Tag: Brazil

Image RIO DE JANEIRO — Members of Brazil’s armed forces, who have largely stayed out of political life since the end of the military dictatorship 30 years ago, are making their biggest incursion into politics in decades, with some even warning of a military intervention. The growing appeal of Brazil’s armed forces in politics comes amid a rightward shift in South America and rising authoritarianism in democratic nations including Poland, Hungary, the Philippines and Turkey. Mr. Bolsonaro, the first former military officer to mount a viable bid for the presidency since democracy was restored, recently said he would appoint generals to lead ministries, “not because they are generals, but because they are competent.” The campaigns seize on broad frustrations across Brazil. “This is a cry of desperation against all of this corruption,” said Luciano Zucco, a 44-year-old lieutenant colonel who took a leave of absence from the army this month to run for a state legislature seat. “There are many people trying to create the conditions for that, but for my part, I don’t believe it.” Maurício Santoro, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University, said that while no one in Brazil was calling for a lasting dictatorship, many Brazilians, particularly those who did not live through military rule, found the idea of a short intervention appealing. “You have many people in Brazil who like the idea of the military throwing out the current political class and in six months calling for a new election.” The debate over such an intervention has grown as active duty and retired high-ranking generals have weighed in on political issues in ways not seen since the dictatorship years. General Bôas, the commander of the army, took the highly unusual step in April of issuing a statement on Twitter that was widely interpreted as a warning to the Supreme Court. It was a particularly big decision, because Mr. da Silva was running for president again and appeared to be the front-runner in the race. “We want to adhere to the rule of law as much as possible,” Mr. Mourão said. Military leaders still do not refer to that era as a dictatorship, contending that the armed forces in fact preserved democracy by sparing Brazil from the rule of authoritarian socialists.

Disparate bands of truckers turned to the messaging app to organize thousands of drivers in the largest and most effective truckers strike in the nation’s history. “We tried to do this many times before WhatsApp, but it has never been so successful,” said Rutino, who has been driving trucks for 40 years. The truckers strike began in mid-May. They quickly struck a deal to temporarily clear the highways in return for temporary cuts to fuel prices. Eight days into the strike, 87 percent of Brazilians supported the truckers, according to one poll. We had to identify the leadership at the base of the movement, which had been started through WhatsApp,” Da Costa said. Da Costa called these leaders in for a meeting and transmitted their requests to the state governor. The governor struck a deal with the representatives for lower state vehicle taxes and tolls, and mediated an accord with Temer to slash the cost of diesel. WhatsApp has become a depository for outrage against the political elite in a country with 35 political parties, where the line between corruption and compromise can be especially thin. Social networks increase the pressure and allow it to be organized pragmatically,” said Francisco Bosco, a philosopher who wrote a book about social media and political culture in Brazil.

Image RIO DE JANEIRO — A new Netflix series about a sprawling corruption investigation has muscled its way into Brazil’s heated politics, outraging supporters of a leftist former president who is trying to make a comeback and stirring debate about how closely a docudrama should adhere to the facts. “I think this is very serious for them.” The show’s creator, José Padilha, a Brazilian based in Los Angeles, said the furor had only benefited the series. Three successive presidents have been implicated: Mr. da Silva, who was convicted of corruption and money laundering; Ms. Rousseff, who was impeached and removed from office over unrelated charges of violating budgetary rules but also faced criminal investigations; and the incumbent, Michel Temer, who has faced charges and remains under investigation. Mr. da Silva wants to stand as a candidate in the October election, although he was convicted last year of corruption and still faces charges in six other corruption cases. The title of the Netflix series comes from Mr. Padilha’s theory, expounded in columns, that only the corrupt can get ahead in Brazilian politics. Some critics have called him a reactionary, a charge he denies; he has made donations to a smaller left-wing party that has not been embroiled in the corruption investigation. On the left, the response to Mr. Padilha’s show has been outrage. “I think he did it well, though reality is richer.” In a speech during a rally last Wednesday, Mr. da Silva said he might sue Netflix. “The series fuels already existent points of view,” he said. “A lot of what is in there is very well known to Brazilians.” But the series has found some fans among Brazilians.

