RevDem Podcast · Review of Democracy

How to Resist Illiberalism: Pedro Abramovay on Reimagining Democracy in Latin America

·40 min·2 clips

Pedro says authoritarians can win elections, but they need to undermine civil society to stay in power.

The interview opens with the emergence and consolidation of new radical right-wing forces across Latin America. Brazil is treated as the paradigmatic case. The guest explains that illiberal ideas now move through civil society organizations, social movements, political parties, business networks, and charismatic political and social leaders. That makes the challenge bigger than a single election and turns it into a question about institutions and public life. The discussion also lingers on the word "new" and how mainstream discourse uses it to describe these political shifts. From there, the conversation returns to democracy's record in Brazil after the end of the dictatorship and the approval of the constitution. The guest recalls a country with very high illiteracy and severe child mortality, and says those indicators fell over time. Inequality also declined. A universal public health system was built. Cash transfers and a pension system helped more people maintain a basic standard of living. He treats those changes as products of democracy rather than accidents. That point matters because it pushes back against the habit of treating politics as something to be managed away. The argument instead puts politics at the center of democratic repair. It also pushes back against a neoliberal approach to democracy that sees citizens mainly as consumers of economic or social benefits. The guest insists that democracy is broader than material delivery. Even so, delivery is part of how democratic legitimacy is built and defended. The conversation closes by arguing that there is no technocratic solution to the world's hard problems. Those problems will be solved politically, or they will not be solved at all.

As heard by us

A careful defense of politics as democracy's answer to illiberal right-wing pressure.

This episode follows the rise and consolidation of new radical right-wing forces across Latin America, using Brazil as a central case and asking what democratic politics still owes when those forces move through civil society organizations, social movements, political parties,…

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Why you'd press play

For a serious look at Latin America's rightward turn, with Brazil as the key case.

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