the political-institutional scene and how political elites that form the Brazilian “new” right positioned themselves within the political market, we will have elements to comprehend the other side of the market: the demand. We, then, try to identify the reasons that directed voters toward the extreme right and the determinants on Jair Bolsonaro’s vote observing: 1) Who is the Brazilian “new” right? In other words, what is Jair Bolsonaro’s voters’ profile?; 2) Voters’ opinion; 3) The relationship between consuming and sharing political news on social media.
We seek to understand if consuming and sharing political news online may have influenced the attitudes of those voters who identify themselves with the extreme right rhetoric. In sum, our goal is to find out if consuming this type of content is, somehow, related to extremist attitudes.
Among the approaches available to evaluate political behavior, individual public opinion analysis seems to be the most appropriate to achieve our research goals. In such a way, we use the 2018/2019 Americas Barometer, which brings a section about online news consumption, as our main database.
The Americas Barometer is part of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) organized by Vanderbilt University. The Americas Barometer is a public opinion and democratic behavior survey that integrates 34 countries in the West Hemisphere. It aims to measure democratic values and behavior using probabilistic electoral samples. The 2018/2019 questionnaire was administered in Brazil between January 29th and March 3rd, 2019 and questioned 1,498 people.
This research is in its final stage. It is the author’s PhD dissertation, which will be presented in the upcoming month.

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