Like similar protests across the world, particularly in emerging-economy democracies like Turkey and India, there is a subtext to these protests: middle-class discontent with a government that seems out of reach. In India, the middle class, while speaking of corruption, was making a play for greater attention from a political class that has traditionally paid court to rural rather than urban areas. In Turkey, the protesters in the continuing Gezi Square demonstrations objected not just to the bulldozing of a public park, but to the government's remaking of cities all over Turkey, and to the growing Islamism in public life that upset secular city-dwellers. And in Brazil, many protestors come from an increasingly prosperous middle class that nevertheless feels that their taxes are too high, paying for stadiums and welfare schemes while not providing the quality of public services that many better-off urbanites expect. The rhetoric is familiar - the protests are being described as a "civil war against the corrupt politicians", and the centre-left government is a particular target of attack. The once-popular former president, Lula de Silva, is fighting allegations of permitting corruption, and vote-buying by the ruling party. The massive construction for the World Cup and Olympics is late, over budget, and has attracted numerous allegations of cronyism. Even football legends like Pele and Ronaldo, seen as defending the expense on the beautiful game, have become hate figures.
It is increasingly becoming obvious, as more and more countries give in to the culture of street protest, that something is amiss with the relationship between emergent middle classes everywhere and the states in which they live. Yet perhaps in each case the answers are different. In Brazil, in particular, the solutions seem difficult to find. As with the Occupy Wall Street protests of some years ago, the protestors seem to agree on very little specific reforms. In fact, some of the recent violence was sparked by right-vs-left factional aggression within the protestors' ranks. The real lessons from Brazil are perhaps two-fold. First, while pro-sports voices are usually loud, demanding more money to satisfy national pride, diverting the money from other tasks can frequently lead to an even louder backlash. And second, it is never safe to assume that a country having a few good years will continue to have them. Economic and governance reform must be a continual process, or dissatisfaction will spill over.