Abstract
We advocate for the relevance of taking Brazilian past experience and theorization of populism into account to understand present-day challenges. We depart from Weffort’s conceptualization of populism to discuss the role of businesspeople movements in supporting and taking control of the political agenda through think tanks. According to Weffort, populism is built over precarious alliances that tend to favor policy or politics in different moments. During times of divergence among political elites, a populist leader emerges as a mediator in orchestrating an unstable hegemony among asymmetric classes. At the same time, the classes included in the populist alliance give legitimacy to the populist leader; they hinder his capacity of imposing decisions. However, treason of the weakest within the alliance is certain. We suggest that the political role played by the think tank IPES, in 1960s Brazil, in reframing middle-class demands is akin to contemporary populist events in Brazil—represented by the election of Jair Bolsonaro—and in the Anglo-Saxon world. Trumpism and Brexit are examples of a still-powerful free-market ideology project wrapped up under a populist discourse (re)framed with the support of businessmen and think tanks. A corporate takeover of government and the imposition of a free-market agenda are certain, as it is the treason of the weakest in the populist coalition. CMS academics should engage with the demands that give birth to populist movements as a way to dispute the neoliberal hegemony and anti-democratic populist solutions.
As ‘CMS scholars [we] are tangled up in populism and elitism’ (Stookey, 2008: 922). CMS thinking needs to establish a multiparty dialogue by people advancing situated knowledge to unravel this situation (Ibarra-Colado, 2008). Thus, recognizing and translating the Latin American experience may contribute to new understandings of the current discussion on populism. We take on the challenge of ‘developing historical approaches to understand how and why populist events came about’ (Robinson and Bristow, 2016: 5), and to position CMS to understand them (Bristow and Robinson, 2018).
Populism has a long history in Brazil (Sader, 2005) and in Latin America (Germani et al., 1973; Kaltwasser, 2014a). We sustain that businesspeople had a significant impact on populist struggles in the Brazilian past. Populism studies in Brazil date back to the 1950s (Dulci, 1986; Gomes, 1996); Francisco Weffort, its leading theorist, and his studies remain paradigmatic (Bresser-Pereira, 1978; Gomes, 1996). Through the 1960s and the 1970s, Weffort published various manuscripts approaching the subject, including journal articles in French (Weffort, 1968) and English (Weffort, 1966). His works were consolidated in the 2003 edition of O popoulismo na política brasileira (The Populism in Brazilian Politics), first published in 1978 (Weffort, 1978). It will be our main reference for this text (Weffort, 2003).
During the 1960s, Brazilian business articulated themselves around a think tank, the Institute for Social and Economic Thinking (IPES) (Barros and Taylor, 2018; Dreifuss, 1980; Starling, 1986). They conquered support of medium classes and framed the entrance of new groups in Brazilian society as a danger to Brazilian culture and Catholic traditions (Dreifuss, 1980). The role of businesspeople around IPES led Siekman (1964) to frame it as ‘executives turned revolutionaries’ (p. 147). A leading Brazilianist referred to the IPES members as a ‘businessmen movement’ (Skidmore, 1967), a time when Brazilian and US ‘Businessmen took up the civic action idea readily’ and threw themselves in the political arena (Leacock, 1990: 184).
The process developed in 1960s Brazil resembles events in the present. In Brazil, authors are comparing the role of IPES in the 1960s to prevailing activities of Millennium Institute organized by businessmen to promote right-wing candidates (Pastore, 2012). Brazilian society faced profound socioeconomic changes, questions about the limits of representative democracy, and the place trade unions and workers should have in society. Recently, a global economic crisis that destabilized the traditional order crept into the political system, while dissatisfaction grew. Analyzing these events may throw new lights into current populist outbursts. Brexit, Trumpism, and the election of other strongmen, such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, in 2018, also happen in an environment with major structural changes.
