An Illiberal Environmental Policy? Bolsonaro’s Government in Brazil (2019-2022)

The discussion on illiberalism has focused on understanding the ideological aspects of this political field. Similarly, crises, electoral polarizations, and far-right governments have reignited the debate on the relationship between ideologies and public policies. Thus, a relevant frontier is to analyze how different political movements and governments identified in this political spectrum translate their ideas into actions. One of the most challenging aspects is separating what is specific to a given policy area from the more general characteristics of the government ideology. In particular, we do not understand enough about the relationship between illiberalism and environmental policies. As a result, we also have few tools to better forecast how illiberal governments will behave in the face of the challenges related to climate change, growing pollution, and the loss of biodiversity. The environmental is a particularly thought-provoking arena given the far right’s aggressive stance of denying scientific knowledge in this area and opposing a certain “politically correct” pro-environmental protection consensus (on different facets of this relationship and examples see e.g., this, this, this, this, and this). Nevertheless, we need to question: Are their aggressive speeches just bravado to win over voters, or do they translate into policy changes? Are these changes motivated solely by ideological convictions or also by vested interests? How deep do these changes go? What factors enable or hinder them? What are their consequences? These questions remain open and are some of the most provocative for contemporary political science.

To deal with these issues, this article analyzes the controversial government of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil between 2019 and 2022 and, more broadly, the political movement that supports it, bolsonarismo. In the existing literature, bolsonarismo has been classified in different ways, adopting various concepts to designate it: populist, reactionary populist, neo-Pentecostal patrimonialist, populist nationalist conservative, and neoliberal neo-extractivist conservative (see also, this). And so, the adjectives pile up. This variety of names is symptomatic of how difficult it is to classify this type of movement, demonstrating that its political character, ideology, and discourse are not easy to grasp. In other words, there is nothing obvious here. As much as we intuitively tend to classify them as “far-right,” this is still an inaccurate way of dealing with the problem and analytically poor, given the wealth of nuances and surprises that come from these movements. This is because they combine in surprising and even contradictory ways close but diverse ideas such as conservatism, scientific denialism, conspiracism, Christianity, historical revisionism, nationalism, nazi-fascism, and even liberalism.

The fact is that bolsonarismo, as well as others like it, escapes the usual typologies adopted in the 20th century to classify political movements. It is, therefore, necessary to explore different ways of interpreting these ideologies until one stands out as the best option for making sense of the object studied. In the case of bolsonarismo, there is neither a robust systematic discussion of its illiberal character nor how this ideology influences the direction of its environmental policies. So, to what extent and in what sense can bolsonarismo be classified as illiberal? How did illiberalism express itself and, to a certain extent, how can it explain the environmental policies of Bolsonaro’s presidency? As I argue in this paper, some typical elements of illiberalism help to give coherence and better interpret the diverse and apparently disconnected actions of the Bolsonaro government vis-à-vis the environment.

Characterizing Bolsonaro’s Illiberalism

Illiberalism develops itself in liberal political environments. In Brazil, it was not different. The main milestone of Brazil’s re-democratization in the 1980s was a new constitution approved in 1988, known as the “Citizen Constitution.” Embodying liberal and republican principles, this constitution created rights for defending minorities, implementing redistributive policies, and protecting the environment. It was the legal foundation under which Brazilian democracy developed over the following decades, consolidating policies and governance arrangements that had important results in various areas, such as public health, education, and the fight against poverty. It steered different governments of the most diverse ideological shades, at different federative levels, characterizing a highly competitive and participatory political system.

Bolsonaro built his political career in these liberal institutions. After being discharged from the Brazilian Army in 1986, he invested his career in legislative politics, first as a Rio de Janeiro city councilman and then as a Federal Deputy, a position he held for 28 years until he became President of Brazil. A severe political and economic crisis affected Brazilian liberal institutions and provided the perfect scenario for this hitherto low-profile politician to aim for the Presidency. Between 2015 and 2016, Brazil went through a harsh instability, marked by fiscal austerity policies and rapid growth in poverty and unemployment. In 2016, then-president Dilma Rousseff, a member of the Workers’ Party (PT – Partido dos Trabalhadores), went through a controversial impeachment process that called into question the very legitimacy of Brazil’s representative institutions (Dilma Rousseff was later found innocent of all the charges she faced in the judicial process, which is why many still consider it to have been a parliamentary coup). In addition, the country was going through a crisis generated by the investigations of the so-called Car Wash operation, which accused several members of the Workers’ Party and other parties in its coalition of embezzling large sums of money. The government of Michel Temer (2016-2018), who preceded Bolsonaro, was also marked by several corruption scandals.

