Brazil offers America a lesson in democratic maturity
It is a test case for how countries recover from a populist fever
IMAGINE A COUNTRY where
a polarising president lost his bid for re-election and refused to
accept the result. He declared the ballot rigged and used social media
to urge his supporters to rise up. They did so in their thousands,
attacking government buildings. Then the insurrection failed, the
ex-president faced a criminal investigation and prosecutors put him on
trial for plotting a coup.
That sounds like a
fantasy of the American left. In the hemisphere’s other giant democracy
it is reality. On September 2nd the trial of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s
former president and the “Trump of the tropics”, will begin in the
Federal Supreme Court. The evidence reads like a flashback to Brazil’s
turbulent past. A former four-star general schemed to overturn the
result of the election; assassins planned to murder its real winner. As our investigation into the plot explains·, the coup failed because of incompetence rather than intent.
Mr
Bolsonaro and his associates are likely to be found guilty. That makes
Brazil a test case for how countries recover from a populist fever. In
Poland, two years after Law and Justice (PiS) lost power, a coalition led by Donald Tusk, a centrist, is constrained by a new PiS
president. In Britain, Brexit is now unpopular but Nigel Farage, the
politician who inspired it, is leading in polls. Even Hamas’s massacre
of October 7th 2023 did not shake Israel out of its bitter divisions.
But
Brazil’s most striking comparison is with the United States. The two
countries seem to be swapping places. America is becoming more corrupt,
protectionist and authoritarian—with Donald Trump this week messing
about with the Federal Reserve and threatening Democrat-controlled
cities. By contrast, even as the Trump administration punishes Brazil
for prosecuting Mr Bolsonaro, the country itself is determined to
safeguard and strengthen its democracy.
One
reason Brazil promises to be different from other countries is that the
memory of dictatorship is still fresh. It restored democracy in 1988.
The supreme court, shaped by the “citizens’ constitution” enacted at
that time, still sees itself as a bulwark against authoritarianism.
In
addition, most Brazilians are open-eyed about what Mr Bolsonaro did. A
majority of them believe that he tried to stage a coup to keep himself
in power. Conservative state governors vying to take on the leftist
president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in next year’s election need the
votes of Mr Bolsonaro’s supporters to win. But even they criticise his
political style.
That recognition has opened up the chance of reform. As our briefing·
lays out, most of Brazil’s politicians, on left and right, want to put
the Bolsonaro madness and its radical polarisation behind them. From the
business bigwigs in São Paulo to the political Pooh-Bahs in Brasília
there is surprising agreement on a difficult, but urgent, agenda of
institutional change.
Paradoxically, a key
task is to rein in the supreme court, despite its role as the guardian
of Brazil’s democracy. As the arbiter of a constitution that runs to
65,000 words, the court oversees a dizzying array of rules, rights and
obligations, from tax policy to culture and sports. Groups from trade
unions to political parties can bring cases directly. Sometimes justices
initiate cases themselves, including an inquiry into online threats,
some of them against the court itself—making it the victim, prosecutor
and judge. To handle a workload of 114,000 rulings in 2024 alone, most
decisions come from individual judges. There is wide recognition that
unelected judges having so much power can corrode politics, as well as
save it from coups. The justices themselves see the case for change.
Fixing
the court will be hard, but its power is only part of the
constitutional baggage Brazil is carrying. The country also suffers from
chronic fiscal incontinence, in particular out-of-control tax
exemptions and automatic spending increases. Some of these were
enshrined in the constitution of 1988 to constrain would-be
authoritarian leaders. Some are the fault of Brazil’s Congress, which
has seized control of the federal budget and uses its influence to
finance pet projects. The effect is to crowd out investment and weaken
growth.
In theory, this points to a path
forward. Mr Bolsonaro must be tried for his crimes and punished if found
guilty. Next year the election should be fought over the broader
reforms.
In practice, none of this will be
easy. One obstacle is Mr Trump. He has accused Brazil’s supreme court of
a “witch-hunt” against his friend, and in early August slapped 50%
tariffs on Brazilian goods. The administration has also imposed
Magnitsky sanctions—an exclusion from America’s financial system usually
aimed at human-rights abusers and kleptocrats—on Alexandre de Moraes,
the judge leading the Bolsonaro case. Other officials and politicians
may follow. This recalls an ugly bygone era when the United States
habitually destabilised Latin American countries.
Fortunately,
Mr Trump’s interference is likely to backfire. Only 13% of Brazil’s
exports go to the United States, and they consist largely of
commodities, for which new markets can be found. America has already
granted numerous exemptions. So far, Mr Trump’s attacks have only
strengthened Lula’s standing in opinion polls, and provided him with an
excuse for any poor economic news before the next election, in October
2026.
The domestic obstacles to reform are
greater. Even if the elites want change, Brazil is still a deeply
divided country. Mr Bolsonaro has fanatical supporters who will cause
trouble, especially if the court imposes a stiff sentence. Reforming the
supreme court and the constitution requires groups to give up power for
the common good. It is natural for them to cling to what they have—if
only because they do not trust their enemies. Everyone wants growth, but
to get more of it some people are going to have to surrender some
privileges.
Tensions will therefore be
inevitable. But unlike their counterparts in the United States, many of
Brazil’s mainstream politicians from all parties want to play by the
rules and make progress through reform. Those are the hallmarks of
political maturity. Temporarily at least, the role of the Western
hemisphere’s democratic adult has moved south. ■
ECONOMIST