We connect the concept of populism developed by Weffort with the regular participation of business in politics in different geographies. Therefore, our objective is to emphasize the importance of the political context to understand populism and the role firms and businesspeople play in it. It is necessary to apprehend the historical context that brewed the demands that enabled a populist movement (Weffort, 2003). We join efforts with other authors from the Global South that are calling for more research on the role of business (Masood and Nisar, 2020), other organizations, such as international organs (Cooke, 2004), and technocracy (Bickerton and Accetti, 2017; Hanlon, 2018) in politics.
Politics and economics are intertwined (Barley, 2010; Parker, 2003; Salles-Djelic, 2017). The relation between business and politics is labeled nonmarket strategies and already has a long tradition of research (e.g. Mellahi et al., 2016). New research efforts aim to shed new lights on the role of corporations in the broader political sphere (Scherer et al., 2014). Some authors already highlight the importance of moving this discussion toward making business and their networks accountable (Barros and Taylor, 2018; Salles-Djelic, 2017).
The potential of engaging with business and politics, including from an ethical perspective, is still not fulfilled (Barros and Taylor, 2018; Prasad and Mills, 2010). In addition, business and businesspeople are relevant agents in the development of populist alternatives around the globe. Business elites are unable to offer an alternative to exclusionary capitalism. Thus, they aim to develop cultural and political frames to guide debates in society. Using think tanks, the media, or direct communication, they usually offer a passport to a nostalgic past, when neoliberal globalization was a one-way imperial relationship (Foroughi et al., 2019).
In the next session, we introduce Weffort’s concept, which is followed by the analysis of competing right- and left-wing populism in Brazil in the early 1960s. We then conclude making an analogy of what happened then to what is taking place now in Brazil and elsewhere. A democratic tragedy may lead to the separation between policy and politics (Schmidt, 2006).
Weffort’s accounts of populism in Brazil
Weffort (2003) investigated Brazilian populism from 1930 to 1964. Weffort (2003) contended that populism in Brazil emerged due to power shifts within the elites and the emergence of new popular actors. The great depression altered the dynamics of elite power all over Latin America (Dulci, 1986). Changes in the Brazilian economic structure forced the accommodation of new personages into the political scene. The emergence of the organized agrarian laborer, the industrial worker, and urbanization increased the pressure into the political game (Weffort, 2003).
Weffort considers populism a precarious political alliance. The new political actors could not be considered a class with a conscience in the Marxist sense or a shared experience of living (Gomes, 1996; Weffort, 2003). Heterogeneity increased the tension in the populist block but did not make subjects into passive agents. The workers were actively living through their experiences and possibilities (Gomes, 1996). However, some groups within the coalition were more effective in advancing their causes (Weffort, 2003).
Populism allowed disorganized masses struggling for representation in the political arena to voice their discontent (Weffort, 2003). Thus, populism appears especially in political systems that are facing a crisis of representation. Beyond the sociopolitical dimensions, successful populism reorganizes the social around their interests (Ianni, 1991). Therefore, populism aims to build a historical bloc, a collective of heterogeneous actors under the negotiated direction of one of its components (Gramsci, 1971).
In this sense, the cultural aspect is relevant, and the physical dimension and conditions of everyday life cannot be set aside as well (Gramsci, 1971). When these demands are articulated as a legitimate political platform, they create a two-way frame. The ‘people’ increasingly builds its identity from those demands. On the other hand, the political system has to recognize those demands and must create ways to accommodate the pressure it creates (Kaltwasser, 2014b; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2017).
Thus, for Weffort (2003), populism is a permanent process of consensus-building among asymmetric forces. The turbulent political environment opens a space for populist leaders to appear as mediators among competing political actors. These leaders displaced organizations such as parties or unions. On the other hand, those organizations were not prepared to include millions of previously disenfranchised people suddenly. Populism represents an alliance marked by ambiguity: the leader mediates the inclusion of the masses in the political game. The people recognize the legitimacy of the leader as their representative, while other democratic organizations are disempowered. Concomitantly, the articulation of multiple demands by the people limits the power of the populist leader who may have to manage conflictive views within the same bloc (Weffort, 2003). The groups organized as a mass is as a source of legitimacy. They also are contained ‘within a scheme of “polyclassist” alliance, which deprived them of their autonomy’ (Weffort, 1978: 74).
