The scale of the damage should not be underestimated. Accumulated knowledge about institutional crises provides clues. The literature identifies, broadly speaking, two patterns of overcoming. The first occurs in large-scale crises, due to the rise of a new political force, normally originating from the opposition. This is what is observed in regime change. The alternation of power, in these cases, triggers the dismantling of the ancien régime and the creation of a new one. This is not, however, our case.
In less dramatic contexts, the alternation of power occurs within the regime itself: the opposition wins, promotes reforms and replaces the leadership of institutions. There are gains in legitimacy. Countries can, therefore, radically change their political direction without institutional ruptures (parliamentaryism makes this process more agile and less traumatic). This is not our case either — and for two reasons.
The main one is the balkanization of political authority. Hence the absence of a clear cleavage between government and opposition (just look at the presidential candidates and their parties). In classic crisis situations, the opposition tends to embody reformist demands associated with controlling the abuse of power. Governments, on the other hand, control vast resources. As Rui Barbosa observed, the Executive is “the great voter, the great appointer, the great contractor”. Holding the pen, the Executive survives by setting up a base via the shared offer of private goods (exemptions, benefits, positions). It is the opposition that resorts to flags that are public goods — for example, restoration of administrative morality, republicanism, democracy, as Martin Shefter showed.
In today’s Brazil, however, virtually all relevant political actors command public resources — including sectors of the opposition, which, via amendments. Thus, incentives for control and accountability disappear. Hypercompetitive politics can generate virtuous results, but among us it has degenerated into predatory collusion disguised as Executive-Legislative conflict.
Rui Barbosa already warned that the Executive was “restrained and limited much less by the legislative body, its usual accomplice, than by the constitutional brakes of Justice”. Although it has acquired greater autonomy, for reasons including cyclical reasons, the fragmented Legislature remains complicit. And those “brakes” became perverted: lato sensu control institutions began to appear as protagonists or supporting actors in scandals. This is the second reason. Institutional degradation —in the STJ, etc.— cannot be resolved by alternating power.
Our crisis is, therefore, deeply institutional. It cannot be resolved either by a simple change of command of the institutions, nor by a specific redesign. There is a vast institutional debris to be faced. In this sense, although in a very different context, there is some structural similarity with the transitions in post-communist Eastern Europe. It is less about replacing rulers and more about dismantling arrangements that have crystallized and started to block the republican functioning of the State.
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