It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to: Elite ideological obfuscation in post-authoritarian settings

Abstract

This paper examines the origins and evolution of the direita envergonhada (“embarrassed right”) phenomenon, a pattern of ideological obfuscation by right-of-center politicians that was originally identified and documented in post-authoritarian Brazil. Conservative politicians refused to identify themselves as right-wing, defining themselves instead as centrists and placing themselves ideologically to the left of their own political parties. We find that this phenomenon is not restricted to Brazil, but is widespread across Latin America’s Third Wave of democratization. We also find that politicians personally connected to the defunct authoritarian regime were more likely to engage in obfuscation and that, contrary to previous hypotheses, obfuscation has faded in recent times.