Moreover, Weffort (2003) suggested that within the precarious alliance that gave legitimacy to the populist leader, the end result would be the betrayal of the weakest classes within the alliance, since not all promises made by the leader would be delivered.
Unlike other populist experiences, such as the Populist Party in the United States, Latin American populism has always been an urban phenomenon (Dulci, 1986). In 1930s Brazil, coffee growers were still dominant but losing political ground since the 1929 crisis. Still, local agrarian oligarchies maintained a firm grip into the countryside. Nevertheless, workers were rapidly moving to cities. Industrialists and financial elites were finding their place into representative politics (Weffort, 2003). Vargas’ dictatorship (1937–1945) ended, but the participants in the emerging democracy faced difficulties in organizing and representing people who were excluded from politics. Existing organizations were unable to channel emerging and existing societal groups. The results were variations combining nationalism and populism (Weffort, 2003). Since the 1950s, in Brazil, populism was triggered by ongoing changes in the balance of power. At the same time, the elites were struggling to find new accommodations between agrarian and urban money. The groups that had started participating more actively in Brazilian civil society after 1945 were expelled again in 1964 (de Carvalho, 2014). The spiral of radicalization in mid-1960s Brazil blocked any compromises in the political sphere and force took the place of politics.
Left- and right-wing populisms in Brazil in the early 1960s and the role of business
Brazil, in the early 1960s, is an example of competing populisms on both sides of the political divide, in a kind of clash that has been proposed by some authors (Mouffe, 2005, 2017). There were two competing populist streams: one ‘inclusionary’ and the other ‘exclusionary’ (Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2013). From the analysis of the outcomes of that clash in Brazil, we analyze the role of business and businesspeople that opted for more economic liberties instead of democracy.
Brazilian left-wing national-populism was inclusionary, aiming to bring new groups into politics. Weffort (2003) pointed it as a strategy to blur class divisions and unify the working class. It meant an alliance among new urban industrial workers, students, and peasants. The latter were organizing themselves under the Peasant Leagues, which were alarming conservatives due to their communist inclinations, and because for the first time they were giving support to rural workers against rural elites. In this interpretation, national-populism meant a country for its popular classes without revolution. While gripping into power during Goulart’s presidency (1961–1964), the left imagined that a nationalist discourse would save them from their right-wing opponents (Weffort, 2003). However, at that time, nationalism, the left, and communism conflated under the eyes of the United States (Field, 2014; Taffet, 2007).
Brazilian President João Goulart is considered a representative of left-wing populism. His proposals alarmed conservatives who articulated a reaction (Skidmore, 1967). To keep power, Goulart had to make concessions to his supporters. The left-wing populist government increasingly ceded space for the people that were organizing corporatists groups, beyond the totalizing narrative of a single nation. The organization of popular segments forced the limits of the populist pact since it advanced a real challenge to established power groups (Dreifuss, 1980).
On the other side, businesspeople organized their movement under a different populist discourse. Keen to avoid communism and to do business with the United States, they organized themselves (Dreifuss, 1980; Spohr, 2016). They would spread their vision of a chaotic Brazil if the left continued in power. The right-wing populist discourse was exclusionary. It was backed by business leaders in association with groups from the military and conservative Christians, mainly Catholics. The rightist discourse supported free enterprise and cherished the preservation of Christian values with the consequent exclusion of the ‘godless’ communist left from the political arena. The right built its populist discourse focusing on those who already had the status of citizens. They were urban liberal professionals and public servants placed on the receiving end of a clientelist state (Assis, 2001; Dreifuss, 1980).