One of the key features of illiberalism is majoritarianism, which designates a political vision that claims to be representative of the people’s true will to build its legitimacy and political power. This logic produces imagined homogeneous majorities. They accept contesting elections but do not mobilize the defense of democracy as a fundamental principle. On the contrary, when electoral majorities differ from those imagined and desired, the accusation of electoral fraud is widespread. Consequently, because they distrust electoral processes, they demand drastic political action to keep the imagined majority in power. For instance, in Brazil, many Bolsonaro supporters explicitly advocate the return of a military dictatorship in Brazil. Not by chance, the Brazilian Supreme Court is prosecuting Bolsonaro and members of his government on charges of having planned a coup d’état after losing the 2022 elections.

In the same way, bolsonarismo attacks one of the classic features of liberalism, which is the defense of minority rights. Misogynistic, anti-blackness discourse, and other forms of Othering have marked Jair Bolsonaro’s political career, even leading to lawsuits and convictions in the country’s Supreme Court. His government dismantled policies to protect minorities, mainly descendants of enslaved people (quilombolas), indigenous peoples, and women. At the legislative level, congressmen from Bolsonaro’s coalition have presented bills and constitutional amendments to criminalize abortion even in cases previously provided for by law.

In addition, Bolsonaro’s majoritarianism is aesthetic, revealing another important feature of illiberalism: nationalism. Bolsonarismo takes the national flag as its main political symbol. Its supporters self-identify as “patriots” and take to the streets wearing the yellow and green jersey of Brazil’s national soccer team. There is no room for a diversity of colors, shapes, or flags. There is only the national symbol and colors to which everyone should submit, which is reminiscent of the jingoism promoted by Brazil’s military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. This is well expressed in the slogan adopted by Bolsonaro’s government—“Brazil above everything, God above all”—which paraphrases the Nazi motto “Deutschland über alles.” It is, therefore, an aesthetic homogenization that is reminiscent of totalitarian movements, such as Nazi-fascism or even Soviet communism. An evident populist trait thus emerges in which the leader places himself as the direct representative of the people, a sense explicit in his other slogan, “My party is Brazil.” In turn, his supporters back him with unrestricted faith in their leader, based more on his charisma and rhetoric (see also this) than rational assessments of his past performance. In the leader’s rhetoric, his followers are the true people. The others, especially minorities, are internal enemies to be fought, representatives of what the far right has called “international communism” and are, therefore, a threat to the true national spirit.

Another characteristic of bolsonarismo, widely shared with other illiberal political movements, is conservative Christian values (see also this and this). According to Rivera and Fidalgo, Bolsonaro received broad support from neo-Pentecostal evangelical churches in the 2018 elections, winning approximately 11 million more votes among these voters than his opponent did. Neo-Pentecostal leaders thus established a strategic alliance with Bolsonaro, seeing his candidacy as an opportunity to reach the center of power. The aim was to impose religious values on society, establishing a political and legal arrangement guided by biblical precepts. The neo-Pentecostals’ main interests were a perfect match for the Bolsonaro candidacy, for a number of reasons. The first was the defense of what they consider to be the “traditional Brazilian family” and their opposition to the advancement of minority rights, such as same-sex marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples. The second was the fight against what they call “gender ideology,” which ranges from the fight for reproductive rights to the recognition of transgender people. The third was unrestricted support for the State of Israel, prioritizing it in Brazilian foreign policy. In addition to these programmatic interests, instrumental objectives motivated their support, such as guaranteeing tax exemption for churches and obtaining diplomatic passports for religious leaders. It has to be said that conservative Catholic sectors also defended these agendas and massively supported Bolsonaro. Therefore, during this period, a logic of deprivatization of religion or religious patrimonialism gained strength, in which religious actors mobilized their political strength to impose their morals on the public space, translating them into public policies and justifications for bills and constitutional amendments.

