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One of the most interesting aspects of the apex performance of liberal democracy is the election. It serves as a periodic affirmation of the continued legitimacy of the state apparatus into which representatives are elected. It serves as well as the reaffirmation, with each election, of the delegation of popular sovereign authority from the people to the state apparatus into which elected representatives are inserted in accordance with the architectural intentions memorialized in the higher law of the liberal democratic states. That performance represents the essence of the democratic experience in liberal democracy--one that is both episodic and which starts and ends with the casting of a vote.
It follows that the preservation of the system must at its core be hyper focused on the protection of the legitimacy of the performance of election--and perhaps as important, in the performance of allegiance to the operation of election by those who stand for election (and the factions to which they declare an allegiance). Liberal democracy, in effect, is performed through the singular act of voting. But that act is invested with meaning only under conditions of double affirmation: affirmation that the election more or less produced a free and fair result (within tolerable margins of messiness), and an affirmation by those standing for election that those results will be accepted.
It also follows that it is in the system's interests to move toward the perfection of election--but also to develop cultures of toleration for deviation from perfection, even where that deviation might have cost an individual an electoral victory in closely contested cases. It is also in the interests of the system that those at its electoral center affirm its operation. Everything else is politics. And yet, in the United States, these consensus positions have been eroding slowly for some time. I do not speak to the deal making of the 19th century, but to the increasingly open discussion of election stealing and an increasing reluctance for those standing for election to affirm its result. The arc of that development can be said to be nicely illustrated in the resistance to results that favored the democratic presidential candidate in 1960, to that which produced a Republican president in 2000. In 1960 both parties closed ranks around the legitimacy of the results, whatever the whispers of systemic messiness that ight have changed the result. In 2000 the democratic candidate repudiated the results through litigation that reached the Supreme Court. He eventually accepted not the result through a judicial determination on a key issue of result legitimacy. By 2020, people took to the streets and overran the Capital--hooligans and lawbreakers, to be sure, but hooligans who might convince themselves to undertake their actions by their own reading of the refusal of the losing candidate to effectively concede. And thus the critical performance of the double affirmation.
It is for that reason--grounded in a performative affirmation that manifests the continued vitality of the mandate of Heaven (in the form of the masses and their willingness to engage in election) for the system for the benefit of which these activities are conducted--that any negation of the validity or legitimacy of this fundamental double affirmation could be viewed with such abhorrence. And abhorrence turns to terror when it is the object of that performance, especially where it is undertaken by individuals participating at the hugest levels of elective office, is questioned or repudiated. That, to some extent explains the extraordinary national resources that have been devoted to not merely negating the rejection of the results of the 2020 elections by Mr. Trump and his supporters, but also to cast that attempt at negation as treason of a most fundamental kind.
As for the rest--the actual exercise of the authority of elective
office. well as to that, influence becomes a matter of markets for
persuasive authority. This is the other side of a coin in which elections in a deeply divided polity suggest victories (of representation) the mandates of which appear far greater than the reality of the popular support for the victor. Yet that is the essence of the sort of election in which winners "take all", one the sharpness of which is sometimes dulled by different approaches to "victory" in representation choices (among individuals and factions). An electoral winner can pretend that she received a mandate by victory, the continued validity of hat assumption tested by the next election and dulled by the system of divided power and administrative inertia that marks most advanced liberal states.
The American experience, of course, has become its own complex theater, one with many parts. The most regrettable aspect of that is its somewhat cynical weaponization as a mans to sharpen factional contests for future popular election reaffirmations. That, in turn, becomes more dangerous where the rhetoric of betrayal is used as the discursive language of factional politics in an essentializing way (see, e.g., here, and here). And it remains a more sharply edged disciplinary tool within a faction as well as against factions (eg here). And yet political actors now appear to more readily succumb to the temptation to take politics to its edges.
But the conceptual cage, and its performances, are not unique to the US. Nor is the abhorrence, and beyond it the terror, of high level repudiations of the performance of election. It is indeed the essence of the danger at the borderlands of liberal democracy. Its discursive practices have now seeped into politics in other places. The Americans, it seems, continue to serve as a bellwether for the practices of liberal democracy--and for testing its discursive and performative limits.
