- Brazil’s complex governance system creates impacts at all levels across the country, including consequences for environmental policies.
- Although the Brazilian Congress is designed to be the counterweight to the executive branch, presidential power in Brazil is exceptionally strong. This translates into direct influence over budgetary control, the veto of specific items, and the power to initiate legislation by issuing temporary laws.
- Added to this is the role of political parties, which, in their own way, create a balance of power. However vote-buying is perhaps the one that has most characterized the corrupt practices of those in power.
The Federal Republic of Brazil has a constitutional system with an exceptionally strong executive branch where the president controls the budget process, wields a line-item veto and can initiate legislation by declaring ‘temporary laws’ (Medidas Provisórias) that force the legislature to consider its policy agenda. Congress has corresponding checks and balances, including the power to overturn a veto with a simple majority and the ability to reject the Medidas Provisórias by refusing to ratify them via parliamentary decree. Its power of the purse, while dependent on a budget that originates in the ministries, has been amplified in recent years with the use of ‘earmarks’ that legislators use to determine spending priorities within their jurisdictions or to placate a specific constituency. Congress also has the power of impeachment, allegedly for criminal acts, but recent expertise shows it also occurs when a governing coalition splinters and abandons the president. Dilma Rousseff discovered this when members of her own alliance joined the opposition to remove her from office.
The Congresso Nacional is a bicameral institution that was deliberately designed to ensure the cultural diversity of Brazil is adequately represented in government. The upper house is composed of three senators per state, while the composition of the Câmara de Deputados is determined by population. Representatives to the Câmara de Deputados are elected by citizens who vote for individual candidates who are included in an ‘official list’ affiliated with a specific party. Winners are the top vote getters within each party, but seats are distributed among the parties based on the proportion of total votes won by each party (Text Box 7.5). This system is designed to guarantee that small parties (and constituencies) are represented in the legislature, while ensuring that larger parties win a fair share of the overall vote. The proportional system tends to foster large shifts in composition between electoral cycles, because the total number of votes received by a party tends to reflect the popularity of its presidential candidate.
The political parties of Brazil
Brazil’s political system endows exceptional power to political parties, which dominate the entire political process from the presidency down to municipal councils. Because Brazil elects its legislative bodies using a proportional election process, it has fostered the evolution of an unusually large and diverse multi-party ecosystem. The corollary of this diversity, however, is an almost constant state of political tension, because no single party holds a majority in Congress.
To govern effectively, presidents must build coalitions with several parties, which endows members of Congress with significant leverage in determining policies and, more importantly, attaining access to financial resources and patronage positions. Coalitions are not static, however, and successful presidents manage their coalitions throughout their term in office to maintain support for their legislative agenda. Access to the federal budget tends to weaken the importance of party ideology, making it easier for politicians to switch parties for personal gain or political advantage.
The fluidity that characterizes Brazilian politics is enhanced by the parties themselves, which inhabit a constantly evolving ecosystem where new parties emerge from social movements, or appear after an existing party splinters, or when coalitions merge into a more powerful electoral force. The unwillingness of elected officials to consolidate into a smaller number of ideologically coherent entities enhances the influence of small parties and individual legislators. The multi-party turmoil is not a bug but an attribute of the system.
Senators run in a single, statewide jurisdiction and, although they have a party affiliation, voters select them as individuals. There are no runoff elections, and the winners are those with the largest number of votes (plurality). Because of the proliferation of parties, the winner might win with less than twenty per cent of the total votes cast. Senators enjoy an extended term in office (eight years), which allows them to leverage the powers of incumbency to win reelection and to create an electoral constituency independent of their party affiliation. Unsurprisingly, this accrues even more influence as power brokers when negotiating governing coalitions.
No presidential party has enjoyed an absolute majority in either chamber of Congress since the restoration of democracy and, without an effective voting majority, a president is unable to implement the programmes that will determine the success or failure of his/her administration. This motivates candidates to form pre-electoral alliances, which tend to be ideologically coherent, but insufficient to constitute an absolute majority. This forces the winning candidate to negotiate a post-electoral coalition, which parties use to extract financial resources that benefit their constituencies.
