Science Attacks and Policy Dismantling in Context of Democratic Backsliding: An Analysis of Brazil during Bolsonaro Government

• In Event: Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom II: Case Studies

Abstract

The paper analyses the offensive against Brazil’s science and science community engendered by Bolsonaro’s government. The rise of authoritarian leadership in contemporary democracies, especially populist far-right leaders, has encouraged processes of democratic backsliding with diverse political implications. In Brazil, the populist-authoritarian government of Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022) was marked by systematic attacks on science and the scientific community. From this context, we ask: what strategies has Bolsonaro used to attack science and to erode the science community and what were the consequences of these attacks for public policies and the democracy itself? To carry out the proposed study, we analyzed the government's primary sources (laws, decrees, decree-laws, official data) and we drew on interviews with federal bureaucrats.

Author

• Michelle Vieira Fernandez, UnB