It is in this context that the acknowledgement speech of Mr. Bolsonaro, eventually delivered after his quite narrow defeat by Mr. Lula de Silva, caused such concern (see, e.g., here, here, and here). The problem wasn't the development of a string and likely effective opposition to the victor--given the narrowness of the victory it was likely to produce substantial need for compromise or stalemate in the effective governing of the state. It was the likelihood that the performance of objection to the result would itself undermine the system itself (whatever one might have thought of the validity, at the margins) of the result. It was for those reasons (and the political opportunities they continued to present within a stable if contentious system) that produced what had been the usual result in liberal democratic exogenous democracies--the alignment of all key sectors of the political establishment around the result. “All of Bolsonaro’s escape valves were shut off,” said Brian Winter, a longtime Brazil expert and vice president of the New York-based Council of the Americas. “He was prevailed upon from all sides not to contest the results and burn down the house on his way out.”(With Bolsonaro tamed in defeat, Brazil steps back from brink).
In a sense, Brazil retains a much stronger attachment to the old double affirmaiton standards of liberal democracy that aligns it closer to the cultures of American liberal democracy in the 1960s than in the 2020s. That is how stability is performed in liberal democratic states: not with the conviction of perfect elections, but with the fidelity to the system in the face of the messiness of the performance of elections at the margins. The question for liberal democracy, then, is the extent to which tolerance runs, and the accountability of elite actors who fail to perform their roles in fidelity to the fundamental premises of exogenous democracy and its electoral theater. The quite partisan efforts to paint Mr. Bolsonaro with the same brush as Mr. Trump, then, appears exaggerated. Mr. Bolsonaro's faction will certainly seek its revenge--but in the time honored manner of factional politics in liberal democracy--as nasty and ideologically pathetic as that sometimes becomes. It did not matter so much whether Mr. Bolsonaro undertook the affirmation--it was done for him by his supporters.
It is for this reason that Mr. Bolsonaro's concession, if that is what one wants to call it, appears at odds with a fidelity to the system that brought him to office in the first place, and that might bring him back. One kicks at the foundation of that system with great caution, especially if one means to ride its political trajectories to a future victory that itsef might be expected to be accepted. That appears to be a lesson that Mr. Trump failed to learn, a failure the consequences of which will be high; though it may also be one that Mr. Trump's political enemies have also ignored in turn, and one the cost of which will be borne by the people. The speech follows in the original Portuguese and in English.
Pronunciamento do Presidente da República, Jair Bolsonaro no Palácio da Alvorada
Publicado em 01/11/2022 19h05
Brasília, 01 de novembro de 2022.
Quero começar agradecendo os 58 milhões de brasileiros que votaram em mim no último dia 30 de outubro.
Os atuais movimentos populares são frutos de indignação e sentimento de injustiça de como se deu o processo eleitoral. As manifestações pacíficas sempre serão bem-vindas, mas os nossos métodos não podem ser os da esquerda, que sempre prejudicaram a população, como invasão de propriedades, destruição de patrimônio e cerceamento do direito de ir e vir.
A direita surgiu de verdade em nosso país. Nossa robusta representação no Congresso mostra as forças dos nossos valores: Deus, Pátria, Família e Liberdade.
Formamos diversas lideranças pelo Brasil. Nosso sonho segue mais vivo do que nunca. Somos pela ordem e pelo progresso.
Mesmo enfrentando todo sistema superamos uma pandemia e as consequências de uma guerra.
Sempre fui rotulado como antidemocrático e, ao contrário dos meus acusadores, sempre joguei dentro das quatro linhas da Constituição. Nunca falei em controlar ou censurar a mídia e as redes sociais. Enquanto Presidente da República e cidadão, continuarei cumprindo todos os mandamentos da nossa Constituição.
É uma honra ser o líder de milhões de brasileiros que como eu defendem a liberdade econômica, a liberdade religiosa, a liberdade de opinião, a honestidade e as cores verde e amarela da nossa bandeira.
Muito obrigado.
Statement by the President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro at Palácio da Alvorada
Posted on 11/01/2022 19:05
Brasilia, November 01, 2022.
I want to start by thanking the 58 million Brazilians who voted for me last October 30th.
The current popular movements are the result of indignation and a feeling of injustice at how the electoral process took place. Peaceful demonstrations will always be welcome, but our methods cannot be those of the left, which have always harmed the population, such as invasion of property, destruction of patrimony and restriction of the right to come and go.
The right really emerged in our country. Our robust representation in Congress shows the strengths of our values: God, Fatherland, Family and Liberty.
We formed several leaders in Brazil. Our dream is more alive than ever. We are for order and progress.
Even facing the whole system, we overcome a pandemic and the consequences of a war.
I have always been labeled undemocratic and, unlike my accusers, I have always played within the four lines of the Constitution. I never talked about controlling or censoring the media and social networks. As President of the Republic and a citizen, I will continue to fulfill all the commandments of our Constitution.
It is an honor to be the leader of millions of Brazilians who, like me, defend economic freedom, religious freedom, freedom of opinion, honesty and the green and yellow colors of our flag.
Thank you very much.
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