Abstract
This chapter sets out to dissolve the amalgamation between certain theories of democracy and democracy itself, which presumes that democracy would cease to exist if theory failed to explain how it works. Examining the case of Brazil, it contrasts the explanatory thesis of pemedebismo with other theses that have similar objectives, especially the one that is conventionally called coalition presidentialism. It is a starting point that establishes the understanding of the political system as the main focus of the book, although it does not try to explain the political system exclusively in terms of its own autonomous logic and operation. The results are then extended to a broader discussion on the “crisis of democracy.”
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Notes
- 1.
Andréa Freitas and Glauco Peres da Silva (“Das manifestações de 2013 à eleição de 2018 no Brasil: Buscando uma abordagem institucional,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, v. 38, n. 1, Jan.–Apr. 2019) record “that the number of seats of the largest party decreases continuously from 1991 to 2019, going from 21.5% to 10.9%, in Congress alone. The effective number of parties reduces between 1991 and 1999, falling from 8.7 to 8.0, but thereafter only grows, reaching a high 16.5 parties in 2019.” On this point, see also Cesar Zucco and Timothy J. Power, “Fragmentation without Cleavages? Endogenous Fractionalization in the Brazilian Party System,” Comparative Politics, v. 53, n. 3, Apr. 2021.
- 2.
It is in this sense that I interpret the analyses of Carlos Ranulfo Felix de Melo, “Eleições presidenciais, jogos aninhados e sistema partidário no Brasil,” Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política, n. 4, Jul.–Dec. 2010.
- 3.
Sérgio Abranches, “Presidencialismo de coalizão: O dilema institucional brasileiro,” Dados: Revista de Ciências Sociais, Rio de Janeiro, v. 31, n. 1, pp. 5–33, 1988.
- 4.
To give just one example among many, but all the more significant because of the year, 2014: “The current Brazilian democracy was born in a climate of strong distrust. For most analysts, the chances that the transition would result in a consolidated democracy were minimal. That was the general tone of academic predictions. It would not work. Presidential elections were a central reason for such pessimism. Given the unpreparedness of the voters, their material and cognitive deficiencies, it was inevitable that they would be marked by a combination of high instability and polarization. The 1989 election did nothing but reinforce those gloomy scenarios, confirming what everyone feared: the combination of populism and radicalization. Those beliefs proved unfounded. The 1989 election did not establish a pattern, differing from all subsequent ones. Since 1994, two – and the same two – parties have controlled presidential elections. Voter behavior is highly predictable. Elections have become part of Brazilians’ routine. With the World Cup over, the electoral season begins. A period that has proven to be much less surprising and with homeopathic doses of emotions” (Fernando Limongi and Fernando Guarnieri, “A base e os partidos: As eleições presidenciais no Brasil pós-redemocratização,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, v. 33, n. 2, pp. 4–5, Jul. 2014).
- 5.
Sérgio Abranches, “Presidencialismo de coalizão: O dilema institucional brasileiro,” op. cit.
- 6.
“The control exercised by the president and party leaders over the agenda of parliamentary work and the decision-making process within Congress, based on their institutional powers, has significant effects on the performance of the coalition supporting the president and its ability to remain united over time” (Fernando Limongi and Argelina Figueiredo, “Bases institucionais do presidencialismo de coalizão,” Lua Nova, São Paulo, n. 44, p. 102, 1998).
- 7.
Ibid., p. 86. It is noteworthy, however, that no due weight was given to the institution of reelection, which was approved in 1997 and came into operation in 1998, given its unprecedented nature relative to the 1946 framework in which the debate with Abranches took place.
- 8.
