Brazil’s fledgling democracy is in peril of failing. Meanwhile, its political economy, at the federal and the local and regional levels, is mired in illegal conduct. In a modern democracy with a robust political economy, such as that found in Canada, politics and economics are fundamentally inseparable, mutually interdependent, not dichotomous, and political actions influence economic outcomes.
Moreover, political economy is fundamentally interdisciplinary, drawing from economics, political science, law, history and other social sciences. Whereas, in Brazil, a colony of Portugal for over three centuries, there was no democracy at all until recently. And political economy was colonial in nature. In 1985, an election ushered in civilian rule and thus began the expected democratization of the country, and with it a nascent and post-colonial political economy started to slowly take shape. Progress, however, has consistently been hampered by endemic corruption, a breakdown of law-and-order, the spread of the coronavirus, and the weaknesses of a fledgling democracy.
In January 2019, Jair Bolsonaro, a former military officer, was elected president on the promise of tackling law-and-order problems. He had campaigned on a fresh start that would purge corruption, crime and other illegal conduct. Instead, corruption and scandals have rocked his presidency by implicating him, directly and indirectly, and his conduct is increasingly viewed as illegal. Exacerbating this situation is the comprehensive impact of the coronavirus on all aspects of life, governance and democracy in Brazil. This has prompted the nation’s political economy to take shape in a manner that is exposing actions that are not founded on good governance but rather on shenanigans, political maneuvering, right-wing values (as was the case during colonial times), and the promotion of Bolsonaro’s personal and ideological agendas.