Regarding economic policy, it is not yet clear whether there is a typical profile in illiberalism. However, increasingly, it seems that such a profile may come paradoxically close to ultra-liberalism. Not surprisingly, many illiberal governments have taken measures that are close to economic nationalism, particularly when it comes to international trade, challenging many of the liberal precepts consolidated in orthodox economic theory. However, when we look at some of the most striking features of the economic measures taken by governments such as Donald Trump, in US, and Javier Milei, in Argentina, we see that they take a wildly liberal turn, which removes the regulatory and redistributive capacity of the State. For instance, social and foreign aid programs are usually dismantled and highly regressive tax systems instituted.

In order to meet the demands of one of his most important support bases, Bolsonaro advocated an unrestricted expansion of agriculture in biomes of incredible biodiversity.

In the case of the Bolsonaro government, there is no doubt that similar actions were guided by the typical neoliberal prescription, perhaps even accentuating it in the direction of an ultra-liberalism inspired by the Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. His policies followed a narrow agenda of fiscal austerity, cutting social spending and carrying out a very severe and unequal pension reform, as well as advancing an agenda of privatizations, attracting foreign capital, and approving the formal independence of the Central Bank. In addition, in order to meet the demands of one of his most important support bases—the business community of agricultural product exporters—Bolsonaro advocated an unrestricted expansion of agriculture (see also here) in biomes of incredible biodiversity, such as the Cerrado (Brazilian savannah) and the Amazon (rainforest) (for more on this theme see this, this, and this). Likewise, it defended the mining of these areas, even if it violated environmental laws and the rights of Indigenous peoples. In this way, Bolsonaro’s economic policy combined ultra-liberalism with a deepening neo-extractivist model meant to drive economic growth without redistributive results.

Illiberalism and the Environment: What Can the Bolsonaro Government Teach Us about this Relationship?

The characteristics of bolsonarismo analyzed above are crucial to understanding some striking features of Brazilian environmental policy between 2019 and 2022. These features are the denial of science, growing militarism, the attack on Indigenous peoples and traditional communities, and the dismantling of spaces for participation, transparency, and social control.

The militarization of the environmental area has also moved in the same direction. According to Schmidt, between 2013 and 2021, there was a 193% increase in military personnel occupying civilian positions which was particularly accentuated after 2019, when Bolsonaro took office. This replacement of civilians by military personnel occurred mainly in positions with vast amounts of decision-making power. The growth in the military presence in these positions was significant in the environmental area, where the number of military personnel allocated to the Ministry of the Environment quadrupled, from 0.8% in 2018 to 2.5% in 2021, precisely in positions of higher hierarchy. Militarization of posts and persecution of civilian bureaucrats was also an intense occurrence in the bodies responsible for policies focused on indigenous and traditional populations. This militarization did not happen by chance. Bolsonarismo takes up a view that was widespread during the military dictatorship and is still very strong in the Brazilian Army: that occupying the Amazon through colonization policies, infrastructure, and agricultural expansion is crucial to guaranteeing control over that territory. This view permeates a broader perception, expressed in several of Bolsonaro’s speeches, that environmental regulations are an obstacle to economic growth and that environmentalism is an ideology part and parcel of global communism and, therefore, represents a threat to the nation. In practice, militarizing the bureaucratic structures responsible for environmental protection was intended to implement this vision, reducing control and regulation activities on environmental crimes. It was also a strategy to promote economic growth by exporting agricultural and mineral commodities.

In Bolsonaro’s view, environmental regulations are an obstacle to economic growth, and environmentalism is an ideology part and parcel of global communism. It therefore represents a threat to the nation.

Another key aspect was the attack on and violation of the rights of native peoples and traditional communities. This point is perfectly in line with a more general attribute of illiberalism, which is to attack the rights of minorities and refuse to recognize the profound differences that constitute society. In Brazil, as in other parts of the world, indigenous peoples’ lands have been important spaces for environmental preservation. Likewise, traditional communities have contributed to the sustainable management of considerable areas of various biomes. Precisely because these populations preserve their lands, there are valuable resources within these territories. This is also why groups who illegally press for expanding primary economic activities have been targeting these areas (on this point see this, this, this, and this). Under Bolsonaro, these groups received a free pass to advance on lands reserved for Indigenous peoples and traditional communities. Socio-environmental conflicts intensified significantly during this period, reaching situations of extreme violence against some indigenous peoples, such as the case of the Ianomani people in the Brazilian Amazon (see also this and this). There was an increase in the murder of grassroots leaders and environmentalists, too. In addition, the coalition that gave Bolsonaro congressional support, primarily representing huge rural producers, sought to advance bills and constitutional amendments that would dismantle the set of rights established in the 1988 Constitution to protect indigenous peoples and their territories (on the dynamics at play here see this, this, and this).