Fernando Limongi, “A democracia no Brasil: Presidencialismo, coalizão partidária e processo decisório,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, São Paulo, n. 76, p. 30, nov. 2006, p. 20. See also, in the same sense, José Antonio Cheibub, Adam Przeworski and Sebastian Saiegh, “Governos de coalizão nas democracias presidencialistas e parlamentaristas,” Dados, Rio de Janeiro, v. 45, n. 2, pp. 187–218, 2002; and Fabiano Santos, “Brazilian Democracy and the Power of ‘Old’ Theories of Party Competition,” Brazilian Political Science Review, Rio de Janeiro, v. 2, n. 1, pp. 57–76, 2008.
- 9.
In their 1998 article, Fernando Limongi and Argelina Figueiredo intend to demonstrate that “there is no reason to take the Executive as the weak party in this bargain” (“Bases institucionais do presidencialismo de coalizão”, op. cit., p. 96) To that end, the article performs the mental experiment of a “reverse auction” between the Executive and the Legislative branches (pp. 96–101), concluding that “fearing to be deprived of access to any benefit from the government, parties are led to moderate their demands to become part of the majority coalition” (p. 100). In this reasoning, it is implicit that party fragmentation does not appear as an obstacle to the successful formation of multiparty coalitions, since it would stimulate competition between them, strengthening the bargaining position of the Executive. I thank Leonardo Martins Barbosa for the development on this point. I also believe that the dispute over the decisive bastion of party discipline is still far from over. In this regard, see, for example, the debate with Barry Ames by Octavio Amorim Neto in his “Cabinets and Coalitional Presidentialism” (In: Barry Ames (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Brazilian Politics. New York: Routledge, 2019, pp. 293–312). In order to gain in determination, this debate would need, in my view, to understand the causes of the “excess of adhesion” proper to the formation of super-coalitions. With this, it would be possible to consider the specific type of coordination that PMDB-type parties are capable of producing among themselves, mitigating competition between them to the same extent that it makes cohesion and the organization of governments difficult. It would also be possible to consider the fact that the effective opposition migrates within the coalition itself. It is these traits and characteristics that the notion of pemedebismo intends to highlight. On this, see Sect. 2.2 of this chapter.
- 10.
Sérgio Abranches, “A democracia brasileira vai bem, mas requer cuidados: Proposições sobre democracia brasileira e o presidencialismo de coalizão.” In: João Paulo dos Reis Velloso (Ed.), Como vão o desenvolvimento e a democracia no Brasil? Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 2001, p. 243.
- 11.
Ibid., p. 249.
- 12.
Exemplarily and explicitly, Fernando Limongi, “A democracia no Brasil,” op. cit., p. 30: “From a descriptive point of view, the Brazilian political system, there is no doubt, can be named ‘coalition presidentialism.’”
- 13.
Fernando Limongi, “A democracia no Brasil,” op. cit, p. 39, footnote.
- 14.
“Poderes em desarmonia.” Folha de S.Paulo, 12 May 2019. As far as I know, the first record of the author’s diagnosis that the Supreme Court has become a source of instability dates from April 2013: “The interventions of the Supreme Court in the field of electoral and partisan legislation – it is time to state this in full – lack coherence. The Supreme Court, paradoxical as it may seem, has been a source of instability. By intending to legislate in the electoral field, it cannot avoid linking its decisions to partisan disputes. It thus loses the exemption to claim the ability to arbitrate a fight in which it is involved” (Fernando Limongi, “Em defesa do Congresso,” Valor Econômico, Apr–1 May 2013, p. A8). Even so, it is enough to reread the above quotation from the following year’s article, from 2014, which the author wrote with Guarnieri to conclude that it was in fact only after the implosion of the polarization between PT and PSDB that Limongi began to detect the origin of all the problems in a flawed institutional design that would oppose the presidency of the Republic to the Supreme Court.
- 15.
