Kroc-Kellogg PCCV Workshop - No Country for Criminals: Understanding Support for Iron Fist Candidates in Brazil

A Kroc-Kellogg Peace, Conflict, Crime and Violence workshop with Jake Turner, Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliate, Department of Political Science

"No Country for Criminals: Understanding Support for Iron Fist Candidates in Brazil"

Abstract:

In 2018, Brazil elected Jair Bolsonaro, a relatively unknown politician who ran on a platform of anti-corruption, evangelism, and aggressive anti-crime rhetoric including a notorious phrase that came to define his campaign, “bandito bom é bandito morto” (the only good criminal is a dead criminal). One important feature of Bolsonaro's candidacy and his subsequent government has been his connection with the security forces and other specialists in violence. Not only is Bolsonaro himself a former captain in the Brazilian army, but his vice president Hamilton Mourão was a general, and pro-Bolsonaro factions in congress are populated with former military and police. This blurring of lines between elected officials, state security agents, and armed non-state actors is a familiar phenomenon in the Americas from the "hybrid state'' of Jamaica (Jaffe, 2013) to the "gray zone of criminality'' identified between drug cartels and the security sector in Mexico (Trejo and Ley, 2018). However, there remains much to be learned about how these relationships function in the electoral arena and when security sector candidates are most likely to enter government. This pre-analysis plan details a conjoint experiment to be fielded in Brazil that will explore why voters support military and police officers for elected office, teasing out the independent effects of security sector connections, criminal justice policies, and other ideological appeals on vote choice. I propose that candidates with police and military backgrounds have a comparative advantage projecting an image of a decisive leader unafraid to work outside of the established rules, attracting support independent of their criminal justice policy stances.

For the pre-circulated materials or more information, contact Gary Goertz.