Brazil has elected its president. It has not settled its disagreements.

Lula’s re-election on 25 October establishes who won under the electoral rules. That result should be respected. But accepting an election result does not require believing that it has reconciled the different aspirations of the people who voted.[1]

A country can agree on how to choose a government while remaining profoundly divided over what that government should do. Counting the ballots concludes an electoral contest. It does not conclude the arguments about security, opportunity, culture, responsibility and freedom that brought people to the polling stations.

Watching Brazilian politics, I find myself returning to a question that reaches beyond Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro or any particular party: why should so much depend on which political coalition gains control of the federal government?

My concern is not simply whether the right person has won. It is whether we have placed too many decisions in institutions whose authority extends over people with profoundly different circumstances and expectations.

I approach this from my own understanding of National Anarchism: voluntary association, cultural autonomy, community responsibility and resistance to concentrated political power. These principles interest me because they offer a way to reconsider how people can cooperate without requiring everyone to accept the same political vision.

Brazil provides a demanding setting in which to examine that possibility.

Consider a river community in the Amazon, a farming municipality in the interior, a densely populated metropolitan neighbourhood and an expanding coastal city. Their transport needs, economic opportunities, environmental pressures and access to services may differ substantially.

Even where residents share an objective, the means of achieving it may require different approaches. Better healthcare means something different where the principal obstacle is distance from a hospital than where it is overcrowding at a nearby clinic. Improving education requires attention to the circumstances in which children actually live.

A policy can have a reasonable national objective while remaining poorly suited to some of the places expected to implement it.

Those differences do not make cooperation impossible. They make it necessary to ask which decisions genuinely require a common answer.

It would be too sweeping to declare Brazil simply too large or too diverse to govern. Size alone does not establish that a country cannot function. Nor does a divided election prove that its citizens are culturally incompatible. Voting reflects many influences, including economic expectations, religion, security, personal experience and judgments about the candidates.

My argument is more specific: the greater the differences among the people affected by a decision, the stronger the justification should be for imposing one answer on all of them.

A government may possess the legal authority to establish a policy without possessing enough practical knowledge to design every detail well.

People living with a problem often understand aspects of it that are difficult to communicate through reports, targets and standardised forms. They know which arrangements work informally, which promises have failed before and which obstacles outsiders tend to overlook.

Their knowledge is imperfect. Local residents can be mistaken, divided or influenced by powerful interests. But their experience should help shape decisions rather than merely supply information to distant officials.

That principle should apply regardless of which party wins.

A Lula supporter may welcome federal authority when it advances policies they favour. A Bolsonaro supporter may feel much the same when their side controls it. Both should ask whether those powers would remain acceptable in the hands of their opponents.

If the answer changes with the occupant of the presidential palace, perhaps the commitment is to winning rather than to limiting power.

This helps explain why presidential politics can become so bitter. When too many disagreements are channelled into one contest, the election carries an enormous burden. It appears to decide economic direction, institutional appointments, moral recognition and the country’s cultural identity at once.

Defeat can then feel like exclusion from the national future. An opposing voter becomes someone whose victory threatens your way of life.

Campaigners can exploit those fears. Yet the institutional stakes deserve examination too. If control of the centre carries extensive consequences, people have understandable reasons to struggle fiercely over who controls it.

Dispersing authority would not eliminate political conflict. It could reduce the number of questions on which every Brazilian must accept the same answer. Some disagreements might become easier to live with if losing a presidential election did not appear to place so much beyond local influence.

There is an obvious objection: Brazil is already a federation.

Its Constitution recognises the autonomy of the states, municipalities and Federal District. It would be inaccurate to describe every public decision as an instruction issued from Brasília.[2]

The useful question is how that autonomy operates in practice. Do responsibilities come with sufficient resources? Which national requirements protect people, and which unnecessarily restrict local choices? Can residents identify who is responsible when services fail, or does accountability disappear between levels of government?

An institution may possess formal autonomy while remaining dependent on decisions taken elsewhere. Conversely, a local government may demand greater discretion while resisting scrutiny of its own conduct.

