Dear Professor Fukuyama,
We are a group that closely follows and studies liberal democracy here in Brazil, and we deeply admire your important work and ongoing contributions to the defense of liberal democracy worldwide.
I am writing in response to your article published today in Persuasion, “The Spirit of Democracy Remains Strong” (reproduced below). We have often noticed a recurring misunderstanding among foreign academics and observers when analyzing the behavior and actions of President Lula and the Workers’ Party (PT). Out of concern for this misperception, we have been reaching out to share a closer perspective on the Brazilian political reality.
Because the Bolsonaro family supports Donald Trump, observers who do not follow Brazilian politics closely often assume that a victory by Lula over a Bolsonaro represents a victory for democracy. However, it is not. Lula and the Workers Party are a left-wing populism. In European terms, this is not a contest between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, but rather between Le Pen and Jean-Luc Melenchon (with both sides sympathetic to Vladimir Putin). Similarly, it is not a contest between the AfD and the CDU, but between the AfD and Die Linke (with neither supporting the Ukrainian resistance).
To substantiate this analysis, we have included below (and attached) an English translation of a recent essay by Augusto de Franco, titled “Lula and the PT Are Not in the Camp of Liberal Democracy: The eight reasons that corroborate this assessment.”
Thank you very much for your time, consideration, and continued scholarship.
Warm regards,
Inteligência Democrática
Lula and the PT Are Not in the Camp of Liberal Democracy
Eight Reasons Supporting This Assessment
Augusto de Franco, Inteligência Democrática, October 11, 2026
Lula and the PT (Workers’ Party) belong to the camp of electoral democracy. But they do not belong to the camp of liberal democracy. Why not? The following are eight reasons supporting this assessment.
Reason 1
Because they believe the purpose of politics is order (imposing a fairer order from the top down), rather than freedom (so that individuals and communities, through their free interaction, can create the conditions for the continuous emergence of new orders from the bottom up).
Reason 2
Because they practice politics as a continuation of war by other means (the Clausewitz–Lenin inverse formula) in order to establish a new order—supposedly a fairer one—whose model they believe they possess.
Reason 3
Because they are populists, dividing society along a single fault line—“the people versus the elite”—and encouraging political polarization based on this division, with politics practiced as a war between “us” and “them.”
They refuse to accept that it is normal for society to be divided along many different, sometimes cross-cutting, fault lines, and that the best way to deal with these divisions is through open and free debate, within a political culture that values moderation and seeks consensus (or an ecology of multiple, interconnected disagreements).
On the contrary, they believe that polarization between the people and the elites should be encouraged, and that representatives of the people—whom they regard as the legitimate, or most legitimate, political actors—should not make agreements (except tactical ones) or build consensus (again, except tactically) with representatives of the elites, whom they consider illegitimate or less legitimate. Instead, they should always seek to prevail over them by securing majorities everywhere.
Reason 4
Because they accept social diversity but do not readily accept political pluralism. They do not cultivate a pluralistic political culture that recognizes and values democratic political opposition as legitimate actors, essential to the proper functioning of the political regime.
On the contrary, they believe that minorities—deemed anti-popular—should not be tolerated, or should be stripped of legitimacy, when they stand in the way of implementing popular policies.
Reason 5
Because, in practice, they do not accept democratic turnover or alternation in government—not only the turnover of individuals, but also of political parties and forces.
When they choose the electoral path, they do not do so because they regard alternation in government through elections as a normal part of democracy’s metabolism, contributing to the stability of the regime and to its beneficial outcomes. They do so instrumentally, because they consider elections the most effective means of reaching government and remaining in power long enough to seize control.
Reason 6
Because they are statists and reject the idea that society should control the government. They believe precisely the opposite: that a benevolent government, because it stands on the side of the people, should control society in order to use state power to neutralize the enemies of the people, whom they regard as evil.
In other words, they do not recognize that the quality of democracy is measured by the limits and constraints that society imposes on state institutions—which is the very essence of liberal democracy.
Reason 7
Because they are majoritarian and hegemonistic. They reject the principle that political minorities must be protected against both state tyranny and the tyranny of the majority.
They believe it is necessary to secure majorities everywhere, accumulating political strength in order to achieve hegemony over society through a state apparatus controlled by the party.