In a 2017 article in which they seek to assess the overlapping crises that arose soon after the reelection of Dilma Rousseff in 2014, Argelina Figueiredo and Fernando Limongi stated this very idea in the clearest terms: “Attributing institutional causes to the current crisis is to disregard the various dimensions that intersect and feed to give it specificity and, above all, it asks to leave aside the political polarization that was armed throughout the presidential disputes and the PT governments. This polarization was fed and gained strength in the final moments of the 2014 electoral process amid a series of revelations of corruption. On the other hand, there is an economic crisis that accentuates and interacts with the political crisis” (Argelina Figueiredo and Fernando Limongi, “A crise atual e o debate institucional,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, São Paulo, n. 109, p. 91, 2017).
- 16.
In this regard, see Marcos Nobre and José Rodrigo Rodriguez, “‘Judicialização da política’: déficits explicativos e bloqueios normativistas,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, São Paulo, n. 91, pp. 5–20, Nov. 2011. Recognizing that the boundaries between powers are the object of permanent dispute, that they are not fixed in advance, much less that they are guided by the assumption of a pre-established harmony is not the same as saying that certain configurations are normatively less harmful than others, of course.
- 17.
Sérgio Abranches, “Presidencialismo de coalizão,” op. cit., p. 21.
- 18.
Cesar Zucco, “Ideology or What? Legislative Behavior in Multiparty Presidential Settings,” The Journal of Politics, New York, v. 71, n. 3, p. 1077, 2009.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 1078.
- 20.
Velhas raposas, novos governistas: O PMDB e a democracia brasileira. Rio de Janeiro: UERJ-IESP, 2014. Thesis (PhD in Political Science). In the same vein, see also Fabiano Santos and Talita Tanscheit, “Quando velhos atores saem de cena: A ascensão da nova direita política no Brasil,” Colombia Internacional, Bogotá, n. 99, pp. 163ss., 2019.
- 21.
Ibid., especially pp. 35ss.
- 22.
Fernando Meirelles, “Oversized Government Coalitions in Latin America,” Brazilian Political Science Review, Rio de Janeiro, v. 10, n. 3, e0001, 2016.
- 23.
It will not be possible here to deal specifically with Meirelles’ explanatory hypotheses for the recurrent presence of super-coalitions, both in the Brazilian case and in the Latin American comparison. But it is certain that thinking about pemedebismo in broader terms has as one of its requirements the explanation of its social and institutional causes. But it is possible at least to note that such requirements go well beyond the need, pointed out by Meirelles, for the approval of reforms that require, in the Brazilian case, a three-fifths majority in both houses of Congress, in two rounds of voting. It should also be registered that Carreirão (“O Sistema partidário brasileiro: um debate com a literatura recente,” Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política, Rio de Janeiro, n. 14, p. 271, 2014) noted, already in 2014, a similar trend, in which “inconsistent” coalitions were “occurring frequently in the country.”
- 24.
Sérgio Abranches, “Presidencialismo de coalizão,” op. cit., p. 29.
- 25.
Imobilismo em movimento, op. cit., p. 38. I understand that this position has affinities with the explanatory hypothesis of “endogenous fractionalization” proposed by Cesar Zucco and Timothy J. Power, “Fragmentation without Cleavages?,” op. cit. However, a detailed consideration of Zucco and Power’s proposal and of its possible affinities with pemedebismo cannot be properly made here, requiring a separate development.
- 26.
On these points, see the review by Yan de Souza Carreirão, “O sistema partidário brasileiro: Um debate com a literatura recente,” op. cit.
- 27.
Specifically in relation to the understanding of the Brazilian political system, exemplary cases of “characterization by shortcoming” could well be Scott Mainwaring, as in his “Brazil: Weak Parties, Feckless Democracy.” In: Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America. Redwood City; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 354–98; or Barry Ames, as in his The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001. Exemplary cases of the premise “we are already modern” could well be Argelina Figueiredo and Fernando Limongi, in “Bases institucionais do presidencialismo de coalizão” (op. cit.), or Marcus André Melo and Carlos Pereira. Making Brazil Work: Checking the President in a Multiparty System. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
- 28.
