TY - THES ID - 138195729 TI - The Rise of Jair Bolsonaro. A Decline in Brazil’s Political Legitimacy? AU - Løken Nario, Alberto AU - Van de Walle, Steven AU - Felicetti, Andrea AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen. Opleiding Master of International Politics (Leuven) PY - 2020 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Sociale Wetenschappen DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:138195729 AB - Brazil’s turbulent political history took another interesting turn in 2018 when the right-wing populist, Jair Bolsonaro was elected president. His election fell in line with a global right-wing populist wave. Brubaker (2017) argues that populists rise in the advent of a ‘perfect storm’ of crises. Either as a constituting part of this ‘perfect storm’ or as a consequence of it, political legitimacy is likely to be affected. This research set out to examine political legitimacy in Brazil, and attempt to find a link with voting behavior, specifically voting for Jair Bolsonaro. It makes use of public opinion surveys from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), a research institute hosted by Vanderbilt University. Surveys conducted in 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2019 were chosen for this research. A six-dimensional operationalization of political legitimacy based on previous research by Booth and Seligson (2009) provided the baseline for the research. The research falls short of fully measuring political legitimacy but provides a good starting point for further research and shed lights on some interesting processes occurring within Brazil’s political system. It is hypothesized that Bolsonaro voters will have lower levels of political legitimacy; however, because the original measurement of political legitimacy falls short, no conclusions can be drawn with complete certainty. That being said, the results indicate that the opposite of what was predicted is in fact the case. Moreover, our research provides a new model, Political Legitimacy Indicator, which does not measure political legitimacy as operationalized originally, but provides valuable insight and a reliable indication to levels of political legitimacy. Finally, the research concludes with various avenues for further research. ER -