POPULISM IN BRAZIL’S 2018 GENERAL ELECTIONS: AN ANALYSIS OF BOLSONARO’S CAMPAIGN SPEECHES

Eduardo Ryo Tamaki,Mario Fuks

doi:10.1590/0102-103127/109

Eduardo Ryo Tamaki, Mario Fuks

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/0102-103127/109

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Abstract

Abstract Through an analysis of Bolsonaro’s speeches during his official campaign, we aim to identify the presence of populist traits in his discourse. Preliminary results suggest that Bolsonaro’s discourse have, compared to its predecessors, higher levels of populism. As a theoretical framework, we use the ideational approach to populism. The data was collected and analyzed by Team Populism using the “holistic grading” textual analysis method. Results revealed that, despite his anti-elite, polarizing, and Manichean speech, Bolsonaro is an incomplete populist. In his rhetoric, populist traits vie for space with patriotic elements.

Highlights

With a long history of populist leaders and movements, Latin America is often considered by scholars to be the land of populism
Populism has not attracted much attention from Brazilian scholars. Despite this lack of interest, there is reason to suspect that the last general election in 2018 signals the resurgence of populism in Brazil, aligned with a global wave of rising populist politicians, such as Donald Trump in the United States, Lua Nova, São Paulo, 109: 103-127, 2020
The present study focuses on the supply aspect, analyzing campaign speeches to answer the question: To what extent is Jair Bolsonaro, the winning candidate of the Brazilian general election of 2018, a populist politician? An issue with no consensus among scholars, journalists, and 104 politicians

Summary

Introduction

With a long history of populist leaders and movements, Latin America is often considered by scholars to be the land of populism (de la Torre, 2017). Populism has not attracted much attention from Brazilian scholars. Despite this lack of interest, there is reason to suspect that the last general election in 2018 signals the resurgence of populism in Brazil, aligned with a global wave of rising populist politicians, such as Donald Trump in the United States, Lua Nova, São Paulo, 109: 103-127, 2020. Viktor Órban in Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, the “Five Star Movement” in Italy, or Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. When it comes to the success or failure of populist leaders, the literature divides explanations into two dimensions: demand and supply. Populist attitudes present in a society only have behavioral effects in specific contexts, where leaders operate as a “catalyst in the activation of populist attitudes” (Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2019, p. 15)

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