One, the dictator’s daughter, would be surprising for Peruvians, accustomed to rejecting her in the second round of presidential elections since 2011. But it would not be unusual among countries that are part of the so-called third wave of democratization, after the 1970s.
About a fifth of these nations elected former authoritarian leaders or their children as presidents or prime ministers, says Canadian political scientist James Loxton. The professor of comparative politics at the University of Sydney is the author of the article “Why do we elect former dictators and their children?”, published in April’s Journal of Democracy.
“I use the term ‘authoritarian heritage’ to describe the simple but also somewhat uncomfortable fact that it may be advantageous for authoritarian successor parties, or for the former dictator’s children or the former dictator himself, to have roots in a democracy,” he says.
The main examples in Brazil are , elected in 1950 after establishing a dictatorship, the Estado Novo, in 1937, and the PFL (Liberal Front Party), a dissident from the Arena (National Renewal Alliance), an acronym that supported the current name .
According to the scientist, the popularity of may be a kind of new example of this phenomenon, although he was not a dictator.
“There are clear parallels between us, Bolsonaro in Brazil and this phenomenon of dictators and children of dictators”, says Loxton. “We can clearly see the general phenomenon of authoritarian nostalgia in the current Brazilian context.”
You state that approximately one-fifth of the countries that democratized after 1970 placed former dictators or children of former dictators in power. What explains this?
This is part of a larger phenomenon: the fact that it is very common for voters, in democratic regimes, to elect parties or candidates with roots in previous dictatorships. If we look at Brazil, for example, we have the case of Getúlio Vargas.
I’ve spent my career studying these parties, which I call authoritarian successor parties, that emerge from a dictatorship and then elect politicians in democratic regimes. From the mid-1970s to the present, voters have used the power of the vote to elect an authoritarian successor party in more than half of all the world’s democracies. This is already quite surprising.
But the phenomenon of children of former dictators, or in some cases of former dictators themselves, like Vargas, is even more dramatic. We cannot say that voters did not realize that the candidate emerged from the old regime.
Of course they notice, and that’s actually the main appeal. If you go to Keiko Fujimori’s website now and scroll to the bottom, it will read: “Positive legacy. Deeds that transformed the world.” And then a description of Alberto Fujimori’s regime: economic stabilization, national pacification, social programs. Voters often vote because they have a positive view of that former dictatorship.
About Keiko Fujimori: she never denied her father’s legacy, but, in these elections, she is more dedicated to bringing his memory to light. She started the day of the first shift, for example, on his grave. How do these two dynamics — honoring and denying the father’s legacy — appear in the children of dictators?
I don’t think they can deny their parents’ legacy. In the case of the authoritarian successor parties, some of them embrace the legacy, while others are a little more ambivalent.
If we look, for example, at the case of Brazil: the party that was previously known as PFL, later became Democrats and now I think it even has another name [União Brasil]tried to distance itself from the former military regime, even though it was the main stronghold of former regime officials.
But if you’re a Keiko Fujimori, that’s not feasible. Are you going to report your father or pretend you don’t know who he is? The only option left is to embrace the legacy and hope that, for a large portion of voters, that will be enough. She has already run for President three times and, each time, she reached the second round and lost by the smallest margin.
We don’t know what will happen now, but either she wins with 50.1% of the votes or she loses with 49.9%. In any case, about half of the Peruvian electorate saw the daughter of a former dictator and thought, “She’s my candidate. I like what she represents.”
You mentioned the reformulation of the PFL’s image, but parties linked to dictatorships often have some advantages after the country’s democratization…
For some of them, it’s better to embrace the brand. In the case of the PFL, they tried to deny their links with the old regime. The fact that they changed the name to Democrats is not subtle.
What I can say is that right-wing parties with roots in military regimes usually have very strong connections with the business sector, which is useful, especially in a country like Brazil, where elections are so expensive.
They often have networks of people, especially in poorer regions, who depend a lot on aid, on free things, just to meet their basic needs. These networks are sometimes built under a dictatorship, and if this network is inherited by the politician or party, this can be useful.
It is often said that Brazil’s failure to punish its dictators led to the normalization of this authoritarian period. And, normally, our case is compared with that of Argentina, which managed to punish its dictators. Is this a good strategy to try to prevent dictators from returning to power?
To be honest, I’m a little skeptical of this argument. I want to be clear: I think former dictators should be punished, but I don’t think that guarantees that they will lose popular support or anything like that.
In the case of Argentina, an aspect that is often ignored is that, although it is true that there was no nationally authoritarian successor party that returned to power or even became viable in Argentina, several former officials of that regime won governments.
In many cases, the regime’s most iconic and notorious figures did very well in subnational elections.