Neither centralisation nor decentralisation deserves acceptance simply because it carries an attractive constitutional label.

This is also where my interpretation of National Anarchism goes beyond conventional federalism. Transferring a responsibility from Brasília to a state capital may leave ordinary people just as dependent on political institutions.

I am interested in which responsibilities people can exercise through voluntary associations, cooperatives, mutual-aid arrangements and community organisations. Moving a decision closer to residents matters most when they gain a meaningful role in making it.

The question is how far power can be dispersed while preserving necessary cooperation and protection against abuse.

It becomes more important when we consider how long political decisions endure.

An election is a moment in time. Its institutional consequences can last for decades.

Judicial appointments illustrate this clearly. Current vacancy and retirement projections identify up to four STF appointments through 2030: Barroso’s still-vacant seat and the scheduled departures of Luiz Fux in 2028, Cármen Lúcia in 2029 and Gilmar Mendes in December 2030.

Four completed appointments during the next term are not guaranteed. The existing seat could be filled beforehand, while Mendes’s retirement falls close to its end.[3]

At the STJ, six identifiable vacancies combine existing or expected openings in 2026 with four scheduled retirements in 2027–2029; a possible seventh remains contingent. Two compulsory retirements are reported at the STM, in 2028 and 2030.[3]

At the TST, three scheduled retirements are identifiable through 2028. A published four-seat count incorrectly includes Brito Pereira, who retired in 2021.[4]

These are projections, not a fixed quota belonging to a presidential term. They are also not appointments a president completes alone. Senate approval is required, and procedures differ between courts. At the STJ, the president chooses from shortlists. Presidential nomination does not establish that an appointed judge will obey the president.[5]

Nevertheless, judicial selection can influence the interpretation of rights and public power long after the president responsible has left office.

Children not yet born on election day may grow up under legal precedents shaped by those appointments. They will inherit institutions formed through a political contest in which they could not participate.

That does not, by itself, make those institutions illegitimate. Every generation inherits arrangements it did not choose: schools, public debt, infrastructure, property rules and constitutional commitments. Society could scarcely function if everything expired whenever another generation reached adulthood.

Long judicial tenure also serves a serious purpose. Judges need independence from immediate political pressure. Replacing them whenever an election changes the governing party would create dangers of its own. Courts may protect unpopular individuals precisely because judges do not have to satisfy the current majority.

The difficult question is how to preserve that independence while keeping institutions capable of correction.

We need continuity, but we also need ways to reconsider decisions when their consequences become clearer. Stability should give people confidence in their rights and obligations. It should not make inherited arrangements immune to criticism.

This concern would remain if Flávio Bolsonaro had won. The names would change; the reach of the appointment power would not.

The argument extends beyond the judiciary. Decisions about pensions, borrowing, infrastructure, education and land use affect people who have never voted. Some long commitments are indispensable. A hospital cannot be planned around the assumption that nothing should outlast the next election.

But long-term planning should bring humility about what planners can know.

Communities change. Industries expand and disappear. People move. Families adopt different priorities. Technologies transform work and communication. Environmental pressures alter what is practical. Problems emerge that were absent from the debates through which an earlier government secured its mandate.

No central administration can reliably anticipate every development across a country as varied as Brazil.

Neither can a mayor, cooperative or autonomous community. Decentralisation does not give local leaders the ability to predict the future. Its potential advantage lies in allowing different responses and making correction possible at different levels.

One community can attempt a service arrangement without requiring every other community to adopt it. Others can examine the results, adapt useful elements and avoid repeating failures.

The importance of that freedom appears in an interesting account from Jiang Xueqin.

Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian educator and writer who has worked on educational reform in China. In a 2014 interview with journalist Ian Johnson, published by The New York Review of Books, he discussed an experimental secondary-school programme he helped develop in Shenzhen.[6]

His account concerns education rather than a programme for reorganising Brazil. Its relevance lies in what it reveals about the relationship between practical initiative and institutional freedom.