The right understood that to regain political power, they would have to achieve popular support, and they had an established tradition from which they could build (McCann, 2003). Business and businesspeople organized themselves around think tanks and used their influence to spread their messages in the mass media. It was a two-pronged strategy covering both politics and policy (Schmidt, 2006).
First, the defense of Brazilian Christian family values and the free market was organized as ideological pressure and manipulation. Second, building technical and technocratic knowledge in the name of modernization to skew mass participation (Gilman, 2003). In other words, ‘policy without politics’ (Schmidt, 2006). Both approaches were connected by disdain or incredulity on the capacity of parties to govern the state (Bickerton and Accetti, 2017).
Business elites organized themselves in various organizations and used their connections to the Catholic Church and the media to spread their message. The leading organization created to promote these ideas was a think tank called IPES (Barros and Taylor, 2018; Dreifuss, 1980; Starling, 1986). IPES was the ‘main organization for business mobilization [. . . and] provided forums for inter-elite strategizing and for disseminating anticommunist, procapitalist discourse’ (Schneider, 2004: 106). They claimed to be inspired by Kennedy modernization program, called Alliance for Progress, and the social doctrine of the Catholic Church crystallized in the Mater et Magistra papal encyclical (Dreifuss, 1980). Thus, IPES was a union of both sides of the strategy between tradition and technocracy.
On the policy side, IPES promoted liberal democracy as a remedy for the participation of the masses and to fulfill the promises of modernity. On the side of values, they defended Brazilian Christian family values nationalism as synonymous of acquiescent Catholicism. The campaigns were directed mainly to the middle-class and the urban workers. The IPES circulated its ideas, distributing pamphlets within newspapers and in churches. They also showed short documentaries in cinemas and radio programs (Dreifuss, 1980; Starling, 1986).
The strategy was to disseminate panic among the urban classes and reinvigorate traditionalism. The communists were accused of being on the verge of controlling the Brazilian state and destroying the traditional family and free business values (Dreifuss, 1980). IPES merged the fear of ‘godless communism’ with the promotion of its technical expertise. In doing that, the think tank justified the exclusion of the labor class from decisions, since they would be dangerously close to communism. IPES was able to capture the demands of part of the society within a moment of the political divide and to reframe it under a populist discourse (Dreifuss, 1980; Weffort, 2003). IPES changed the political battle in society and secured a fragile consensus around its exclusionary platform, by redrawing the frontiers of who is part of the ‘people’ and who is not.
The Brazilian elites and upper middle classes felt threatened by the growing participation of rural and urban working classes in politics. They also feared the displacing of traditional values and staged mass demonstrations, such as ‘The Family March with God for Liberty’ a few days before the coup d’état (Dreifuss, 1980). After the coup, the end of political liberties closed the dialogue channels with the state even for the middle classes.
The middle classes who supported the coup became contained and would later be betrayed. The military regime passed a series of dictatorial rules, limiting political rights and pursuing enemies and opponents to the government. The conservative middle could harbor some hope of returning to the political arena up to 1968 (Weffort, 2003). However, the decree named Institutional Act n. 5 (AI 5) established a full flagged dictatorship that same year. The new law shut down Parliament and imposed censorship and restrictions on civil rights (Skidmore, 1967; Starling, 1986). After the AI 5, a compromise was no longer necessary, since the dictatorship opted for coercion instead of trying to build consensus (Gramsci, 1971). Following Weffort’ scheme, treason was complete.
The populist era in Brazil (1930–1964) ended with a right-wing coup. Some supporters of the coup believed that it would last only until the next year’s election. However, they were misled. Their values were guaranteed, but the price to pay was the closing of the political arena to all participants, but that allowed by the regime.
Brazil then and (now) the West now
The Brazilian populist experience happened in a different time, but with forces that were parallel to those we see operating today. Brazil and countries in the Global North have distinct capitalist developments. However, increasing inequality, diminishing representativeness of unions, new work arrangements, loss of party capillarity, change of the socioeconomic status of traditional medium classes, and the increasing power of business vis-à-vis the state allows to draw insights from Brazil.
