The last government elected before the 1964 military coup resulted from a dispute that brought a right-wing populist leader, Jânio Quadros, to the Planalto Palace. The first president elected after the dictatorship was another, . Populism —especially right-wing populism— is not uncommon in Brazilian politics, but something recurrent. Anyone who watches the excellent documentary “”, by Charly Braun (Globoplay), about the rise and fall of Collor, will not fail to notice how much he has in common —in the anti-system speech and the messianic image of the Savior of the Fatherland— with characters as different as Quadros, and, naturally, .
In fact, in Brazil there is a large reservoir of voters willing to believe that a providential leader can, alone, change the country’s course. This disposition is associated with a deep distrust in relation to political institutions, particularly high in Brazil — even when compared to Latin American countries similar to us in terms of socioeconomic modernization and democratic experience.
The lack of trust in institutions makes solutions based on negotiation, compromise and collective construction unattractive. Parties, Congress, bureaucracies and courts are seen as obstacles or irremediably corrupt spaces. In this insecure environment, the expectation thrives that politics can be replaced by the will of a supposedly immaculate leader willing to face the robbery rooted in the Powers of the Republic and in the parties.
The brings to light a paradox of . It works precisely by creating mechanisms to control and monitor power: free press; independent investigations; state control bodies; and civil society organizations — all essential to limiting abuses, revealing wrongdoing and holding governments accountable.
But in societies where the credibility of political institutions is low, those same mechanisms produce an ambiguous effect. The repeated — and necessary — exposure of scandals and irregularities reinforces the perception that all institutions are dysfunctional and politics is essentially venal. Its reverberation on social media — where truths, half-truths, rumors and fabrications receive the same treatment — helps to increase widespread discredit. This is what populism of any political color feeds on.
This is when the quality of operation of control systems becomes decisive. In societies with little trust, journalistic “scoops” devoid of evidence, long, poorly delimited, secretive investigations or accompanied by partial disclosure of findings tend to increase widespread skepticism, even if they reveal real irregularities. The repeated exposure of suspicions, without visible evidence and clear outcomes, reinforces the perception that politics is structurally corrupt. Therefore, it is not only the existence of controls that matters, but the way in which complaints are investigated, how the justice system processes them and, above all, whether they produce valid results.
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