Reason 8
Because they oppose coups d’état—which places them in the camp of electoral democracy—but erode democracy by seeking to achieve hegemony over society through a state apparatus controlled by the party, enabling them to remain in government indefinitely, or for long enough to alter democracy’s DNA from within.
The aim is to replace democracy with a form of citizenship bestowed upon the people by a populist leader. This, together with the seven reasons presented above, excludes them from the camp of liberal democracy.
Note
Our starting point here is V-Dem’s (Varieties of Democracy) distinction between electoral democracy and liberal democracy, particularly as set out in the article Regimes of the World (RoW).
According to this distinction, among other characteristics, electoral democracy ensures that political power is contested and obtained through competitive processes and under conditions of basic freedoms. Liberal democracy requires, in addition, that elected power be constrained and that the individual rights of citizens and the rights of political minorities be effectively protected against the democratic government itself.
We have, however, added several other characteristics of liberal democracy, drawn from twenty years of reflection and brought together in the 2023 book Como as democracias nascem (How Democracies Are Born).
The Spirit of Democracy Remains Strong
The news from Brazil, Serbia, and Venezuela should be celebrated. But it’s too soon to say if these victories are sustainable.
Francis Fukuyama, Persuasion, October 26, 2026
After the piece below had been drafted, news came in of a third development that was perhaps even more consequential than the two described, the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election. His defeat of the right-wing populist Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, was unexpected after a first round in which the latter ended up with the largest plurality of votes. Lula’s victory broke a string of seven consecutive right-wing victories in Latin American presidential elections. Flávio Bolsonaro has called for the election to be annulled, and it is at this point uncertain what his followers will do in reaction to Lula’s victory. Nonetheless, given Brazil’s size and importance on the world stage, this is a stunning and hopeful development that may signal, together with the developments in Venezuela and Serbia and the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, a major reversal of the wave of authoritarian-populist victories around the world.
—Frank
Sunday October 25 saw two very hopeful events from different parts of the world. They give us some optimism that democratic backsliding is not inevitable, and that it is possible to fight back against the rising tide of authoritarianism.
The first was the return of María Corina Machado to Venezuela. Machado should rightfully be president of Venezuela today. She sought to run against Nicolás Maduro during the July 2024 presidential election, and attracted huge enthusiastic crowds all over Venezuela during her primary campaign. Because of the threat she posed, she was disqualified by the regime; her stand-in, Edmundo Gonzalez, went on to win the election by a huge margin.
We know this because the democratic opposition kept voter records from each polling place in the country, and published them before the regime could declare its own falsified results naming Maduro the winner. Machado had to then go into exile to accept her Nobel Peace Prize, and has been living out of the country until this past weekend. Her return was marked by the same rapturous crowds cheering her that had come out during her election campaign two and a half years earlier.
The current situation in Venezuela following the Trump administration’s arrest of Maduro in early January is completely unsustainable and unjust. Trump made a deal with Delcy Rodríguez Maduro’s, vice president and member of his inner circle, to stabilize the country as the United States sought to take control of the country’s oil assets. Venezuela since then has been run by the same authoritarian clique that existed previously, with a pliable Rodríguez substituting for a resistant Maduro. Trump made no pretense that any of this was being done for the benefit of the Venezuelan people, bragging instead that he had put the United States in control of the country’s oil. As he told the UN General Assembly in September, “to the victors go the spoils.” Worse than that, there has been no transparency regarding where any of the oil revenues were going, or even how large they were. The administration revealed that it was working with Alejandro Betancourt, a businessman notorious all over Venezuela for his corruption.
In the meantime, Trump sidelined Machado, claiming that “she doesn’t have respect within the country.” To the contrary, she was by far Venezuela’s most popular politician. The State Department claimed that there would eventually be democratic elections, but without specifying a timetable, and held talks with various opposition groups that excluded Machado. Neither the regime nor the United States permitted her to go back to her country, and at the present moment we don’t know how she managed to return.
Her return puts both the Rodríguez regime and the Trump administration in a difficult position. Much as they might like to, neither can afford to arrest or otherwise silence the most popular politician in the country, certainly not in the face of the rapturous crowds greeting her. Machado has spent the time since January trying to placate Trump, giving him her Nobel Prize and refraining from public criticism of the United States.