Finally, another line of action was dismantling spaces for participation, transparency, and social control. Brazilian democracy has developed since the 1990s, anchored in various structures for the direct participation of citizens and civil society organizations in government affairs. Bolsonaro’s administration took several measures to dismantle institutionalized spaces for political participation, especially policy councils. Analyzing the impact of these actions on more than 103 councils operating at the Federal level, Bezerra et al. concluded that the area most affected by the revocation of the functioning of councils, especially those less institutionalized, was the environment. These measures reduced civil society’s ability to monitor government actions, paving the way for deregulation and ignoring illegal practices with harmful environmental consequences.

Conclusions

This brief analysis sought to demonstrate how Bolsonaro’s environmental policy aligns with the ideological foundations of illiberalism. It opens a path for advancing comparative research that might identify whether these logics are also relevant to other governments with similar political orientations. Likewise, it is necessary to theorize how environmental policy relates to liberal doctrines and, consequently, to their negation, illiberalism.

A critical topic is the attacks on minorities’ rights, especially those whose importance for environmental preservation is increasingly recognized, such as Indigenous peoples and local communities. It brings an important field of comparative research on illiberalism: the study of how illiberal governments (re)act in the face of participatory institutions opened to the political action of these minorities. Here, another important aspect of illiberalism emerges: even when elections are maintained, the actions of illiberal governments demonstrate an aversion to civil society participation and create institutions incapable of being held accountable. Therefore, in the most optimistic scenario, they would build low-participation democracies without accountability. These elements seem typical of illiberal thinking precisely because there are relevant arguments in the liberal tradition to defend the role of associations and civil society participation in democratic consolidation. Thus, it is necessary to investigate whether the dismantling of participation had a doctrinal character, opposing the liberal tradition, or was merely a pragmatic maneuver to remove obstacles to deregulation. A further investigation into the dismantling of participatory spaces that provide transparency and social control over policies is likewise crucial.  

Another aspect that requires further study is the relationship between scientific denialism and illiberalism. Can denialism be explained solely by pragmatic reasons linked to economic interests, or is there a more profound logic that makes it possible to understand why governments that we usually identify as illiberal also tend to be deniers? A starting point would be understanding how contemporary far-right ideologies adopt a broader denial of Enlightenment ideas and investigating the relationships between liberalism, rationality, and the construction of modern scientific knowledge.

Finally, political analysts must pay greater attention to militarism. Could this be a particular characteristic of the Bolsonaro government, given his career in the Brazilian Army and Brazil’s authoritarian past? Or have other illiberal leaders, usually civilians, also relied heavily on military personnel as a basis for political support and placed them in strategic positions for the state administration, substituting civilians? These are relevant questions since the development of civil rights, which curb the power of the State over society, is one of the central features of the history of political liberalism. This suggests that those responsible for waging war should be progressively removed from political leadership positions. In other words, civilian control over military personnel should be advancing, according to liberal thinking. Thus, it is necessary to identify whether the recurring practice of illiberal politicians persecuting and dismantling civilian bureaucracies has led to increasing militarization.

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Guilherme de Queiroz-Stein holds a PhD in public policy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul and is a strategy analyst at FINEP: Innovation and Research. He is also a visiting researcher at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and a member of the Graduate School of Politics at the University of Münster, Germany. His research interests cover national and international governance arrangements, political dynamics, and socioenvironmental and economic impacts in areas like bioeconomy, biodiversity, energy transitions, and sustainable development goals. His work has been published in Earth System Governance, Forest Policy and Economics, and the Brazilian Political Science Review.

Image: “Bolsonaro aniversario da constituição 10” by Marcos Brandão CC Attribution 2.0 Generic