A RESHAPED �COALITION PRESIDENTIALISM’
If the defects of �coalition presidentialism’ are now more explicit than ever, it does not follow that the institutional achievements related to the Brazilian political system should be ignored.
Brazil’s â€?coalition presidentialism’ could perform quite efficiently up until some years ago, at least according to Figueiredo and Limongi’s and Melo and Pereira’s arguments above, mostly because there was a high dependence of the legislative power on presidential incentives,[659] from cabinet offices to pork-barrel politics, in a negotiation that can be legitiÂmate in most cases, but which can also lead to patronage and graft. Functional political regimes normally have the executive and legislative powers working in a symbiotic manner, and the executive is expected to have strong control over the legislative agenda,[660] but they also provide a set of tools to make such negotiaÂtions more transparent and accountable. The question that is now clearly on the table is whether such a system, which could preserve some governability and stability for many years, did so by empowering or constraining the capacity of Congress to act as a powerful check on the executive power. It is also whether such a system can provide a set of tools that makes it more prone to operating according to the rule of law.These questions are not easy to answer, especially now that Brazil’s â€?coalition presidentialism’ seems to be going through a transitional moment, and the first signs are pointing toward a more clientelist Congress, not a more accountable one. On the other hand, the system could prove fairly resilient against a would-be autocrat such as Bolsonaro, despite all the means of co-optation he so fiercely embraced. Fernando Limongi, who continuously expresses his concern with the sequence of political events that struck the country and the risk of an authoritarian regression - â€?this genie that is leaving the bottle you do not put it back’[661] - argued that the Brazilian political system is clearly not compatible with a president who governs chaotically.[662] The strategy of continuously confronting the instituÂtions does not play well in a system that is largely dependent on politics and on the ability of the executive to negotiate with Congress, especially in such a fragÂmentary party configuration.[663] Even if, in the end, Bolsonaro reverted to the most blatant â€?old politics’, he was never regarded as a normal president, but as an â€?incidental’ one, whose coalitions in Congress were improvised and precariÂous,[664] and an â€?unlikely’[665] one, whose election was only possible due to a set of critical junctures that would not be easily repeated in the future.
Moreover, there are some positive signs that will perhaps make this system more functional.
Mechanisms to make it less fragmentary have been approved in Congress, such as the prohibition of electoral coalitions and an electoral threshÂold for political parties,[666] meaning one of the main reasons for it being derailed may weaken. In addition, some signs that have led to the disruption of the politiÂcal system seem to be fading away: the municipal elections in 2020, for instance, were much more conventional, with traditional parties regaining some ground even if leaning to the Right[667] (but not far-right, which was interpreted as a Bolsonaro defeat),[668] and civil society has increasingly shown its deep rejection of a government that has continuously attacked the country’s institutions and whose series of mismanagements have impoverished Brazilians.[669]It looks increasingly likely that the political wave and set of junctures that led to the rise of such an â€?incidental’ and â€?unlikely’ president are going away, so the political system may be able to recover from such turbulent years, even though some of its major dysfunctionalities - notably, clientelism, fragmentation, polarisation, lack of transparency and accountability, lack of representation of minorities - are still very present and, in some respects, became worse. What lies ahead is whether the Brazilian political system, after such disruptive years, will learn from its recent past and challenge some of its longstanding wrongs that have so directly contributed to such a scenario. As with many of the features of Brazilian constitutionalism, its political system cannot simply sweep this recent past under the carpet. Yet, as has been the rule in Brazilian constitutionalism, preservation, accommodation and oblivion tend to prevail in the end. In a way, the rule of law in Brazil has been continuously challenged by that other rule - the political system just makes it more visible than any other Brazilian institution.