Editor's Note: At the end of each week, one of the rotating editors for Future Development—Shanta Devarajan, Wolfgang Fengler, Indermit Gill, or Homi Kharas—provides recommended literature on a specific development topic. A case in point is the effect of trade opening on wage inequality, which, according to economics, could be ambiguous whereas the political rhetoric, especially in rich countries, is that it is always harmful. A recent paper in VoxDev reconciles this difference by showing that the initial effect of trade liberalization is increased wage inequality, but as firms’ input costs fall further, wage inequality begins to decline. In addition to deriving the result theoretically, they empirically corroborate it with data from Brazil. The implication here is that the people protesting trade liberalization may be capturing a longer-term effect than economists’ short-run models. They find that Kenyan workers will remain competitive for about 20 years, which gives low-income country governments a window of opportunity to prepare for the technological changes, especially if they focus on the less-automated sectors such as food and beverages, garments, metals, and paper. The messages resonate with an earlier study, entitled “Trouble in the Making,” by my World Bank colleagues, Mary Hallward-Driemeier and Gaurav Nayyar. Finally, the 2011 Arab Spring revolutions pose a puzzle for economists because most standard economic indicators, such as GDP growth, poverty, inequality, and access to basic services were improving in the first decade of this century. Hassan Hakimian at University of London provides an explanation, drawing on Aristotle’s famous quote, “In order to secure his power, a tyrant must keep the population in poverty, so that the preoccupation with daily bread leaves them no leisure to conspire against the tyrant.” Hassan suggests that the growing prosperity raised expectations, particularly of the middle class, which the current regimes were not able to fulfill. The hypothesis echoes Elena Ianchovichina’s and my paper, “A Broken Social Contract, Not High Inequality, Led to the Arab Spring.” Related

Nearly 300 academics and activists gathered over a weekend recently at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague for an extraordinary, highly animated conversation about ‘authoritarian populism and the rural world’. What, then, does the rise of such different forms of authoritarian populism mean for rural peoples around the world? Many themes emerged. Authoritarian populisms The term ‘authoritarian populism’ we used to frame the conference was intensely debated. The need for a new narrative to counter authoritarian populism, one that is popular, inclusive and progressive was a common call across the event. Religion and moral solidarities Religion was a common theme; one not often discussed in gatherings on agrarian issues. With such repressive closing down, how can emancipatory alternatives emerge? There was much talk too of the importance of cross-class mobilisation and the importance of intersectional analysis and organising. But the challenges of generating and sustaining alternatives are very real. Our focus is on the rural origins and consequences of authoritarian populism, as well as the forms of resistance and variety of alternatives that are emerging.

Is hosting the World Cup a “propaganda victory” for Vladimir Putin? Happily for our purposes – I am using only World Cups and European Championships, because I have more polling information and more democracies to choose from – the most recent two contests occurred in democracies and relatively close to an election. France hosted the 2016 European Championship, reaching the final before losing to Portugal, a successful tournament by anyone’s standards. The winners, Portugal, had had an election the year before. The most recent World Cup was hosted in Brazil, the summer before their presidential election. Maddeningly, winners Germany had just had an election a year before, but Angela Merkel does appear to have had a small bounce in the polls in the immediate aftermath, but it is hard to be sure: her ruling CDU/CSU went from polling around 40 per cent to around 44 percent, so barely outside the margin of error. Frustratingly, Poland had had elections a year prior, so our information is less useful, but Ukraine, like Brazil, had an election the following autumn, where the incumbent government was re-elected. Victory in the Euros actually coincided with a fall in the polls for Spain’s ruling People’s Party. But the hosting nations had no political boost and the governing parties in Austria both slumped to their worst-ever performances in the snap elections that followed the autumn after the contest. So the recent evidence, such as it is, is clear: there is no political dividend for Vladimir Putin to be had in Russia hosting the World Cup.

Shares in miner Grupo Mexico put downward pressure on the stock index, slipping 2.08 percent. Brazil's Bovespa dipped 0.04 percent as President Michel Temer continues to face difficulties pushing through a pension reform seen as key to shoring up fiscal health. Stock indexes daily % YTD % Latest change change MSCI Emerging Markets 1152.40 -0.37 33.65 Chile IPSA 5034.33 -1.84 21.27 Currencies daily % YTD % change change Latest Brazil real 3.2226 0.38 0.83 Mexico peso 18.61 0.18 11.47 Chile peso 635 -0.22 5.65 Colombia peso 2976.75 -0.13 0.83 Peru sol 3.237 -0.03 5.47 Argentina peso (interbank) 17.38 0.17 -8.66 Argentina peso (parallel) 18.05 0.22 -6.81