BRICS| Voters against Public Opinion: Press and Democracy in Brazil and South Africa

Abstract

In both Brazil and South Africa, mainstream media sustain an uneasy relationship with left-wing governments. Conventional wisdom holds that this problem reflects the immaturity of their political institutions, which results chiefly from the late development of their democracies. Alternatively, this article hypothesizes that it relates to the crisis of a political order inherited from a colonial past: The mainstream media voices the perspectives of elites that present themselves as the authorized carriers of Western civilization’s legacy in their societies, living among non-civilized multitudes. However, successive victories of the Workers’ Party in Brazil and African National Congress in South Africa put these elites’ leadership at risk.