“These findings represent a synthesis between the depictions of the Brazilian Congress as the arena of the locally-minded, pork-seeking, free-floating legislator (Ames 1987a), and the competing view that internal rules result in a legislature structured around parties, which behave in roughly ideological terms (Figueiredo & Limongi 2002).” Cesar Zucco, “Ideology or What?”, op. cit., p. 1090.
- 29.
A recent and symptomatic example of this opposition can be found in Jairo Nicolau’s O Brasil dobrou à direita: Uma radiografia da eleição de Bolsonaro em 2018 (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2020), pp. 12–3: “In an attempt to characterize the style in which this work was written, I would say that I sought to make an essay based on data. For many, this may seem an oxymoron, but it was only when I finished the essay that I realized that the result produced brought this apparently contradictory mixture.” In a passage just before this quote, Nicolau gives as one of the reasons that impelled him to write the book “the perception that, although there are good essays and interpretations about Bolsonaro’s rise, some of them connecting what happened in the campaign and what is happening in the government, almost none is based on quantitative evidence.” This way of seeing knowledge production is linked to the oldest of the discussions since the establishment of the university in Brazil: whether we would do “science,” or continue with “impressionistic” practices such as that of the “essay,” precisely. (On an emblematic case of this dispute, see Carolina Pulici, Entre sociólogos: Versões conflitivas da “condição de sociólogo” na USP dos anos 1950-1960. São Paulo: Edusp; Fapesp, 2008.) This is not the place to resume this long and interesting discussion, but at least two observations are important for the continuity of the argument here. First, the strangeness of equating “essay” to a “radiography” (which is found in the subtitle of Nicolau’s book). One need not frequent the notion of “essay” in works such as those by Theodor W. Adorno or Antonio Candido de Mello e Souza to have difficulty in understanding a use like this, an equalization like this. Secondly, to sustain this position, I believe that Nicolau would not only have to clarify what he understands by these terms, but also, at least, take a position in relation to what I have called the paradigm of the “formation” (which I will address later), a Brazilian intellectual strand that sought precisely to overcome this opposition between “science” and “essay.”
- 30.
In other words: I understand the horizon in which pemedebismo intends to insert itself as part of models of thought that, with greater or lesser success, point beyond this type of division and opposition, showing its unnecessarily reductive character. Indications in this sense can be found in Marcos Nobre, “O que significa ‘pensar o país’? Um debate a propósito de Por que o Brasil cresce pouco?, de Marcos Mendes,” Novos Estudos Cebrap, São Paulo, n. 100, pp. 97–113, dez. 2014; and also in Id., “Apontamentos sobre a pesquisa em direito no Brasil” (In: Emerson Ribeiro Fabiani (Ed.), Impasses e aporias do direito contemporâneo: Estudos em homenagem a José Eduardo Faria. São Paulo: Saraiva, 2011), pp. 79–89. Which is not to say, of course, that there are not trends that are as pernicious or even more pernicious to rigorous research and vigorous thinking in the current academic environment. It is only to emphasize that, at least, its old forms, typical of the period of implantation of the university in the country, have already been effectively left behind.
- 31.
On these developments, see Imobilismo em movimento, op. cit. On the centrality of the notion of “diagnosis of the times” in Critical Theory, see, for example, my Como nasce o novo: Experiência e diagnóstico de tempo na Fenomenologia do espírito de Hegel, São Paulo: Todavia, 2018.
- 32.
Marcos Nobre, “Da ‘formação’ às ‘redes’: Filosofia e cultura depois da modernização.” In: Pedro Duarte, Ernani Chaves and Luciano Gatti (Eds.), Filosofia. Rio de Janeiro: Funarte, 2017, pp. 285–306 (Coleção Ensaios Brasileiros Contemporâneos). A condensed version of the more general main argument was published in Marcos Nobre, “Depois da ‘formação’: Cultura e política da nova modernização,” piauí, n. 74, nov. 2012.
- 33.
