AUTHORITARIAN NEOLIBERALISM IN BRAZIL

Abstract

This paper defines neoliberalism as the form of regulation or the regime of governmentality predominant in the current phase of capitalism and shows how it has been historically associated with the emptying of democracy and with authoritarian strategies. Then, based on the most recent literature, we show how, after the 2008 crisis, neoliberalism radicalized its measures while it deepened its recourse to authoritarianism, constituting a difference of degree that allows us to affirm, following the analysis of Nancy Fraser (2017), the passage from a progressive phase that maintained authoritarian practices to a properly authoritarian phase of neoliberalism. Finally, we seek to understand this phase shift in the crisis of the Nova República (New Republic), admitting the singularity of the Brazilian neoliberalization process. This singularity is due to neoliberalism not completely replacing other previously existing political rationalities and regulatory projects but hybridizing with them and reconfiguring our specific historical constellation.