Describing the scope available to the school administrator leading the experiment, Jiang explained:

“Wang Zheng had a free hand to try different things there that couldn’t be done elsewhere.”[6]

The programme included a lending library, a school newspaper and a coffee shop. Jiang summarised the students’ activities simply:

“They read, wrote, and worked.”[6]

The point was to broaden education beyond preparation for examinations through activities involving practical responsibility.

I do not present this experience as proof that local autonomy always succeeds. Nor do I suggest that Jiang’s educational observations constitute an endorsement of National Anarchism.

The connection is my own: someone needed enough freedom to attempt an approach that prevailing arrangements did not ordinarily accommodate.

If every useful innovation must first secure permission to become a universal policy, opportunities to learn may be lost. Institutions need room for initiatives whose value becomes apparent through practice.

For Brazil, this raises a practical question. How much freedom should communities possess to develop responses to their circumstances, and how should those responses be evaluated?

An experiment is not successful merely because its organisers call it autonomous. Residents need information about costs, outcomes and who benefits. They need opportunities to challenge a project without being accused of undermining the community.

Different approaches will also produce different results. Some communities may prioritise material development. Others may accept slower growth to preserve particular surroundings or practices. Some may favour cooperative provision, while others prefer different combinations of public, private and voluntary services.

Those choices deserve space, but a community’s declared priorities can conceal disagreements about whose needs matter. Autonomy must include a means of hearing people who lack influence.

There are also limits to local experimentation. Pollution travels downstream. Infectious disease crosses boundaries. Transport networks require coordination. A community cannot claim autonomy as a licence to impose costs on everyone around it.

The appropriate scale of decision should follow the scale of the problem. Some matters belong close to residents; others require regional or national cooperation.

A shared railway needs compatible arrangements. It does not follow that every community along its route needs an identical cultural life. Cooperation should have a defined purpose, with authority proportionate to the task.

This is how I understand a network of autonomous communities: connected through agreements, services and obligations, while retaining substantial room to organise their internal affairs differently.

There is no reason to imagine that cultural autonomy must produce sealed settlements incapable of working together. Communities can share a hospital without sharing every moral conviction. They can cooperate over water management while disagreeing about education or religious practice.

The difficult part is ensuring that necessary coordination does not gradually acquire authority over unrelated questions.

Institutions develop habits, budgets and interests. An organisation established for one purpose may discover reasons to extend its responsibilities. Decentralised arrangements would need safeguards against that tendency just as national institutions do.

They must also confront inequality.

Autonomy supported by a strong tax base is a different proposition from autonomy without adequate revenue, trained staff or essential services. Transferring responsibilities without resources may merely transfer blame.

A proposal that gives prosperous areas greater freedom while leaving disadvantaged areas with impossible obligations deserves criticism. Shared financing and arrangements that reduce severe disadvantage would remain necessary.

The debate concerns how to provide that support while preserving responsibility and local influence. People receiving assistance should retain a voice in how it is used. Those contributing resources can reasonably expect transparency.

Solidarity requires institutions capable of sustaining it. Autonomy requires care that those institutions do not make every recipient permanently subordinate.

Nor should we romanticise local authority.

A distant bureaucracy can be oppressive, but so can an employer, landowner, religious leader or entrenched political family. Moving power closer to people can make it easier to challenge. It can also place it in the hands of someone on whom they depend personally.

The official who lives nearby may understand your circumstances. He may also know exactly how to punish your disagreement.

Smaller institutions therefore deserve the same scrutiny as larger ones. Fair procedures, transparency and protection against retaliation remain necessary at every scale.

Regional identities require similar care. A state that votes predominantly for one candidate still contains people who chose another. Electoral maps show majorities; they do not establish unanimous communities.

Nobody should be treated as politically misplaced because they disagree with the majority where they live. My understanding of autonomy includes freedom within communities as well as freedom between them.

The same applies across generations. A community should be able to preserve what its members value while recognising that later members may make different choices.

Cultural continuity cannot mean that one generation acquires permanent authority over everyone who follows. The restraint we ask of Brasília must apply closer to home.

For me, this gives National Anarchism a practical responsibility. It must show how autonomy can remain open to change instead of becoming another justification for inherited control.