See Marcos Nobre, “Conservadorismo em chave democrática: A redemocratização brasileira, 1979-2013.” In: Angela Alonso and Miriam Dolhnikoff (Eds.), 1964: Do golpe à democracia. São Paulo: Hedra, 2015, pp. 247–66.
- 34.
Some systematic thoughts about my view of the practice of “political theory” may be found in “La Théorie politique critique dans des conditions d’inégalités abyssales.” Raisons Politiques, Paris, n. 84, pp. 125–31, Nov. 2021.
- 35.
This perspective has affinity with that of Leonardo Martins Barbosa in his Conflito partidário e ordem política: PMDB, PSDB e PT na nova República. Rio de Janeiro: IESP-UERJ, 2019. Thesis (PhD in Political Science), p. 185, to the extent that it intends to present the instability of the political system in its historical evolution, “as a rule and not an exception of the Brazilian political process.”
- 36.
Thus, “the ‘Real’ alliance accepted as unavoidable the myth, generated during Collor’s impeachment, of the need for parliamentary supermajorities to guarantee governability. With that, it opened the doors of government to all political forces that wished to join” (Marcos Nobre, Imobilismo em movimento, op. cit., p, 72).
- 37.
This, however, is still insufficient to dispel the objection addressed by Yves Cohen in Imobilismo em movimento, which is that of the underdevelopment of the relationship between democracy and inequality in Brazil. See “Nobre, Marcos. 2013. Immobilismo em movimento: Da abertura democrática ao governo Dilma,” Brésil(s), Paris, n. 7, pp. 231–3, 2015. Nevertheless, in favor of the proposed approach, it may be said that the type of explanation that pemedebismo offers, even if limited to the concrete functioning of the political system, is also an attempt to understand a mode of functioning of democracy in conditions of extreme inequality. Furthermore, it is this social depth horizon of its approach, so to speak, that allows it to formulate questions normally absent from the specialized debate.
- 38.
- 39.
Steven Levitsky and Samuel Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die. New York: Crown Publishing, 2018.
- 40.
About this, see Marcos Nobre, “Crise da democracia e crise das teorias da democracia.” In: Maurício Fiore e Miriam Dolhnikoff (Orgs.), Mosaico de olhares: Pesquisa e futuro no cinquentenário do Cebrap. São Paulo: Sesc, 2021.
- 41.
How Democracies Die, op. cit., p. 43.
- 42.
Adam Przeworski, Crises of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 86–7.
- 43.
Crises of Democracy, op. cit., pp. 198–199.
- 44.
Paolo Gerbaudo, The Digital Party, op. cit.
- 45.
In full: “Within the world of conventional party politics, there is less and less sense of enduring opposition, and more and more the idea of a temporary displacement from office. Opposition, when structurally constituted, now increasingly comes from outside conventional party politics, whether in the form of social movements, street politics, popular protests, boycotts and so on. Within politics, on the other hand, the parties are either governing or waiting to govern. They are now all in office. And with this new status has come also a shift in their internal organizational structures, with the downgrading of the role of the ‘party on the ground’, and an evident enhancement of the role of the party in the institutions.” Peter Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy. London; New York: Verso, 2013, p. 99.
- 46.
- 47.
Hence, the interpretation I defend stands in opposition to the two interpretative strands that I see as hegemonic in the Brazilian public debate on what has happened since June 2013 and that, all in all, reproduce, each in its own way, the official version of the political system that June was only a risk and a threat. I call the first “serpent’s egg theory” and the second the “theory of the breakdown of the informal rules of functioning of democratic institutions.” On this, see Chap. 4, and also the “Anexo” to my Ponto-final: A guerra de Bolsonaro contra a democracia (São Paulo: Todavia, 2020).
- 48.