A president-elect has a mandate to govern, and one of his/her first actions is to select a cabinet. Ministerial appointments often go to party stalwarts or promising (young) regional politicians; not infrequently, however, the president will appoint a sitting member of Congress as a cabinet minister. This practice is an essential characteristic of parliamentary systems; however, it is proscribed in presidential systems, such as Brazil, where the separation of powers is mandated by the constitution. Successive governments have bypassed this legal constraint by having ‘congressional ministers’ take a leave of absence from their elected office. They do not, however, forfeit their parliamentary immunity or the opportunity to return to Congress, as their seat is held by a ‘suplente,’ who will vote as instructed by party leaders.
This hybrid system, which is uniquely Brazilian, has provided a level of stability and a spirit of compromise to successive administrations, and its impact is evident in policies that impact the Amazon. For example, during his first term, President Lula da Silva assembled a broad coalition within Congress to provide the votes needed to launch the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Deforestation in the Legal Amazon (Plano de Ação para Prevenção e Controle do Desmatamento na Amazônia Legal or PPCDAm), as well as to spend tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure projects via the Accelerated Growth or the Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC). Those two all-of-government programmes reduced deforestation by eighty per cent (PPCDAm), while ensuring that vast areas of natural forest and riparian habitat would be open to conventional development (PAC). There is no reported evidence that these two overarching policies were part of a quid pro quo, but they exemplify the tradeoffs inherent in a broad multi-party coalition government.
Both the PAC and the PPCDAm have been resurrected for Lula’s third term, and he has recruited congressional leaders representing coalition parties to lead key ministries, including Marina Silva (Ministra do Meio Ambiente e Mudança do Clima) and Sônia Guajajara (Ministra dos Povos Indígenas), as well as Carlos Favaro (Ministro da Agricultura e Pecuária) and Renan Calheiros Filho (Ministro dos Transportes). Lula seems oblivious to the contradictions among his policies, particularly his aspirations to lead climate change negotiations (COP30), while joining the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC+).
Congressional coalitions are essential for legislative success, but they also create an environment ripe for abuse. Despite Brazil’s admirable embrace of a depoliticised civil service, which limits political appointees’ ability to interfere in the administrative affairs of regulatory agencies, some of these officials have successfully used upper-tier ministerial positions to pilfer money from the state or extort so-called ‘campaign contributions’ from the (all too eager) private sector.
Vote-buying as governance
The first exposé of this type of political corruption surfaced when President Fernando Collor de Mello (1990–1992) was involved in a vote-buying scheme that led eventually to his resignation. A similar system operated during the administration of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), who was accused of organizing payments from corporate backers to support a constitutional reform that allowed him to stand for reelection. Further evidence of systemic congressional vote buying emerged during the first term of Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–2007), when it was revealed that political operators close to the president managed a congressional payment system known as the Mensalão.
All these schemes were dwarfed by Lava Jato, which was essentially an illegal campaign finance system that paid congressmen to support the policies of Presidents Lula da Silva (2008–2011) and Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016). Most attention focused on Petrobras and a cartel of construction companies, most notably Odebrecht. Nevertheless, numerous other businesses used the clandestine system to pay bribes for favourable treatment from federal and regional governments. For example, a holding company controlled by the Mendonça Batista brothers (J&F Group) funnelled US$ 183 million to hundreds of elected officials during their successful effort to create Brazil’s largest meat packing company (JBS Foods). Coincidentally, these illegal contributions occurred concurrently with the government’s campaign to implement the PPCDAm, which included law-and-order actions targeting JBS beef supply chains.
The Lava Jato prosecution collapsed because of inappropriate acts by prosecutors and judges, but also because a major sector of Brazilian society was desperate for a candidate that could defeat Jair Bolsonaro. That person was Inácio Lula da Silva, and a judicial finding freed the former president from detention, allowing him to challenge Bolsonaro in a free and fair election. That finding also created a legal precedent, however, that led to the dismissal of criminal charges against dozens of senators, deputies, governors, and former cabinet members. Consequently, the political elite at the core of the Lava Jato scandal escaped punishment and remain in positions of influence despite ample evidence of their culpability.
Banner image: Capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) in the Brazilian rainforest. Image by Rhett A. Butler.
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