THE INTERNATIONAL PERCEPTION OF BRAZIL’S COMPLIANCE WITH THE RULE OF LAW
The prospect of a greater integration with the international order relies on the future of the political landscape in Brazil. Depending on how the chess pieces will move in future elections, Brazil may maintain an isolationist behaviour based on conspiracy theories or it can try to regain some portion of the soft power the country was able to exert up until recently.
The results of the 2022 presidential elections will seal the fate of the country and greatly affect the international perception of its compliance with the rule of law, democracy and human rights. The re-election of would-be autocrats like Jair Bolsonaro is normally interpreted as a marker of serious concerns about the prospects of further constitutional[1296] and democratic[1297] erosion,[1298] but Brazilian politics are quite dynamic and may also lead to the election of a president who behaves more rationally and is driven by the purpose of reinstalling Brazil onto the internaÂtional stage. At the time of writing, the prospects of Jair Bolsonaro’s re-election looks increasingly more difficult, and the reappearance as a potential contender of former President Lula da Silva (2003-10), who helped project Brazil as a soft power and invested in South-South relations, may radically change the landÂscape once again. In the end, Brazil under Bolsonaro may be a transitory, though very disruptive, experience in the country’s history, which may be succeeded by the resumption of its soft power, even if an enfeebled one.The path towards the reconstruction of Brazil’s soft power, nevertheless, will be laborious. What Brazil has long built to consolidate itself as a promiÂnent â€?soft power’ of the underdeveloped world has been rapidly dismantled by a myriad of policies largely inspired by conspiracy theories, lack of strategic vision and confrontational conduct that only reveal how weak Brazil becomes once it throws away its well-known capacity to lead efforts with other middle 196 The Rule of Law in Brazil and the Challenges of International Law and low-income nations to defend their mutual interests.
President Bolsonaro’s foreign affairs policy has focused on rolling back key achievements of that past - the weakening of regional integration, for instance - and adopting a subserviÂent and bold alignment with the US at least until President Donald Trump was in office, with no effective gains. Continuous attacks on China by members of Bolsonaro’s cabinet and his supporters have shown how reckless and disruptive his government is for Brazil’s strategic interests, especially in view of China’s position as a major trading partner and a vital supplier of medical equipment and vaccines for combatting COVID-19.The instruments for fighting corruption and enhancing accountability, which had seen important improvements during the last few decades,[1299] have since been progressively undermined.[1300] The country’s positive image as a defender of the environmental agenda, also backed by previous successes in reducing the deforÂestation of the Amazon Forest, has been wrecked by the government’s incentives to encourage illegal deforestation, mining and agricultural operations. Brazil’s well-known cultural heritage, which has long projected Brazil internationally, has been overshadowed by the government’s cultural wars and radical views on topics such as abortion, gender equality and religious freedom. To make things worse, the calamitous handling of the COVID-19 crisis, in which Brazil suffered one of the world’s highest numbers of deaths/per capita, revealed the country’s absence of effective governance.
However, Brazil’s longstanding capacity for strengthening diplomatic ties and reaching a consensus in the international arena should not be simply forgotÂten based on the most recent events. It is also misleading to merely focus on â€?executive-led assaults on democratic rule’[1301] while there is a multidimensional institutional framework that may help contribute to - but also constrain - such assaults.
Brazil’s longstanding self-reinforcing processes,[1302] many structurÂally built upon the still pervasive authoritarian mindset[1303] and inequality,[1304] have indeed been impactful drivers of Brazilian politics - Bolsonaro is, after all, a direct consequence of such a phenomenon.[1305] On the other hand, Brazil’s history is also impacted by a growing and active civil society and incremental and impactful institutional improvements,[1306] which have pushed the country toward democracy[1307] and a fruitful dialogue with the international community.Although Brazilian institutions - and the judiciary in particular - have been very timid in explicitly incorporating international law and complying with foreign decisions such as those of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, there is a growing sense of the need to combine constitutional review with conventionality control, thereby adopting international human rights standards such as those of the Inter-American System of Human Rights.[1308] The 1988 Constitution had already explicitly recognised this connection in Article 5, §2, by determining the incorporation of unenumerated human rights from internaÂtional law. There is, therefore, a great deal of potential. Strategic litigation and political pressure from civil society can push Brazilian institutions to incremenÂtally pursue international law standards in human rights and the rule of law.[1309] Moreover, unlike what has long been recurrent in southern American integraÂtion, the most successful mechanisms for this purpose such as MERCOSUR should be strengthened and not dismantled to build another organisation that features flexibility but lacks basic principles of coordination and institutional capacities.[1310] There is still a long way to go before Brazil can seriously inteÂgrate into the international order, but the scenario is, as in numerous aspects of Brazil’s institutional framework, of a glass half full or half empty.