On June 12, right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro faced his first defeat at the Supreme Court. The Court issued an injunction blocking part of his recent decree, which would have dismantled important tools for civil society involvement in policymaking. The decree called for the elimination of more than 50 participatory councils, which give civil society an official role in designing public policies and monitoring policy implementation. 

Brazil’s participatory councils originated with the country’s 1988 Constitution, written after its transition to democracy. By attacking the councils, Bolsonaro has challenged one of the foundations of Brazil’s democratic order. 

What are Brazil’s participatory councils?

Participatory councils are institutional venues that bring together representatives from civil society and the government. During monthly meetings, councilors develop policy proposals, pass policy initiatives, set budgets, and oversee the implementation of policies on the ground. Participatory councils operate at all levels of government across a range of different policy sectors.

Rather than just relying on voting, lobbying, and protest, participatory councils give civil society a seat at the table in deciding on policy issues. For instance, as shown in Lindsay Mayka’s new book, Brazil’s National Health Council brings together patients, health care workers, and service providers from throughout Brazil. During monthly meetings, councilors work with bureaucrats to make decisions on issues such as new surveillance systems to detect Zika and dengue outbreaks, the allocation of funds for basic reproductive health care, and potential sanctions for a local government that has misused health funds. 

Over the past three decades, councils spread to a wide range of policy areas. When Bolsonaro came into office in early 2019, there were nearly 90 participatory councils at the national level in areas ranging from the environment, to crime and security, to health care. 

Why did Bolsonaro attack the participatory councils?

In April, to mark his 100th day in office, Bolsonaro issued a sweeping decree to eliminate more than 50 of Brazil’s participatory councils at the national level. The decree shutters long-standing councils for disability rights, rural development, biodiversity, and LGBT rights, among others. In a tweet, Bolsonaro justified his actions by arguing that participatory councils provide a space for special interests to “deliberately disrupt Brazil’s development of Brazil,” ignore the law and go against the “real needs of the population”. 

Dismantling the councils is the latest step in Bolsonaro’s efforts to roll back policies associated with the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) governments of Lula da Silva (2003-10) and Dilma Rousseff (2011-14). During this time, the PT created additional participatory councils and invested resources in strengthening participation at all levels of government. 

Given that many of Bolsonaro’s supporters have little in common other than their opposition to the Workers’ Party, an attack on participatory councils may be seen as a way to rally Bolsonaro’s base. After all, Bolsonaro is politically vulnerable, given plummeting approval ratings, economic contraction, and a fractured legislative coalition. 

Yet while many Brazilians associate participatory institutions with Brazil’s leftist Workers’ Party, many of the most prominent participatory councils were created under centrist and right-wing presidents before the left gained power. The councils are not just a tool of the left. Instead, participatory councils are a standard component of clean democratic governance, much like having transparent accounting practices or disseminating data on policy performance. 

In fact, a number of the councils eliminated by the decree were established by centrist president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002). New books by Lindsay Mayka and Jessica Rich point to the Cardoso government as being pivotal for the institutionalization of participatory councils in health, social assistance, and HIV/AIDS. 

In other words, Bolsonaro is not simply reversing the Workers’ Party’s policy agenda. He is unraveling an established tool of democratic governance in Brazil.

Eliminating participatory councils undermines democracy

Bolsonaro’s attack on participatory councils would damage Brazilian democracy, given what we know from recent research. The participatory councils deepen democracy by including groups that typically have less influence through elections or lobbying, such as the poor. 

This decree also eliminates a key tool in the fight against corruption. Participatory councils increase transparency and oversight of budgets. Moreover, the expansion of Brazil’s policymaking councils has been tied to more efficient use of public funds, yielding a reduction in infant mortality among the poor.

More broadly, dismantling the participatory councils undermines the stability of democratic institutions. As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued, democracies die when politicians give up on institutions in favor of defeating their political opponents. Shuttering the councils is part of a broader step away from democratic norms in Brazil. 

The future of the councils remains uncertain

The Supreme Court’s recent injunction represents a partial victory for Brazil’s councils. On the one hand, the decision ruled that Bolsonaro could not eliminate any participatory council that had been mentioned in a law, protecting most of the councils slated to be eliminated. On the other hand, the ruling does not protect participatory councils that were created through presidential decrees or administrative acts, such as the National LGBT Rights Council and the National Commission for the Eradication of Slave Labor. These councils remain in legal limbo while lawyers argue that they form part of Brazil’s commitments under international law and thus cannot be eliminated through a decree.

Beyond the details of the injunction, the Supreme Court’s ruling was a landmark one as the first court decision to uphold the councils’ constitutionality. All 11 Justices affirmed the importance of participatory democracy as a foundation of Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. Thus, the decision refuted Bolsonaro’s claims that participatory councils are merely a tool of the left. While the fate of many participatory councils remains uncertain, this recognition by the Court may help supporters of the councils to advocate for their survival. 

Carla Bezerra is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of São Paulo (USP) and a researcher at the Brazilian Analysis and Planning Center (CEBRAP).

Lindsay Mayka is an assistant professor of government at Colby College and is the author of Building Participatory Institutions in Latin America: Reform Coalitions and Institutional Change (Cambridge University Press, 2019). 

One of the most important stories in Latin American politics in recent decades begins with a 2014 Brazilian federal investigation into a Brasília gas station/laundromat where cars were washed and clothes and money laundered. Radiating outward from this one city block, “Operation Car Wash” has become a sprawling web of allegations, indictments, and convictions that implicate top companies, businesspeople, and politicians throughout Latin America.

Among the most significant people to fall in this scandal thus far have been Peruvian ex-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned on March 23 to avoid impeachment, and Brazil’s leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was imprisoned on April 8.  