But this kind of appeasement has never worked with this president, who has no interest in Venezuelan democracy. There is growing anger at the United States among ordinary Venezuelans, who naturally would like to know where money from their oil patrimony is going. Delcy could buy temporary peace, but as time goes on, the corrupt deal she struck with Trump is going to be a huge liability. Machado needs to get behind what would amount to an anti-corruption protest. It is likely that anti-American (and anti-Delcy) protests will gain momentum, and it is only at that moment that people in Washington may realize that a legitimate election is the only route to long-term stability.
Trump thinks that he is in control of the situation, but he is not; only the Venezuelan people have the right and ultimately the power to create a legitimate government.
The second rather miraculous event occurring Sunday was the victory of the Student List over the ruling Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) in Serbia’s parliamentary election, and strongman Alexander Vučić’s concession. Most informed observers fervently wished for Vučić’s defeat, but believed that in the end he and his party had enough levers to intimidate voters and manipulate the process. Vučić had been in power in one capacity or another—he recently resigned as president so he could become prime minister under an SNS-led government—such that many young Serbs had known no other leader than him.
The roots of the Student List victory lay in the student movement that emerged following the lethal collapse of the roof of a train station in the city of Novi Sad in November 2024. The station, a Chinese project, was riddled with corruption linked to the regime, and students across the country started mobilizing in protest.
There had been many protest movements previously in Serbia, including the one that brought down Slobodan Milošević back in October 2000. This movement, however, was deliberately organized in a way that minimized the measures that the regime could take against it. It had no leaders and no evident hierarchy. There were no immediate political demands except for an end to corruption; the movement was able to organize gigantic protests in Belgrade and other Serbian cities on this basis. In 2025, the students began marching across the country, stopping in villages and towns where they were frequently greeted by rural sympathizers. In organizing ahead of Sunday’s election, they deliberately did not include prominent politicians or existing opposition parties in the Student List. A large number of the Student List’s members are in fact academics. The movement did not say who would be likely to emerge as the prime minister under if they won the election.
In response to this broad mobilization, the Vučić regime employed all of the tools that have by now become commonplace among rising authoritarians. There was massive manipulation of the electoral process itself, and the disqualification of many popular personalities. A huge number of Serbs, many of whom were sympathetic to the Student List, live outside the country; the government made it very difficult for them to vote. The state controlled most of the legacy media in Serbia, putting newspapers and TV channels in the hands of friendly oligarchs and making it hard for the opposition to get its message out.
Nonetheless, the students evidently benefited from the generational shift that was taking place in media consumption all over the world. Young people got most of their information online from sources beyond the regime’s control, and made an art of leaderless mobilization in the two years of protesting.
Now that the Student List has won the parliamentary election, however, the very tactics that allowed them to achieve this victory will become a major liability. The new parliamentary majority will now actually be responsible for governing the country. This cannot be done without a leadership hierarchy or a concrete policy program.
The Student List was able to attract a broad coalition of followers by not being specific about its intentions, but there will clearly be tensions among the groups supporting it. The electoral practice of avoiding existing politicians and members of other parties means that no one on the list has actual experience running a government. Other movements built around civil society organizations, like those in Ukraine in 2004 or Egypt in 2011, ultimately failed because of their inability to make the transition to the responsibilities of governance.
These obvious challenges make me wonder whether Vučić was being clever in conceding defeat so quickly. Had he tried to hang on through the usual tactics of intimidation and fraud, he would have faced continuing protests. He may have calculated that the Student List was like the proverbial dog finally catching the car it was chasing and not knowing what to do with it. A failed transition might then create the conditions for him and the SNS to return to power.
Let’s hope that this is not the case. At this point, Serbia’s outside friends need to give it every possible form of support, and focus especially on building the Student List’s ability to govern. While its victory and Machado’s return to Venezuela are hopeful developments, there are a huge number of things that need to happen in both countries in the coming weeks and months to turn either of them into a sustainable victory for democracy.
In the meantime, however, we can enjoy the fact that the spirit of democracy is still alive in different parts of the world. The most important election of all will occur in the United States, where American voters will have the opportunity of rejecting a Republican Party that has been dominated by a right-wing authoritarian, Donald Trump. If this happens we will have clear evidence that democracy, far from being a dying doctrine, has strength and vitality in many different parts of the world.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University. His latest book is In The Realm of the Last Man. He is also the author of the “Frankly Fukuyama” column, carried forward from American Purpose, at Persuasion.