The ongoing effects of the 2008–2009 economic crisis marked the changing balance of the socioeconomic game around the world. Currently, democracy is threatened. In the name of something else (nativism, economic liberalism, or anti-elitism), democratic institutions are weakened. Some authors see a return of the dangerous ethnic populism that existed in the 1930s in the current context, especially but not only in Europe (Morgan et al., 2015). The ‘amorphous populist anger’ is increasing in influence everywhere (Centeno and Cohen, 2012: 331). Recent surges of populism may be the result of the concentration of political and economic power that has excluded groups from participating in society (Jessop, 2010), such as the workers in Western countries ‘rust belts’.
At the same time, Weffort (2003) differentiation between populism and nationalism brings insights to analyze our times. In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro won a 4-year mandate to govern Brazil. His populism is embedded in nationalistic rhetoric. Some point that this is more form than content (Ortellado and Ribeiro, 2018), mainly because he proposes an automatic alignment between Brazil and the United States or, to be sure, between him and President Trump.
Weffort (2003) understands that nationalism in Brazil is closely associated with the state. Thus, it is not surprising that Bolsonaro core supporters come from the armed forces and local police forces. At the same time, if Weffort’s analysis still holds, Bolsonaro’s coalition between urban middle classes, financial and rural elites, and conservative Christians will grow in insurmountable contradictions. The state is incapable of representing the will of ‘the people’, and the people may get frustrated if it does not fulfill its promises.
In 1960s Brazil, after the right-wing populist victory, a robust pro-business agenda was implemented based on free-market fundamentalism dressed up in moralist rhetoric. We should consider that the 2008–2009 crisis did not decide the battle against market fundamentalism. Much to the contrary, the great recession which started what Roberts (2016) calls the long depression opened up the space for new populist outbreaks.
Before us is a time of political divide allowing the emergence of populist leaders as mediators. We also perceive the development of think tanks led by businessmen capturing and (re)framing the demands of the left-behind. In some cases, think tanks are vital to understanding the spread of ultra-conservative ideas and the links between world elites (Maclean, 2017; Salles-Djelic, 2017). Think tanks are again helping potential candidates to fulfill the role of the populist leader. They also harbor and develop partisan ideas, dressed up as technical knowledge.
The example of IPES highlights that think tanks may formulate coherent proposals and serve as a pool for public officials after the corporate takeover of the state. Although think tanks may not be involved in nativist policies, they help to normalize the economic reforms that come with them. The commitment made by IPES to reinstate the values of the Brazilian middle class in the early 1960s is akin to contemporary populist events in Brazil and the Anglo-Saxon world.
In Brazil, Bolsonaro’s powerful ministry of economy, Paulo Guedes, was one of the founders of the think tank Millennium, which is comparable to IPES (Pastore, 2012). Guedes is an almost libertarian ‘Chicago Boy’ and filled up ministry positions with pairs from that school and with other conservative businessmen (Vasconcelos and Hoeveler, 2018). For instance, Guedes placed another economist and banker named Roberto Campos Neto as Central Bank’s president. Campos Neto’s grandfather, also named Roberto Campos, was a prominent articulator behind the IPES. After the 1964 coup, Roberto Campos became Planning Ministry and led the implementation of liberal pro-business reforms in the first military government (Dreifuss, 1980). In Bolsonaro’s administration, Guedes has merged planning and finance ministries under his guidance, and he is pushing the modernization of the Brazilian state by the privatization of state companies and pension and fiscal reforms (Vasconcelos and Hoeveler, 2018).
Resuming what is taking place now in Brazil which is similar to what happened in the 1960s: businessmen [sic] organized in think tanks orchestrate to (re)frame a populist discourse based on the protection of traditional values. They also organized a corporate takeover of the state where they implement a pro-business agenda. They do end up (partially) delivering some of the popular demands. However, as Weffort (2003) pointed out, treason will come since policy and politics will be disconnected at the cost of ‘the people’.