But the reason why, on a national level, we have not found a significant authoritarian successor party in Argentina is not because former members of the military junta and other officials were tried and found guilty by the judicial system, it is because the regime ended very badly. It ended after this humiliating defeat for the United Kingdom in the Falklands War, in the midst of a terrible economic crisis.
In many cases, these dictators had low popularity and, years later, returned to power. A few years ago, for example, it was much less common to see the defense in Brazil. Do people forget the bad parts or are they just ashamed of supporting an authoritarian regime at a time of democratic openness?
I see Bolsonaro and his movement, which represents approximately half the country, as a very extreme example of what I call authoritarian nostalgia.
If we reflect on nostalgia in our own lives, if I think back to when I was a teenager, for example, I think, “Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to that time?” But maybe I know it wasn’t amazing. I’m rewriting my past.
I think the same thing happens when, in countries like Brazil, people remember the old dictatorships. “Okay, things weren’t perfect, but at least it was safe or everyone had a job. There was no corruption.” Things that are actually false.
And this can have an even more powerful effect among people like you or your generation, who did not live under the dictatorship. They can make up whatever they want about the past.
What is the role of the internet in all this?
It is easier to access information today than at any other time in history. But this does not mean that the information we have access to is accurate. In fact, much of it is misinformation. And an extreme example of this is .
The current president of the Philippines is called Ferdinand Marcos Jr., but everyone calls him Bong Bong. He has the same name as Ferdinand Marcos, his father, who was dictator of the Philippines for about two decades until 1986, when he was deposed.
In my opinion, all dictators are bad, but some at least can point to some kind of achievement. They may be terrible in many ways, but actually stabilizing the economy or something — that’s not the case with Marcos.
His dictatorship was terrible from a human rights point of view, but it was also terrible from a governance point of view. He did not manage the economy well. He and his wife were some of the most corrupt dictators in history. A kleptocracy, a regime that exists to steal, to extort the population.
However, when Bong Bong decided to run for President, he openly and enthusiastically embraced his father’s legacy and was supported by a veritable army of internet users who posted videos on YouTube and several other platforms spreading blatant lies about what the regime had been like. Trying to justify the corruption of that period with conspiracy theories, creating an alternative history that, according to Philippine political analysts, played a crucial role in the elections.
Could the understanding that a democracy will not necessarily result in a more stable country help?
I think it is very important to understand what democracy is. To use a visual metaphor: you can imagine a spectrum in which democracy is at the top and authoritarianism at the bottom, and another spectrum that goes from good government on the left and bad government on the right.
Democracy, authoritarianism, good government and bad government are orthogonal. There is no relationship between one and the other. We can fill all four quadrants.
There are examples of authoritarian regimes that govern well, such as . Or we can look at , a dictatorship that is one of the most poorly governed places in the world.
And there are countries like , a or , which are well-governed democracies, and there are other democracies that are not well governed.
I think sometimes voters make a mistake in forgetting that these are different spectrums. They live in a democracy, and things aren’t going very well, for example. Maybe the economy is not doing well, maybe there is a lot of violence, maybe there have been some corruption scandals. And they assume, “Well, I don’t like it.”
At that moment, bad government and democracy seem to go hand in hand. “If we go back to being a dictatorship, then we will have a good government,” they might think. But they are different spectrums.
In Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, is in second place in voting intentions, behind (PT). And although Bolsonaro was not a dictator, he was a president with authoritarian tendencies and convicted of an attempted coup. How do you evaluate this scenario?
There are clear parallels between Donald Trump in the USA, Bolsonaro in Brazil and this phenomenon of dictators and sons of dictators.
Did Trump become a dictator? No. Did he try to become one? More or less. Did Bolsonaro become a dictator? No. Did he try to become one? For sure.
As we now know, thanks to the judicial investigations that took place in Brazil, much more serious than those in the USA, he met with senior military officers. Some people in your inner circle. If he had succeeded, Brazil would certainly have regressed to some form of authoritarianism.
What will happen in the next Brazilian election? I have no idea, but I suspect it will be something similar to the second round of the Peruvian election. Maybe Lula will win, maybe Flávio Bolsonaro will win. But either way, it will be something like 49.9% versus 50.1%.
Approximately half of the Brazilian population will look back on the Bolsonaro years and say: “That was excellent. We want more, please.” And approximately the other half of the population will be horrified by this and, of course, will vote for Lula. But the same phenomenon of authoritarian nostalgia is present. Nostalgia for the old military regime and now nostalgia for the Bolsonaro years.
While it is true, as you said, that Bolsonaro never became a dictator, it was not for lack of trying, and we can clearly see the general phenomenon of authoritarian nostalgia in the current Brazilian context.
X-ray | James Loxton
Professor at the University of Sydney (Australia), he has a doctorate from Harvard University and author of three books on politics, two on Latin America. He was a visiting professor at the universities of Oxford, Princeton and Notre Dame.
