The full flower of democracy came late to Brazil, nearly five centuries after Europeans first arrived, but finally, little more than a decade ago, it did come—and so far, it has survived. But its roots are shallow, and daunting social problems persist in the world’s fifth largest and (with 150 million people) fifth most populous country. Sixteen scholars, writing in Daedalus (Spring 2000), assess Brazil’s condition and prospects. Fernando Collor de Mello was elected president in the 1989 elections that marked Brazil’s becoming a full-fledged democracy. The traumatic but successful 1992 impeachment of Collor on corruption charges, and his removal from office, can be read as a sign of the democracy’s strength, rather than its weakness, notes Leslie Bethell, director of the Centre for Brazilian Studies at the University of Oxford. Current President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who won a second term in 1998, is "a distinguished sociologist... and a politician with impeccable democratic credentials and advanced social democratic ideas."

But Brazilians consistently hold political leaders in extremely low esteem, Bethell and historian José Murilo de Carvalho, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, separately observe. In a 1998 poll, 94 percent said they did not trust politicians, overwhelmingly regarding them as dishonest. President Cardoso fared a bit better: Only 69 percent distrusted him. Eighty-five percent looked upon Brazil’s political parties with suspicion. Those parties are numerous—30 or so, currently—ideologically incoherent, and highly undisciplined, Bethell points out. Nearly a third of the deputies elected in 1994 switched parties during the Congress of 1995–98, some of them more than once.

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