In the United States, Trump hired part of his administration from the Heritage Foundation, a hard-right think tank (Klein, 2017). Trump regime has advocated for the ‘cutting out of the middlemen—those needy politicians who are supposed to protect the public interest’ (Klein, 2017: 4). With the Trump administration, what is taking place is not the regular substitution of Democrats by Republicans, ‘it is a naked corporate takeover’ (Klein, 2017: 4). In other words, a policy without politics, in the dramatic way that is characteristic of Trump. Are we not all Americans?
In these cases, populists usually advance a pro-business agenda presented as a solution to problems faced by the ordinary citizen. The history of the ‘entrepreneurial order’ (Dreifuss, 1980) established in Brazil after the 1964 managerial-military takeover may serve as a warning. In addition, the Brazilian right-wing populism that won in the 1960s has a lot in common with other movements today. Beyond support from businesspeople, there is also widespread misogyny and defense of a return to Christianity. Hence, we can rewire the WASP acronym—White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant—as WASSC: ‘White, Anglo-Saxon Sympathizer, Christian’. The word ‘Sympathizer’ enables the inclusion of Latin American leaders who, just like the criollo’s elites from colonial times, still try to imitate the colonizer. It is not a coincidence that some consider Bolsonaro as the ‘Trump of the Tropics’ (BBC, 2018).
The appeal to Christian values in populist discourses in Latin America is translated otherwise. If in Brazil Bolsonaro’s slogan is ‘Brazil above all else. God above everyone’, in the United States, Trump’s motto ‘America first’ is a defense of traditional American values against foreigners (Lusher, 2016), while Brexit leaders disseminated ‘anti-immigrant and nativist sentiments’ (Inglehart and Norris, 2016: 29). In Europe, the populist right is steadily increasing in importance (Gidron and Hall, 2017). At the same time, think tanks are also playing a part in Brexit. Recently, the newspaper, The Guardian (2018), uncovered that the British think tank, Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), is promising privileged access to British government officials to influence their decisions. Brexit promises included reinvigorating the National Health Service (NHS) and ‘the return of good farm jobs’, a clear signal about ‘reinvigorating the old welfare state in the service of the people’ (Guldi, 2016: 5).
Thus, the dynamics at play are not new or unique. Populism is a political movement, frequently driven by the incapacity of the polity to tend to material changes and real demands from the population. In Europe, support for populism is coming from sectors that have seen a relative or absolute decline in their status in the last decades (Gidron and Hall, 2017). Therefore, in the face of cultural change and economic downturn, they ‘resent the displacement of familiar traditional norms’ (Inglehart and Norris, 2016: 3).
One should not look solely to economic factors to understand why populism is gaining support. Gradual cultural changes associated with the subjective experience of declining social status led to reactions that include the reiteration of social boundaries (Gidron and Hall, 2017), which may explain why ‘older generations, men, the less educated, the religious and ethnic majorities’ are prone to supporting right-wing populism (Inglehart and Norris, 2016: 4). The main supporters for the populist discourse are targets for think tanks and businessmen movements.
These voters will probably receive symbolic gestures while continuing to suffer political and economic exclusion. However, as suggested by Weffort, in populist coalitions, three things are certain: ambiguity and political instability during the drama of reconciling asymmetric interests, and treason of the weakest parts as the epilogue. Finally, the aftermath is the cleavage between policy and politics and the consequent deterioration of democracy.
To face this situation, CMS should engage more actively in topics that deal with the role of business and think tanks in enacting right-wing populism. We should strive for being more active public intellectuals, and to foster dialogue among knowledge from various geographies. It is critical to engage with popular demands and take discontent seriously into account. Otherwise, business may capture agendas through think tanks and disentangle politics and policy to their benefit.