When a top political leader is brought low, the process is often framed in the international media as a sign that democratic mechanisms and the rule of law are triumphing in Latin America. Indeed, independent judiciaries and legislatures, as well as media and civil society, are showing their willingness to hold powerful people to account for their bad behavior. The message that no one is above the law is hailed as a critical advancement for democracy. 

Yet we fear that something is amiss. Paradoxically, the current round of corruption investigations could ultimately undermine democracy in Latin America more than fortify it. 

Corruption investigations in Latin America threaten democracy in two ways. First, malfeasant legislators and executives — rightly recognizing this historical opening as an existential threat to their job security and freedom from imprisonment — are fighting back. From Guatemala to Argentina to Honduras to Brazil, politicians are using their positions of power and control over legislative levers to weaken the rule of law, rewriting policy and manipulating investigations to shield themselves yet take down opponents. These public officials are exploiting the tools of the law and an open civil society to subvert anti-corruption investigations and the rule of law. 

Most obviously, this involves attempts to shut down entire investigations and dismantle agencies that prosecute corruption. In Guatemala, President Jimmy Morales has for the past year been seeking to shut down the anti-corruption agency CICIG — an effort that in the past month gained traction with baseless allegations that the CICIG has been manipulated by Russia (see also recent events in Honduras).

Even more threatening to the rule of law, though, has been selective prosecution — often unintentional on the part of anti-corruption crusaders in civil society and accountability agencies of the state.  

With the new zeal for prosecuting corruption in Latin America has come the weaponization of corruption investigations. For instance, in 2016, conservative Brazilian politicians succeeded in impeaching center-leftist President Dilma Rousseff from the Workers’ Party (known by its Brazilian initials, PT). The impeachment was based on questionable grounds formally related to minor fiscal mismanagement but was framed by her partisan opponents as part of a broader corruption scandal in which Rousseff was not in fact implicated.

A year and a half later, Rousseff’s mentor and predecessor from the PT, Lula, was prosecuted and imprisoned on more serious corruption charges — yet the legitimacy of the prosecution was tainted by the fact that the (by Brazilian standards) speedy and non-exhaustive legal process appeared calibrated to disqualify Lula from the 2018 presidential election.

Meanwhile, justice has been plodding and less fierce for politicians from the coalition of center-right and rightist parties now opposing the PT. Brazil’s right-leaning legislative majority has repeatedly voted to shield Rousseff’s conservative replacement, current President Michel Temer, from prosecution on corruption charges more severe than those that faced Lula. Temer and his legislative allies pursued Rousseff’s impeachment while they themselves faced corruption charges. Corruption proceedings have recently begun against Aécio Neves, Rousseff’s principal opponent in the 2014 presidential election, though the charges have long been in the public eye. 

In this context, people who perceive themselves as neutral — including media, the courts, and civil society activists — can be drawn readily into false equivalence that ultimately serves partisan interests. The narrative of impartiality has led observers to paint the political sins and fates of Rousseff, Lula, Temer, and Neves in similar tones and brushstrokes. Yet a straightforward reading of the facts reveals great variation in the gravity of both violations and punishments, leading to a bias in favor of the conservatives currently in power.

Meanwhile, the international media hails Brazil’s anti-corruption activist federal Judge Sérgio Moro as a democratic hero, yet fails to recognize that selective prosecution and conviction damages the rule of law.

The second way corruption investigations undermine democracy in Latin America is psychological. Even when fairly implemented, massive corruption investigations can lead to the perception that the whole system is rotten. Media coverage of corruption triggers decreased faith in the political system, and thus lower levels of voter turnout and other forms of political participation. Following the investigation and impeachment of President Richard Nixon in the United States, Americans’ trust in government as a whole declined precipitously. Political apathy and disengagement can foster support for dangerous populist demagogues or for a military “solution” to the problems of democratic government.   

The more wide-ranging the corruption scandal, the greater the threat to support for the political system as a whole. Here, the Guatemalan and Brazilian cases are emblematic. In Guatemala, the past six elected presidents have been the subject of credible and grave corruption charges.

Meanwhile, of Brazil’s seven presidents since democratization in 1985, two have been impeached. A third is currently imprisoned, and two others have been the subject of serious corruption charges (Temer and José Sarney). Arguably the least tainted of the seven, the statesman Fernando Henrique Cardoso, recently acknowledged that corruption had also been widespread in his administration, though he denied personal involvement.

And the ever-expanding scandal shows no signs of slowing down: 15 of the 20 most frequently discussed candidates for Brazil’s October 2018 elections face a whopping 160 investigations.

In such a situation, it seems reasonable for citizens to conclude that the system is fundamentally broken, top to bottom. Yet shining a bright light on the rot can make it more difficult to fix the problems, if citizens disengage from democracy.  

What is to be done? On the one hand, citizens and civil society elites fortify democracy by confronting corrupt politicians; on the other hand, how we talk about and mobilize around the corruption fight matters. In the swirl of corruption investigations, a key fact has gotten lost entirely: Over the past 25 years, corruption has declined precipitously in many developing countries. For instance, starting in the 1990s, Brazil instituted a number of reforms to tighten controls over social policy spending, limiting opportunities for politicians to siphon off health, education, and welfare funds. 

Meanwhile, a major reason these corruption allegations have come to light and entered the legal system is the expansion of the powers and funding of pro-accountability agencies within the state, such as the public prosecutor and the federal police, which have expanded the “web of accountability.” 

In covering anti-corruption investigations, it is important to shine the light on the remarkable progress that countries like Brazil have made in moving toward greater transparency and accountability. Indeed, overlooking them could bolster anti-democratic forces with an interest in dismantling the advances.