Giovanni Sartori. Parties and party systems: A framework for analysis. Colchester: ECPR Press, 2005. In the context of the present discussion, it is interesting to note that there are many points of contact between Sartori’s book and that of Levitsky and Ziblatt (How democracies die, op. cit.), especially because it is not a reference present in the book of both authors. Although it is not the place here, it would be interesting to compare the proposals of Levitsky and Ziblatt, with, for example, the Sartorian proposal of distinguishing between the “visible” and the “invisible” politics (see, for example, pp. 84 ff. and pp. 126 ff.), or the necessary assumption of “mutual trust” (p. 123).
- 49.
Ibid., p. 117.
- 50.
Ibid., pp. 119.
- 51.
Id. ibid.
- 52.
Marcus André Melo and Carlos Pereira, Making Brazil Work, op. cit., p. 56.
- 53.
Carlos Pereira and Samuel Pessôa, “PSDB e PT discordam mais sobre alianças do que sobre inclusão,” Folha de S.Paulo, 11 oct. 2015. See also, in the same sense, Carlos Pereira, Frederico Bertholini, and Samuel Pessôa, “Métricas para o presidencialismo multipartidário,” Folha de S.Paulo, 9 Oct. 2016; and Frederico Bertholini and Carlos Pereira, “Pagando o preço de governar: Custos de gerência de coalizão no presidencialismo brasileiro,” Revista de Administração Pública, São Paulo, v. 51, n. 4, pp. 528–50, 2017.
- 54.
I understand the questionings of Andréa Freitas and Glauco Peres da Silva, “Das manifestações de 2013 à eleição de 2018 no Brasil: Buscando uma abordagem institucional,” op. cit. to go along similar lines. Although the questions are not directly addressed to the positions of Marcus Melo and Carlos Pereira reconstructed here, but to texts by Fernando Limongi and Argelina Figueiredo, on the one hand, and Fabiano Santos and José Szwako, on the other hand, I understand that their questioning apply a fortiori to the authors of Making Brazil Work. It is encouraging to follow the attempt of Freitas and da Silva, among other things, because it starts from the frank recognition of the difficulties in which theories of institutionalist extraction find themselves at the present time and by recognizing the need to rethink the boundaries between what is “endogenous” and what would be “exogenous,” seeking answers to these challenges within this same institutionalist theoretical framework.
- 55.
Celso Rocha de Barros, “Estou errado sobre a democracia brasileira?”, Folha de S.Paulo, 17 Jan. 2022.
- 56.
Ibid.
- 57.
As the author wrote in a text from October 2020: “Our hope has always been that the physiological center of Brazilian politics would gradually be squeezed between a strong center-left and center-right from PT and PSDB. We hoped for the end of what the philosopher Marcos Nobre called ‘pemedebismo’. The opposite happened. On the eve of a rule change that should strengthen those who are already big, the parties with a clearer identity and greater social roots are doing badly, and the pemedebismo is giving an Olympic turn for having saved democracy” (Celso Rocha de Barros, “O custo da moderação pelo acordão,” Folha de S.Paulo, October 12, 2020).
- 58.
“O sujo e o mal lavado,” O Estado de S. Paulo, 7 Feb. 2022.
- 59.
“A política do desembarque,” Folha de S.Paulo, 7 Feb. 2020. It is curious to recall, in this context, that Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a model of the paradigm of coalition presidentialism, also qualified himself as an “accidental president.” The Accidental President of Brazil: A Memoir (Washington: PublicAffairs, 2006). As in the case of Carlos Pereira’s statements above, it would be interesting to ask here if for Marcus Melo José Sarney, Itamar Franco and Michel Temer could also be considered ‘accidental presidents,” since they were vice presidents who came to office in circumstances of death or impeachment. Including Bolsonaro in the series, we would have in this case something like four out of seven presidents who would be “accidental,” which should make one wonder what is “accident” and what is “substance” in the case of the theoretical framework in question.
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Nobre, M. (2022). Pemedebismo, Coalition Presidentialism, and the Crisis of Democracy. In: Limits of Democracy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16392-0_2
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