Safeguarding democracy from the outside in: transnational democratic networks against autocratisation in contemporary Brazil

Over the last decade, democracy in Brazil has been under attack. Efforts to protect Brazilian democracy from autocratisation date back to the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and have come to a (temporary) conclusion after Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat in the October 2022 elections. One of the most striking elements of democratic resistance in Brazil has been the establishment of multiple and overlapping transnational networks. Would democracy in Brazil have resisted without international pressure? We resort to a process-tracing analysis to argue that transnational networking strategies were a necessary condition to protect Brazilian democracy, in tandem with the domestic role played by Brazil’s organised civil society and political institutions. These networks have operated (1) to maintain the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) as the main partisan alternative to the far right, represented by Jair Bolsonaro; (2) to preserve the civic spaces necessary to criticise and counter Bolsonaro’s moves to undermine fundamental rights, critical policy areas and democratic institutions; and (3) to increase the costs of attempts to overturn the election results in 2022.