That work need not begin with a grand constitutional rupture. It could begin with a service, a cooperative venture, a neighbourhood association or an agreement between municipalities.

What can participants manage effectively? How are costs shared? Who can question the organisers? Can arrangements be revised when circumstances change?

These questions bring political principles into contact with everyday responsibility. Declaring opposition to central authority is easier than maintaining accounts, resolving disputes and persuading people to contribute time.

Voluntary cooperation depends on work that slogans cannot perform.

Successful initiatives should also be assessed honestly. A cooperative operating within Brazil will continue to rely on wider infrastructure and legal protections. Its achievements may demonstrate that a particular activity can be organised effectively; they do not automatically establish that every function of society can immediately follow the same model.

Each further claim needs its own argument.

That discipline strengthens an alternative philosophy. It helps distinguish an aspiration from a proposal, and a proposal from a demonstrated achievement.

I regard National Anarchism as a direction for the future because it asks how people can retain meaningful control over their lives while cooperating with others. Its value lies in the possibility of distributing responsibility widely enough that differences need not always become struggles for control of the centre.

It must earn support through arrangements that protect individuals, sustain cooperation and respond to change.

Brazil has chosen its president. Respecting that result is compatible with examining the reach of the office that has been won. The winning coalition does not acquire ownership of the country’s future. The losing voters do not cease to belong to it.

Children born after this election will inherit decisions made without their participation. We owe them dependable rights, functioning institutions and cooperation beyond their immediate surroundings.

We also owe them room to question our assumptions and build alternatives we have not imagined.

The political future I want is one in which they possess that freedom—even when they use it to reject my answers.

Footnotes and sources

[1] Presidential election result. Câmara dos Deputados, “Lula é reeleito presidente com quase 52% dos votos válidos no 2º turno,” 25 October 2026, updated 26 October 2026. Read the report.

[2] Brazil’s federal structure. Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Article 18, recognises the Union, states, Federal District and municipalities as autonomous within the constitutional framework. The argument here concerns the distribution and exercise of authority; it does not claim that Brazil is a unitary state. Constitution published by the Senate.

[3] Projected superior-court vacancies. Poder360, “STF e cortes superiores deverão ter 16 novos ministros até 2030,” 14 October 2026. The survey identifies the existing STF vacancy and scheduled retirements of Luiz Fux, Cármen Lúcia and Gilmar Mendes; six existing or expected STJ openings, with a possible additional vacancy contingent on proceedings concerning Marco Buzzi; and two scheduled STM retirements. The projections include vacancies arising before 2027 and should not be described as guaranteed appointments during 2027–2030. The TST portion requires the correction in footnote 4. Read the survey.

[4] Correction to the TST projection. The survey includes Brito Pereira among future retirees, but the National Justice Council’s report, “TST encerra 2021 com investimentos em tecnologia e aumento na produtividade,” records his retirement in 2021. Excluding him leaves three identifiable scheduled retirements in the survey: Delaíde Alves Miranda Arantes and Maria Cristina Irigoyen Peduzzi in 2027, and Maurício Godinho Delgado in 2028. This is not an exhaustive forecast of unexpected vacancies. Read the CNJ report.

[5] Appointment procedures. The Senate’s official appointments portal explains the approval requirement for nominees to the STF, STJ, TST and STM. The STJ’s institutional page explains its shortlist procedure. Presidential nomination is one stage in an institutional process and does not establish political obedience by the appointed judge. Senate appointments portal · STJ composition and selection procedure.

[6] Jiang Xueqin and educational experimentation. Ian Johnson, “Solving China’s Schools: An Interview with Jiang Xueqin,” The New York Review of Books, 8 April 2014. The interview identifies Jiang as a Canadian citizen active in Chinese education and describes his involvement in an experimental programme in Shenzhen. Both quotations above come from his account of that programme. Their application to Brazilian governance and National Anarchism is the author’s interpretation, rather than a claim that Jiang endorses that philosophy. Read the original interview · Read the republication at ChinaFile.

Vacancy information reflects sources consulted on 26 October 2026. The arguments about decentralisation, National Anarchism and future generations represent the author’s views.